How to Become a Better Negotiator by "Clicking" with Your Clients

How you "click" with clients is the building block of relationships, and the connections you make can affect the success of your business. In fact, word-of-mouth remains the top way that consumers find a real estate professional to work with.

During the most recent Secrets of Top Selling Webinar, The Secrets of Successful Negotiation, we sat down with Jackie Leavenworth to discuss how "clicking" with clients can help you negotiate your way to better business results.

"I have boiled the real estate industry down to three words: We need to be seen, found and trusted," says Jackie. She believes that these three things are key ingredients to truly "clicking" with clients and that they can help you:

• Develop better negotiation results
• Identify differences in people that might hurt negotiations
• Recognize default negotiation styles.

As with any relationship, step one is to build trust with whomever it is you are dealing with. It would be nice if you could click with everyone, every time, but that's just not realistic because you work with so many types of people throughout a real estate career. Jackie states, "When an emotional 'click' happens, it's great, but there are people in our world—whether we work with them, live with them or have to be around them in some fashion—that we just don't click with."

In this type of situation, Jackie recommends advice that she found in Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by brothers Ori and Rom Brafman. This book explains how to use accelerators to build a relationship, which includes vulnerability, physical proximity, resonance similarity and the environment. She explains that today's digital connectivity keeps us from getting face to face with people and that, while technology is great for networking, it lacks the social glue that allows us to make strong connections with people.

Jackie recommends that agents meeting a seller for the first time try to look around their client's home for photos, trophies or other signs of common ground. Being able to show that you have something in common with them will help them feel more comfortable about working with you, which in turn will establish trust in the relationship.

Another recommendation that Jackie makes for agents who are having trouble "clicking" with someone is to mirror their style of behavior. While opposites may attract, sometimes it can be a good idea to go along with a person's communication style. "I'm extremely outgoing and I talk fast and loudly and I realized if I care about a relationship, I have to bring myself to the other person's level," explains Jackie.

The final tip that Jackie provides is to pay attention to and use nonverbal communication. This can be done in three ways: body gestures, tone of voice and words chosen. She mentions a study in NLP (neuro-linguistic programming): "What this study says is that 55 percent of our message is received by the other person based on our body language and gesture. That's over half of my message! Another 38 percent is through my tone. If you put those numbers together, that means just 7 percent is done through words," Jackie explains.

Since the majority of communication in real estate is done through email and text, most clients are only receiving the remaining seven percent of your message. Jackie recommends using technology such as Facetime, Skype or even Periscope to take advantage of the verbal clues mentioned above. She concludes by saying, "Get face to face with people as much as you can—even if it's virtually—if you really want to be a really successful negotiator."

These were just a few of the tips that Jackie provided during this exciting webinar, so if you're looking for even more insight into how to become a successful negotiator, be sure to check out the full webinar. Also, don't forget to sign up and tune in for the next Secrets of Top Selling Webinar, "Team Building and Accountability," on Wednesday, August 26th at 1:00 PM/ET featuring Lisa Archer!

To view the original article, visit the Homes.com blog.