Real estate agents are courageous.

They've got to be, to choose an entrepreneurial career where income is commission-based. 

But here’s the paradox: 

As professional salespeople, agents tend to have the gift of gab. 

But put them in front of an audience or a webcam with a sales script to follow, and their natural talents can be sorely tested.

HOUSE HUNTING
My wife and I spent months of Sundays riding around in the back seat of our agent Laurie’s car, looking for our first home together in Monmouth County, New Jersey. 

Laurie, a vibrant and outgoing New Jersey native in her mid-40s, had a genuine passion for helping people find their perfect homes. She impressed us with her devotion to embracing one of the best conversational practices – speaking with one’s ears.

She was terrific at reflective listening and giving empathetic feedback. She knew how to take our concerns and feed them back in a way that both kept us from getting too discouraged by the grind of the house-hunt while reassuring us that finding our desired home eventually was possible.

And it happened! We soon found a lovely home less than a mile from the Atlantic Ocean across from a park with wonderful neighbors on either side of us. I could take the train to work in New York from the Long Branch New Jersey Transit station that was a few miles away from us, and on the weekends we had many local entertainment and recreational options to occupy us and the new friends we quickly were making.

SPEAKING JITTERS
But as I got to know Laurie better over the months, I came to learn that despite her outgoing personality and infectious energy, she had a fear of public speaking. If you put her in front of a camera or a live audience, she would stutter, ramble and freeze, especially if following a predetermined script.

During one of our Sunday house-hunting drives, she claimed she could “get by” when speaking to small groups, shaky as her delivery might be. But I could tell it bothered her to come up so weakly against this test of her otherwise considerable communication skills.

That wasn’t too surprising, given the competitive nature of real estate agents.

SUCCESS MINDSET
The good news for her, as I saw it, was: 

1. She understood she needed help – and was willing to get it. She accepted that better speaking skills would help her business. 

2. She already had an idea of audience – and understood that putting her audience first was what counted most in public speaking. 

That made the prospect of her making the jump from a mediocre speaker to a good one eminently achievable – with professional help. 

HIT AND MISS
But up to that point, Laurie’s efforts to improve her professional speaking ability had been hit-and-miss.

 ·      She used what she’d learned in school or on the job

·      She’d joined a well-known member-run public speaking and leadership organization, where she was sometimes evaluated by people who knew no more about speaking well than she did – or even less.

·      She tried to apply free speaking tips from the internet to her work challenges. But she was unable to stick with it without any real push from behind.

·      As a proud mother of two teenage children and a devoted wife to her husband, a local small business owner, it was hard for her to keep her other life responsibilities from getting in the way of her professional self-improvement project. 

SPOKE UP
When she told me that despite these efforts to improve her skills she still got nervous in front of a crowd, was self-conscious about how she looked and sounded and feared failing so much she was afraid to take risks that potentially could advance her career, I decided to speak up. 

I told her I thought I could help her as a speaking coach. I said that in addition to liking her personally, I admired how approachable and relatable she made herself and how she took the time to truly understand her clients’ needs and preferences.

“You’re not just a real estate agent,” I once told her.

“You’ve been such a consoling presence while we’ve been trying to navigate one of the biggest decisions of our lives, that you've become a trusted advisor. You shouldn’t be held back from achieving the success you deserve.” 

TEAMED UP
We wound up working together to help her resolve her speaking problems.

We jointly designed a concise and practical speaker-training program for her that catered to her schedule since agents often have limited time for extensive training.

INSTALLED FILTER
For her first lesson, we took her natural appreciation of the need to put the audience first a step farther – teaching her to filter everything she said or did when she spoke in those intimidating speaking situations through the central question of, “How is this going to affect the audience?”

She was encouraged to stop focusing on her discomfort and instead to shape her utterances and actions in terms of questions, like “What problems do they have that I can solve? What is creating pain or frustration for them? How can I help?”

Creators of books, courses and coaching programs on public speaking today err greatly by emphasizing the content and the speaker, instead of the audience.

The evolution of communication technology, from the age of rhetoric to the telegraph, radio, television, satellite communication and internet, has caused the idea of communicating directly with an audience to get lost.

CONTENT CREATORS
For instance, with the smartphone today, people are used to creating content and getting content anytime they want it.

That phenomenon has caused the concept of audience-first speaking to get pushed into the background.

My book, “How to Become a Super Speaker: The 7 Principles for Speaking with Confidence and Connecting with Audiences,” tries to rectify that mistake.

It emphasizes how successful speakers understand that everything in speaking starts and ends with the audience – and ignoring that fact is courting communication disaster. 

7 PRINCIPLES
(Corcoran Group's Marketing & Business Coach Ida Fields interviewed me about my book for an episode of its "Master This" series for agents in the New York City region. The photo that accompanies this article shows Ida and I sharing a laugh during the live chat.)

The 7 principles:

1.     Prioritize Delivery. The best content will go unheard without a delivery that arouses people emotionally and makes them curious to hear more.

2.     Put on a Show. Any time you speak to a group of people, you are a performer, they are an audience and your speaking area is a stage. And audiences expect performers on stages to put on shows – it’s the way we’re wired.

3.     Display Personality. Audiences decide to do business with you on whether they like your personality. In an age when authentic speaking is prized by audiences, they also are mesmerized by performers who confidently communicate in a style that showcases their human traits, including quirks.

4.     Feel the Fear but Keep Practicing and Speaking. Don’t fight fear, let it in. You can’t extinguish it – it’s a survival mechanism. Use it to make you speak better as the extra shot of energy and brainpower makes you mind work faster and helps you stay one step ahead of the audience and its changeable moods.

5.     Give the Audience a Reason to Care. Provide contextual details that answer the audience’s top-of-mind question: why am I supposed to care about this and what’s in it for me? If you make them work too hard to figure that out, you will lose them.

6.     Reveal What’s Inside You. When you let out emotions you can’t help revealing, the audience moves to you, paving the way for them to respond to your call to action. 

7.     Keep Things Easy to Follow. A speech story line and argument is only as compelling as it is easy to follow. Provide signposts that announce impending changes in logic or turns in emotional direction.

FILLER WORDS
Like a lot of other agents, Laurie struggled with problems that came up during pitches and negotiations, such as filler words, faulty word choices, rambling and racing.

My suggested remedies:

Filler words – learn to identify the feeling when you have an “Um” or “ah” or “so” or “right” coming on. Get in the habit of using a pause to head it off until your brain catches up to your mouth with the intended word or phrase. The audience won’t see your pause as anything other than giving them time to let your ideas sink in, or as creating drama between ideas.

Faulty word choices – Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. When you know their background you can tailor your words to their education level, demographic group, place of origin and other identifying factors.

Rambling – Practice cutting your talk down to the essentials. First speak for 7 minutes. Then trim to 5 minutes. Then 3 minutes, then 2 minutes, then 1 minute. You’ll learn how to leave out nonessentials while zeroing in on the important points.

Racing – Record yourself on your phone and laptop and analyze the playback. Could someone who was not an expert follow your pace? Are your pronunciations clear? Generally don’t ask friends or family for speaking advice but do present a bit of the talk to them and ask them if they had any trouble understanding your words. If so, adjust accordingly.

DEEP BREATHING
To prepare for speaking – and handling speaking anxiety – I showed her how to practice deep breathing. She learned to lie down or sit in a chair, inhale through the nose for 6 seconds, hold it for 6 seconds, then exhale through the nose for 12 seconds. (Even if you change the length of the breath, the exhale should always be twice as long as the inhale.)

Thus did Laurie learn to equip herself to prevail over many communication problems that confront real estate professionals.

Such preparation isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s a “must-have” for success in a field where communication woes often stem from misaligned expectations, unclear or incomplete information, a lack of timely updates and difficulties in coordinating between the parties who drive transactions – from buyers, sellers and agents to lenders and inspectors.

Strong speaking and communication skills can help agents achieve fewer misunderstandings by effectively conveying complex concepts in a way that resonates with the client – whether the challenge is explaining the intricacies of mortgage options to a first-time homebuyer, explaining property inspection reports to a seller, clarifying contract terms to a buyer, negotiating price adjustments with a seller, or explaining closing costs to a first-time buyer.

INVESTING SIDE
On the real estate investing side, strong speaking skills will make it easier to handle communication problems related to deal negotiation, market analysis, networking, presentations and pitches, due diligence, or risk management.

Subscribing to my complimentary public speaking series at michaelbarris.com/mini-course will help real estate professionals learn how to navigate their multifaceted industry communication challenges faster. The series comes with instructional videos by me to accelerate your progress.

Ultimately, learning to speak better will help real estate pros foster trust, transparency and clarity – aiding their entrepreneurial activities and helping both homebuyers and investors to appreciate what Mark Twain once said of the property business: “The best investment on Earth is earth.”