Muhammed Ali said, “If you view the world at 50 the same way you viewed it at 20, then you’ve wasted 30 years of your life.”
Ralph Strangis, writer and motivational speaker, said these were the keys to success: “What you put in your brain affects how you think and act. Don’t watch reality shows. Read. Watch documentaries. Learn. Constantly. Question everything all the time and always ask WHY. Be nice—it doesn’t cost anything. Surround yourself with good people as much as you can.”
Surrounding ourselves with good people and these other thoughts were discussed recently in our Executive Leadership Team meeting about real estate recruiting. Every employer today knows that the war for talent is real. There are so many people seeking opportunities—the challenge is finding the right people for the culture you have built.
We were seeking to define the ideal profile of a successful real estate broker at our firm as we look to expand our local and U.S. footprint. Do we hire from within the industry or do we look at those already successful in outside careers? What we concluded is that our most successful people possessed a similar set of basic skills and replicating those skills would likely produce the greatest success for new brokers.
Those skills, frequently mentioned in social media, are oddly enough the ten things that require zero talent:
- Being on time
- Strong Worth Ethic
- Effort
- Body Language
- Energy
- Attitude
- Passion
- Being Coachable
- Doing Extra
- Being Prepared
Several years ago, E Smith Realty Partners saw an opportunity to build a real estate platform focused around the client’s needs. The formula was simple: hire best-in-class professionals who embrace our key philosophies, foster total collaboration, provide superior services, and allow our team to customize solutions based on project objectives.
Simply stated, someone who possesses those basic 10 things, regardless of their degree or employment history, will more likely lead to future success and fit well within our corporate culture that includes:
Be A Consultant, Not A “Pitch” Person
Many salespeople are the type who will likely do more talking than listening. A highly successful broker will be able to demonstrate both an understanding of the prospect’s pain points, the ability to ask great questions, and get to the heart of the client’s goals.
Add Value to Each Meeting
Beyond listening and addressing the needs of your prospect, a successful meeting or presentation is an opportunity to teach a client or prospect something new. Instead of spending all your time reiterating that you’re the right team, bring unique knowledge and insight to the table to educate and improve.
Leveraging the Power of Information
Brokerage success in the future will require leveraging the power of information, relevant analytics, and insights. This can be overwhelming, as there is no single data tool on the market that will uncover and identify every factor a client might need in choosing a site. There is not a single consolidated database that contains all aspects of why companies make decisions that can be exported into a spreadsheet.
Therefore, it then becomes our job to assist our clients in assessing everything from a region’s labor availability and labor costs to commute times, airline transport, and real estate expenses. If a client needs to know where electrical engineers live throughout the U.S., we must gather that data and analyze it, showing those concentrations, average commute times in traffic at locations under consideration and, using statistical and predictive analytics, creating projections of where that labor force will be living in five or 10 years.
Changing labor market conditions that impact the cost or availability of certain talent will cause companies to re-evaluate the long-term suitability of their operational footprint.
In today’s “big data” world, clients need their real estate advisors to provide a team of industry professionals who bring unique perspectives and experience in predictive analytics, technology and information management, real estate, architecture and engineering, supply chain and shared services, operations, process improvement, business intelligence analytics, finance, construction, and more.
We know that the war for talent is real, so our challenge is to find the individuals that align best with our culture and seek individuals with those TEN basic skills that require ZERO talent.
As Stephen King said, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”
Or in the alternative, Drew Carey offers this suggestion: “Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that—it’s called EVERYBODY and they meet at the bar.”
Susan Arledge is president of site selection services at E Smith Realty Partners.
