Take 5
How To Build Relationships That Pay Off
April Rager Kirkland
TRT: 3m 27s
Video Transcription


April Rager Kirkland directly addresses camera: As a real estate agent, you've heard over and over to stay in touch with your sphere. All good advice. But your sphere is more than just past and prospective customers. It's your peers. I'm April Rager Kirkland, a sales associate with Coldwell Banker, Tony Hubbard Realty in Claremont.

Let's take 5 minutes to talk about how to build relationships with other real estate agents. So many agents focus on building relationships with potential buyers and sellers, but need to remember about nurturing relationships with agents. It usually starts with the agent on the other side of the transaction.

How do you stay in touch once the deal is closed? When it comes to your peers, it's essential that you know, like and trust them and they feel the same way about you. Here are some things I do to nurture relationships with other agents to help transactions get to close smoothly.

The very first thing to note is your mindset. Texting and emailing can be fraught with unintended messages. You may have 2 minutes to send a text and it comes across as blunt and terse. Perhaps the other agent is in the middle of a frustrating day and an email sent sounds rude. I found that I should always assume the other agent had the best intention. Take a deep breath. Pick up the phone. I usually say hi. I received your message and I just want to ensure everything is okay.

I want to clarify the message. Usually the other agent immediately apologizes and our conversation moves on from there. Sometimes I'm the agent apologizing. Everyone has bad days and it's so easy to read into these text messages and inject our tone and thoughts when that wasn't even what the other person intended.

Connecting with other agents happens online too. I use social media to communicate with other agents. If I'm working with an agent, I don't know. I immediately add them to my Facebook. My goal is to uplift other agents. So each day I comment on posts, ask for advice or compliment a listing they posted.

Sure, we're all in competition, but we only succeed by helping one another. I also send handwritten cards to the agent on the other side of the transaction once it closes. I pick out something that was a challenge or what they did well and tell them how much I appreciate them and their hard work.

Or I comment on their creativity in getting the deal closed. I've been in the industry for over 20 years and I still have agents I talk to regularly. Tell me how I help them. Of course, I don't do it for the accolades.

I believe we are all in this together and serve the consumer better when we work as a team. I frequently meet other agents for coffee and have developed some long term relationships. We talk about challenges help each other through the transactions and share interesting books or podcasts.

I go beyond just real estate agents and I also build relationships with loan officers and title representatives. I frequently go to lunch with a friend who works in the title company and we collaborate and work through the challenges.

The payoff to these relationships is excellent. First, you make new friends. But more than that, you help each other succeed. And that's what the real estate industry is all about helping people and building relationships. So next time you think of your sphere of influence, remember to add industry professionals to that list.