If one of the brokers I interviewed with in 2010 asked me if I had skills in making 30-second dance videos to sell real estate, I would have laughed in their face and walked out the door. Well, that’s not entirely true. In those days, I was so desperate to join a luxury brokerage I probably would have said something like, “No, but I can learn!” 😂
Today, new agents and even experienced ones are being asked questions like this when they interview with teams and top brokerages. The real estate agent skills that top brokers and teams are seeking today are very different from the ones they looked for even 10 years ago. So we asked some of our friends who hire for luxury brokerages what the most sought-after real estate agent skills are in 2022.
1. Resilience
They say that in some decades, nothing happens—but in some years, decades happen. With a global pandemic, blockchain, iBuyers, and 40-year record high inflation, succeeding as a real estate agent in 2022 is harder than ever. The one skill that can predict success in such a chaotic time better than any other is resilience—aka the ability to bounce back quickly after failure.
Also referred to as “grit” or known as trait conscientiousness by psychologists, resilience is fast becoming the most important skill brokers look for in new agents.
How to Build Your Resilience to Upgrade Your Career
While building resilience isn’t easy—some people seem naturally more resilient than others—it is one of the most important skills you can learn to upgrade your career in real estate. It may sound a little woo-woo, but keeping a diary of cognitive biases and making a habit of challenging your emotional responses to failure can be a big help. You can learn more about building resilience here:
How to Become a Successful Real Estate Agent (6 Simple Strategies)
2. Short-form Video Skills
Over the past few years we’ve watched the length of videos that do well on social media shrink from 10 minutes, to five minutes, and recently, to about 30 seconds(!) on apps like TikTok. While this may sound like good news for agents who hate making long videos, the truth is that the shorter your video, the harder it is to educate or entertain your audience. This means sharpening your short-form video skills will make you a more attractive candidate for top teams and brokerages in 2022.
How to Build Your Short-form Video Skills to Upgrade Your Career
The best way to improve your short-form video skills is to master the art and science of writing scripts and shooting videos. Then all you need to do is condense your ideas down into their essence and shoot them. For example, if you want to educate your audience on important real estate terms, focus on defining just one term in each video you create.
You can see some examples of agents crushing it with short-form videos in The Broke Agent’s article on Instagram Reels here:
10 Agents & Coaches Crushing It on Instagram Reels
3. Teamwork
If you ask anyone who thinks about the real estate industry for a living, most of them will tell you the days of the lone-wolf agent are quickly coming to an end. Today, agents are starting to realize that it’s teamwork that makes the dream work. The number of agents starting or joining teams is at an all-time high, and teamerages—hybrids of teams and brokerages—have been crushing it.
How to Build Your Teamwork Skills to Upgrade Your Career
If you’re a newer agent in a busy office, building your teamwork skills is simple. Figure out what you do better than the experienced agents around you and offer to help them do it. Most top producers work long hours. They either show up very early in the morning, or stay in the office very late. If you work those hours too, you’ll have the ideal opportunity to get to know them and what they need help with.
If you’re looking to start a team instead of joining one, check out Chris Linsell’s guide here:
How to Build a Real Estate Team in 2023 + 7 Critical Mistakes to Avoid
4. Creativity
Like resilience, creativity is another skill that has become more important for agents over the last few years. When things change fast, you need to be creative to find ways to keep up. Whether it’s chopping up your YouTube videos into short-form videos to use on Instagram Reels, or hiring a hot-dog truck to drive traffic to your open house, creativity is fast becoming a crucial skill for real estate agents.
Here’s Tricia Lee, Team Leader for the Sold by Tricia Lee team at SERHANT., explaining why creativity is crucial for real estate agents this year:
“It’s with the softer skills where you will find your rock stars. We want personalities that influence behavior and opinion, because they KNOW what is right and their client can trust that. It’s one thing to say something—it’s a whole other skill set to impact movement or action.”
How to Build Your Creativity Skills to Upgrade Your Career
While most people think creativity is something people are just born with, nothing could be further from the truth. Creative people—whether they’re writers, painters, directors, or musicians—typically approach creativity with a problem-solving mindset.
In other words, they break down creative projects into smaller chunks and treat them as problems to be solved. They also don’t wait for inspiration to strike. They work consistently every day to solve the problems they chose to solve.
If you want to learn how to be more creative with your copywriting, check out my copywriting article here:
7 Real Estate Copywriting Rules Professional Writers Swear by
5. Negotiation Skills
Since both buyers and sellers have access to more information than ever before, negotiation skills are becoming increasingly important for real estate agents. The crucial lesson to remember about negotiating is that your goal is not to “win,” but to get a deal done. To do that, you will have to come up with a solution that will satisfy both the buyer and the seller. Of course, you also need to remember that the agent you’re negotiating with might be someone you will need to maintain a professional relationship with in the future.
How to Build Your Negotiation Skills to Upgrade Your Career
The best way to build your negotiation skills is through experience. If you’re brand-new and have no experience negotiating, you can start by studying the negotiation advice of the experts. In our negotiation guide below, we break down advice from some of the best negotiators in the world:
23 Clever Real Estate Negotiation Strategies From the Pros
6. Data Analysis
When it comes to access to information, your buyers and sellers can’t hold a candle to the reams of data that are available to real estate agents these days. If you want to know more about pretty much any aspect of your local market, chances are you can find a service to provide it for you—often for free. That means agents who develop skills to analyze data will have an edge over agents who don’t.
How to Build Your Data Analysis Skills to Upgrade Your Career
The first step to building your data analysis skills is to learn just how much data is out there and what you can and can’t do with it. Predictive analytics, the practice of using artificial intelligence to parse large amounts of data to get actionable advice, has advanced more in the last five years than in the last 20 years. You can get started by reading Chris Linsell’s predictive analytics guide here:
Predictive Analytics: How to Get More Listings With Less Marketing
7. Patience
The last skill that the brokers we talked to mentioned was patience. We have to admit this seemed a little odd to us for such a fast-paced industry like real estate. But after a few minutes, it clicked. It takes time and patience to build every single skill we’ve outlined so far—and you need to stick with it until it starts to make you money. This applies to soft skills and hard skills. Whether it’s cold-calling or Facebook advertising, patient agents win the day.
How to Build Your Patience to Upgrade Your Career
The best way to become more patient so you can learn the soft and hard skills you’ll need in real estate is through an exercise routine or meditation. Both will teach you rudimentary lessons about incremental growth—an approach you’ll need to embrace to succeed at anything in life.
You can learn more about meditation for busy agents in Real Estate Coach Beverly Ruffner’s (aka the Conversion Queen) guide here:
89 Motivational Real Estate Quotes You Haven’t Heard 1,000 Times
Over to You
Are you a Managing Broker or Team Leader hiring real estate agents in 2022? What real estate agent skills do you look for in your new hires?
All animations featured in this article are courtesy of Icons 8.
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