The New Standards of Operating a Real Estate Business

As successful entrepreneurs we all want and expect to portray the highest level of standards in every encounter and every transaction in our real estate business.

There are a few golden rules to follow to maintain your standards:

• Treat others the way you would like to be treated
• Set your standards high and vigilantly uphold them
• Ensure clients are not only happy with the end result, but with the entire process from start to finish
• Treat the person digging the ditch with the same respect as the person they are digging it for
• Don’t make promises you can’t keep – if you say you will call on Thursday at 6 PM – do it – always
• Surround yourself with like-minded people with the same high standards
• Appreciate compliments but more importantly pay attention to complaints

Real estate businesses that set and maintain high standards need to worry much less about their competitors. Setting the benchmark high leaves your competition grappling to try and match what you do on a consistent basis – a task too daunting for most of them.

It is not good enough to have clients that are just happy when the deal is done – you must strive for clients that are happy throughout the process. This may sound like a no-brainer, but how many times have you experienced poor customer service, lack of communication, un-returned phone calls or emails, unpleasant or less then polite personnel or shoddy substandard treatment? Even if you were happy with the eventual result or product, you don’t forget what happened in between, and won’t likely be a repeat customer, let alone refer friends.

A high standard of service is more easily maintained by selecting a team of personalities that share your business vision and high standards. In other words, it’s easier to learn job skills than it is to fundamentally change your inherent personality, bad habits and level of standards.

We all prefer compliments to complaints, but inevitably this is not a perfect world, and there will be dissatisfied customers from time to time. The most successful entrepreneurs don’t just ignore complaints and consider them a one-off even when they are. It is important to get to the bottom of what went wrong, (not who made the mistake) and as a team collectively discuss the incident and devise a strategy so that it is not repeated.

Maintaining high standards demonstrates to team members, clients and the competition that your business stands out from the crowd, and won’t be easy to compete with.