Real Estate Is a REALLY Hard Job—Here’s Something to Make It Easier

by Steve Shull

As a real estate sales professional, you have a REALLY hard job. 

REALLY hard.

There’s absolutely no way for any buyer, seller, prospect, or client to understand what you actually do—the complexity and nuance of navigating the sales process, the knowledge and expertise it takes to put together a good deal, the many requirements you must follow…

They’ll never understand that. They’ll never appreciate that. They’ll never thank you for that. 

The ONLY thank you that you can count on in this business is a paycheck…and we know they don’t come often enough.

From the outside looking in, real estate seems easy. You drive around and look at pretty homes, the client picks one, you make an offer, it gets accepted, and 30 days later you get a big, fat paycheck.

If only any of that were true.

However, this is why everyone thinks you’re so overpaid—that’s their vision of what you do.

Even when they get the ideal outcome, they’re not grateful. If the home sells too quickly, they don’t want to pay you because it seems like you didn’t have to work that hard. If it sells for too much, they think maybe they could have gotten more.

Every single day I listen to what my clients are going through, and it’s just one challenging station after another.

The reason for this is you’re dealing with emotions ALL DAY LONG.

Specifically you’re dealing with people’s hopes and dreams. 

Many of your clients have pretty outrageous and unrealistic hopes and dreams…however, those are the hopes and dreams you have to deal with.

Your clients also have fears and worries.

They want you to wave a magic wand to take all that away and leave them with absolute certainty.

As Chris Voss loves to say: “Ignore the human condition at your peril.”

Humans aren’t driven by fact, logic, and reason—we’re driven by EMOTION.

As a result, your clients’ expectations of you aren’t reasonable. They don’t expect you to be a real estate professional—they expect you to be a magician.

This is what you’re dealing with all the time every day: clients who are unreasonable, overly emotional, changing their minds constantly…

Sometimes being disloyal and dishonest…

Demanding, passive aggressive…

We could go on and on with the bad behavior.

But guess what? This is the bed you chose to lie in.

This is what you do for a living, and it’s NEVER going to change.

The clients will always be flawed human beings, and they will never have any appreciation for what you do because there’s no way for them to understand it.

The next time a client asks you what they’re getting for their 3.5%, whip out your listing process checklist that has 500 items on it that all must be executed perfectly and on time…and say, “That’s what you get.”

Will that shut them up? Probably not. This is what you’re up against. It’s the nature of the job. Nothing you say or do will ever change that.

You have 2 choices: you can FIGHT it or you can EMBRACE it.

This is why mastering Tactical Empathy—the art and science of making people feel understood—is so critical not only to your success but also to your SANITY.

Without it, you’ll be stressed out every single day because you have no way to communicate in an open, honest, authentic way with your client.

Just take one line from TE: “I’ve got some really bad news.”

That’s a line most agents would never use, ever.

You’re afraid of saying that because you think your value lies in having an answer to every single problem, so you don’t want to bring up a problem unless you have a solution. But most of the time the solution lies with your client, not you—they’re the ones who have to make a decision.

In The Full Fee Agent, Chris Voss and I wrote a whole chapter on this.

Most of the stress you experience in this business is because you’re taking on problems that aren’t yours. You think your job is to solve problems and tell your clients what to do.

It’s not—your job is to defuse your client’s negative emotions so they can THINK clearly about what they want to do.

You think you have to have an answer when you don’t even have the authority to make a decision…and you do this over and over. No wonder you’re so on edge!

This is just ONE of the many ways Tactical Empathy radically transforms your approach and reduces your stress at work. 

I want to acknowledge all of you hardworking agents. I listen to you every day, and I know how hard and thankless your job is.

I want you to know that Tactical Empathy can make it easier.

It can change your business…and more importantly, your LIFE.

Would it be crazy to think that if a skill can do that for you, it might be worth investing some time and money into learning it?

Our Tactical Empathy Bootcamp is starting in just FOUR days.

In this 10-week program starting Sep. 12th, you’ll dive deep into the core concepts and tools of Tactical Empathy, building the foundational skills you need to create a strong repeat and referral business. 

We won’t do this powerful program again for at least 6 months, so get in while you still can!