Ok so I’m going to assume everyone listening has taken the quiz and knows what type of realtor they are. 

Based on the way you answered the questions, your results have either said your are a BFF realtor, a Trusted Advisor realtor or a shark.

Now before I go into more details about these types, obviously this quiz is just for fun and doesn’t actually say anything about who you are as a person or your ability to be a great Realtor. So let’s not take the results too seriously or too literally ok?

So if you’re thinking you want to skip ahead and only learn about your type of realtor, I really encourage you to listen to the whole podcast because for the purposes of this podcast, even if you’re a trusted advisor, you’re either a BFF or a Shark type. Make sense? Ok let’s dive in shall we?! 

As I said before, this is really a spectrum from one extreme to another. Starting at one end are the BFFS. Now if you’ve been living under a rock (just kidding) and don’t know what BFF stands for, it’s best friends forever. 

These realtors are just that. They are like family. Their clients completely trust that they have their best interests at heart. Clients never worry that they’re being given advice that is not in their best interest. They are usually completely comfortable around their BFF realtor. They kind of let it all hang out and they have a tendency to air their dirty laundry.

The BFF realtor has a boatload of integrity and has very clear lines around ethical and unethical behaviour. They are very professional and tend to be at their client’s beck and call, always readily available to help whenever needed. They are extremely patient and empathetic and they care more about relationships than they do about deals which is why they work so well with buyers. These are the realtors that will remember the minutia of their client’s lives – they make people feel special and as such their secret power is that they develop very close relationships with people and they create deeply rooted loyalty as a result.

If someone decides not to work with them, the decision has probably kept them awake at night for weeks. They will feel soooo guilty firing a BFF realtor and they will go to the ends of the earth to try and make the relationship work. 

They will forgive mistakes much easier from a BFF than they ever would from a Trusted Advisor or a shark. So as you can see, there are some very desirable and admirable qualities to BFFs and if they could keep most of those qualities, but shimmy over a little more into Trusted Advisor territory, they would really rock their real estate careers. So I’m going to give everyone who falls on the BFF side of the spectrum 3 tips to reach your full potential and then I’ll do the same for those that fall on the shark side of the spectrum. 

On a comical note, there’s probably not a lot of true Sharks that are even listening to this podcast. A hardcore shark doesn’t care enough about improving themselves to bother with stuff like this. Again I’m generalizing, but the stats prove it.

BTW, I know you don’t know what your actual score was, but if you’re a trusted advisor, you should have a good idea of what side of the spectrum you fell on. Do you tend to personify more BFF qualities or more Shark qualities?

First Tip – Implementing appropriate boundaries.

So moving along, the first tip that will help those that fall on the BFF side of the spectrum reach their full potential is around implementing appropriate boundaries. These boundaries need to be put in place with both others AND with yourself. What do I mean by that?

First, let’s talk about boundaries with others. although you need to still be readily available and reachable for clients – I believe those are two very important factors in creating a successful business, but you will need to have some boundaries with some types of clients. You may find that some types of people will take advantage of you. It just kind of comes with the territory when you care so much, right?. On a side-note, I go into great detail about identifying who your ideal client is in my Foundations of Success course, which is a critical step that the vast majority of realtors miss when building their business..

Without knowing who you are hoping to attract, it is very difficult to build a long-term successful business. It starts with being able to clearly articulate your why and then having a clear understanding of your unique amazingness. 

Once you know those two things, identifying your ideal client avatar is critical to ensure you are attracting the right type of clients, that are going to work best with you. In that process, you’ll also learn how to identify your NO clients.

You need to flush them out. They don’t value you, they don’t respect you. They cripple you. Define them clearly so you can recognize them and avoid them at all costs. 

Now new agents will often say, “are you crazy, I can’t turn any client away while I’m trying to build my business? I can’t afford to!” I hear you and I fell victim to that mentality many times in my career. I get it. 

The goal here, is to have so many yes clients that you can say no to the others eventually. So focus on attracting your yes clients. However, you are going to need to learn to say no eventually. Saying No is a beautiful word and one that female realtors don’t use enough.So I want you to spend some time thinking about your boundaries and who your ideal client ISN’T. Make a list of the ways that you can tend to get taken advantage of and just be mindful when they come up. Now I want to talk about boundaries that you need to set up for yourself. These are boundaries that you really need to protect yourself from this business – which can be brutally hard. 

Women who fall on the BFF side of the spectrum tend to care about what people think of them, more than average people do. It’s because they care. They worry when they think someone has a less than perfect perception of them. Sharks on the other hand rarely COULD USUALLY CARE LESS. Those that fall on the BFF side often find themselves stressed and ruminating about all the things that could go wrong. Their deals can often keep them awake at night, which overtime can have serious implications on your health and your family. So you need to set a boundary up and separate yourself from your work. You need to learn how to compartmentalize. 

Find ways to put your business into a box and put it away at the end of the day.

2nd Tip – Build your Confidence.

The 2nd tip for BFF types to reach your full potential is to build your confidence. One of the fastest and easiest ways to do that is by improving your competence. The more competent you are, the more confident you’ll be and that confidence is a HUGE part of how successful you’ll be in this business. 

I am cocky as hell when it comes to most things real estate, because I know my STUFF inside and out. When I walk into a meeting with a new potential client, I own the conversation. I control the dialogue, I am the boss. And clients feel that confidence and they just defer to me as the expert. So your number one priority is to increase your competence to boost your confidence. That means you need to learn everything you can about home construction, your neighbourhood, the market, pricing, your business, contracts, etc. When you’re in real estate, you’re never done learning.

Ok to recap, the first tip for those that fall on the BFF side of the spectrum was to implement some appropriate boundaries, the 2nd tip was to find ways to boost your confidence by focusing on your competence and the

Third Tip – Coaching

Third tip actually came from feedback we received directly from clients of BFF realtors. The one thing they wanted from their realtor that they didn’t feel like they were getting enough of was…..ready for it? coaching. The most successful and great realtors are really good decision making coaches. They don’t ask clients what they want to do and they don’t tell clients what to do….they act as a coach by asking the right questions and challenging when needed. The client ultimately makes their own decision, but they get there because of the coaching that their realtor gives them.

Buying and selling homes is an extremely emotional process. The vast majority of clients are not thinking rationally, they are driven by emotions and those emotions often get the better of them. They’ll either make rash decisions or they will become immobilized and unable to make any decisions. Your job is to coach them through that process. This is a very underdeveloped skill in real estate, but it is the number one skill that separates the mediocre from the rockstars.

Where or how can you hone that skill? I wish I could refer you to a great program that’s currently available, but sadly there’s nothing.. Stay tuned though as I’m currently trying to get a brilliant business coach I know to create a course just for realtors on this topic. I am fortunate in that I have a degree in Psychology which has helped me immensely, but I think there’s a way to teach these skills to realtors without having to spend huge coin and 4 years in University.

Ok so for all of you that fall on the BFF side of the spectrum, hopefully focusing some attention on these three tips will help you move a little more to the middle of the Trusted Advisor spectrum.

Before we move onto the 3 strategies for those on the Shark side, I think it’s important to clarify something.

It is not better to be a trusted advisor that is a little more BFF or a trusted advisor that is a little more shark. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. One is going to be a bit better at relationships and the other a bit better at the deal side of the business. To put it in simple terms, one will be better at bringing in business and the other will be better at keeping it. So if you’ve ever thought of partnering up with another realtor, make sure you do it with someone who is opposite to you. Two BFF types together would really struggle to generate business and two Shark types together would struggle keeping it. But having the opposites is a recipe for rockstar success. Now I’ll save the pros and cons of partnerships for another podcast.

Ok, back to business. Changing gears now to those of you that fall onto the Shark side of the spectrum. So what are the traits that classify someone as a shark? There are two kind of key features of sharks and it’s important to note that just because you may have some of the characteristics, does not mean you have all of them and the biggest distinction here is around ethics. There are some sharks that are tough badasses, but are still highly ethical. It’s only the sharks at the extreme end of the spectrum that give the whole industry a bad reputation. Those are the ones that truly don’t CARE about anyone but themselves. All they care about is their bank account and how many deals they can secure, but any means necessary, including things that compromises their integrity.

It’s important to note thought that these agents only represent a very small percentage of the realtor population. Of all the women that completed the quiz there was only 10 that scored on the extreme end of the shark spectrum.

So I just wanted to make it clear that I’m only talking today about the trusted advisors that fall on the shark side of the spectrum, and not the extreme sharks that have questionable ethics. In my opinion this industry has no place for you.

Ok, so what are the characteristics of Sharks? First of all, It’s important to mention that they do represent the biggest portion of successful agents out there. If the top 1% of agents were to take this quiz, the vast majority of them would be Trusted Advisors that fall on the shark side of the spectrum. The same is said for DISC profiles – top producing agents tend to score very high on the D measure. When it comes to personality types, top agents are most frequently ENTPs on the Meyer’s Briggs test.

Those that fall on the shark side of the spectrum are extremely driven, they are hunters, they are very confident, they command respect and they are in control. They don’t take CRAP, they can be a bit or a lot intimidating, they don’t really care what people think of them and they don’t really let much get to them. They are strong influencers and they are really good at compartmentalizing stuff, they don’t take things too personally and they’re very focused on end-results. When you combine those traits with charm to round out those sharper edges, you’ve got a realtor that is extremely magnetic and will do very well in real estate, especially when working with sellers.

So what about the downsides? As with everything, too much of anything is not a good thing, and sharks are not exception. So the first tip that those that fall on the shark side of the spectrum need to focus on to reach their full potential, is to focus more on relationships.

Because sharks are such go-getters and they get such a high from securing new business, they like to move onto the next shiny object quickly, which can leave current and past clients feeling, well abandoned or not important. They don’t have the same patience that those on the BFF side do and as a result their relationships can suffer. So if you want to build more of a repeat and referral business, focus more on your relationships with your current and past clients. Be more present with current clients and focus on building your softer skills and getting to know people on a more personal level.

The next thing those that fall on the shark side of the spectrum should focus on to reach their full potential, is to soften their approach a bit and shift it from getting to giving. Instead of always being a go getter, try to become a go-giver instead. What does that mean exactly? It means approaching every situation and everyone you meet with a focus on what you can give to them, vs what you can get from them.

You need to trust me on this. You already have all of the qualities and skill sets needed to absolutely rock this business and if you combine that drive with a commitment to giving value to people everywhere you go, your business will explode. I have a whole module in my Foundations of Success course dedicated solely to this topic – that’s how much of an impact it can have on your business. I’m not kidding, it’s huge.

Ok to recap, my first tip for those on the Shark side of the spectrum is to focus more on relationships, my second tip is to soften your approach and shift it from getting to giving and my last tip is to make sure you have solid systems and processes in place. Sharks tend to get in trouble more often than any other type of realtor. One reason is just because they tend to do more deals and as a result are exposed to more things going wrong. But the more common reason is that they tend to be less detail oriented. They are deal makers and they don’t have the attention span or the interest in the minute of real estate transactions. To protect them, they need systems and processes so that nothing gets missed. Making sure you have a detailed deal management program with checklists, reminders and built in automation is key. These agents would also benefit greatly from hiring an administrator as soon as they can afford to.

Alright so that brings us to the end of this podcast about your realtor type. For all of you that fall more on the BFF side I want you thinking about your boundaries, I want you to be boosting your confidence by focusing on your competence and lastly I want you remember to be a great decision making coach when you’re working with buyers and sellers.

For all of you ladies that fall on the shark side, your goal is to focus more on building deeper relationships with your clients and to try and be more of a go-giver than a go-getter. I also want you looking at your systems and processes to make sure you have a model that is going to keep you out of trouble.

Alright, I sincerely hope that you learned more about your realtor type and that you’ve got some actionable things to focus on to reach your full potential. I also hope that you’ll tune into this podcast again and join me while I tackle all the things you can do to build your real estate empire.
Great, now that we’ve got the right headspace about this, let’s dive into more details. Before we get into the types though, I just wanted to quickly explain how the quiz worked. Basically each question was assigned a score and based on how you answered the questions, those scores added up to a total which put you in one of the three buckets. The important thing to understand here, is that although there are three buckets, it’s actually more like a spectrum, with BFFs at one end of the spectrum and Sharks at the other end. I want you to think of that spectrum as having an exact mid point – nobody can score exactly in the middle. So even if you are a Trusted Advisor, you either fell more to the BFF side or more to the Shark side.

Similarly you might have landed in the BFF category, but you could be right on the border of being a Trusted Advisor. Same thing goes for Sharks.

For example, l am a Trusted Advisor, however I definitely have some Shark tendencies and fall more on that side of the spectrum. Not in the unethical kind of way, but in the tell you like it is, know it all, cocky kind of way. So I’m actually a Trusted Advisor Shark.

Alright So the first question you’re probably asking yourself is whether there is one type of realtor that is better than the others and the answer is yes, obviously being a Trusted Advisor is the ideal. As with any extremes, it’s always preferable to be a blend of both ends of the spectrum. Having said that, there are qualities that BFFs have that are highly desirable and there are qualities that Sharks have that a lot of people buying and selling homes desire. So if you are a BFF or a Shark, I am not suggesting that you don’t have anything redeeming about you. Far from that.

However I will say that you will do better in real estate if you try to emulate more traits associated with Trusted Advisors. I’m not saying to change entirely, but to adapt some new strategies and approaches to the business. I’m just suggesting that you round out your edges so to speak. Of the same token, if you’re a trusted advisor, don’t go gettin all on your high horse here. You actually fell on the spectrum either closer to the BFF or closer to the Shark. So there’s lots that you can still learn to improve as wel