For the 432nd episode of Mail-Right Show, Robert Newman, and Jonathan Denwood delve into skills agents must learn to position themselves for success in a competitive market. Robert Newman is the founder of InboundREM, a content marketing, story-telling-based platform. Meanwhile, Jonathan Denwood is the joint founder of Mail-Right, which builds beautiful websites on WordPress and provides CRM, landing pages, email, text outreach, and more in one great value package. This episode offers the essential knowledge and tips to help agents take charge of their professional development and gain a strategic advantage over their competitors.
Good Storytelling Makes Property Interesting To Potential Clients.
Your storytelling skill needs technical expertise because you have to know how Google wants to see the story and adjust your story to address specific questions that people have through Google. So, it’s not directly storytelling. It’s not just making up a yarn and going for it. Telling a good story is central to the success of being online and being an inbound marketer. It’s central to all of it. Your ability to riff and make a boring subject interesting.
Storytelling is vital for startups. It helps startups connect with customers. Storytelling and making the product fit the customers’ needs are the two biggest things for every startup. Real estate agents can benefit from having a message that genuinely connects with their audience. When the message is right and reaches the right people, it creates something special that nothing else can match. However, many real estate agents and new startups often fail to link their message with their target audience.
Storytelling falls into categories. Try to read Carl Jung and look deeply into his messaging related to archetypes. Jung was the first person to say that most stories are based on the hero’s journey. He was correct because the hero’s journey is an idea that has been around since language was painted on cave walls. The idea is that the protagonist is under duress, has a hard life and a hard time, and barely survives.
Your job is to tell that story compellingly. But the idea of the story, the general outline, is already done for you. If you read and understand archetypes, you can also really flesh out many characters in the story. There are all these different archetypes, and if you decide to fit yourself into one of them or king, hero, teacher, or professor, one of those archetypes generally helps you tell a story. So you’ve got the storyteller sitting in an archetype role, and then you’ve got the story you’re telling, which is full of archetypes. You make sure that they’re understandable, straightforward, and relatable to other people. And then you take everybody through a hero’s journey. These are the various challenges that you had to overcome.
One of the fascinating things about selling things is that you can sell anything if you can make the idea digestible and relatable. For example, you go and look at a house, and you need to tell a story about it.
Understanding the basics of storytelling, especially from a psychotherapist’s view, is vital for speaking confidently on camera and talking about a house in an interesting way in five minutes or less. The message must connect with the average person. Knowing how most people think is key to good storytelling. Talking about a property needs to be relatable, and research is required to make the story touch people’s emotions. A good message can energize the listeners’ subconsciousness. When the message connects well, something amazing can happen. A perfect example is writing a book at the right time with the right message, which creates magic.
Additional Skills You Need to Develop in 2024
To be a successful agent and have a long career, you need additional skills to support your storytelling ability. Many agents are not good at these skills, but with awareness and practice, improvement is possible. Speaking in front of a camera and talking to people can greatly help. Becoming good at these does not require being a natural star; it just needs effort and practice.
1. Become Knowledgeable
Knowledge helps with storytelling. Being knowledgeable is an important skill because it involves understanding the area where property is being sold and the different types of properties. Learning from experts like Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar is important for basic sales skills. It’s also helpful to read books on the psychology of selling by Brian Tracy. Some books are worth reading many times. However, understanding sales isn’t enough. It’s crucial to truly understand the product or subject. Many people get frustrated with salespeople because they often don’t know enough about what they are selling. For example, visiting a car lot and asking a question about a car, only to find the salesperson needs to know the answer, can be very disappointing. This lack of knowledge can make customers decide not to buy anything from that place.
Remember, the word professional indicates enhanced knowledge, skills, or ability. That is certainly what people expect from real estate agents.
2. Narrow Down Your Niche
Knowing your niche will help you greatly in storytelling because you will know more about it. When starting your journalism career, you must explore various aspects. Over time, as you advance, focusing on a specific area or type of audience becomes important. Finding a niche that interests you makes storytelling and selling more effective.
3. Focus on Accountability
Being accountable is important in compelling storytelling. Many people can tell stories that sound good but aren’t entirely true. Accountability means doing what you promise to do.
In storytelling, sometimes you might exaggerate to make the story more interesting, like everyone does. But it’s important not to exaggerate facts, like numbers or statistics, because people might think you’re lying. So, accountability in storytelling is about being accurate in what you communicate. It’s better to admit that if you’re unsure about something.
4. Learn to Delegate
Delegating tasks, such as blog writing, image creation, and WordPress maintenance, is key to effective storytelling through media. Delegation is essential for optimizing videos, editing content, and adding images.
Telling stories efficiently impacts people emotionally and ensures your message is heard. Make sure the message is clear. Your goal is to show real estate agents the importance of having at least one marketing plan that isn’t controlled by a large company. It’s crucial to have something independent.
5. Automate All You Can
Automating things is a great idea, but sometimes, you can overdo it. In real estate, many people promote automation to an extreme level, which seems silly. On the other hand, some argue that real estate is a personal business where phone calls matter more than automated processes. For instance, you only use my mobile phone, and if someone calls and doesn’t leave a message, you won’t call them back. More and more people are like this nowadays.
If you utilize automation when writing content for the audience, ensure you won’t get penalized by Google. Try to include five real estate facts you never use AI to find. Make sure your team always researches these facts manually, but you can automate half of the writing work. Tools like GPT-4 are useful because they can help you quickly generate blog posts using existing content or specific topics.
6. Keep a To-Do List
Having a to-do list helps you keep everything under control. When you focus on more advanced and creative tasks based on your to-do list, it will benefit you. Stick to a strict schedule for your tasks. They’re important things that you should prioritize for health and productivity.
