Inspiration

Personality Assessment in your Estate Agency

RAT 86 (Rawlings Agency Tip)

How often do you repeatedly have to fix a “problem” trait – either in yourself or a colleague? I mean the type of weakness or area of poor performance that, no matter what you do, seems to recur repeatedly, causing frustration, anxiety and possible damage to the smooth running of the office. It might be poor time keeping, failing to maintain records properly or a host of other niggles that can creep in via the backdoor of any estate agency office. It might just be the fact that one person is simply not as good as another at eg converting enquiries into viewings, or viewings into offers.

But why not look at things another way? After all, a good team is made up of different people each with different skills-sets. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to be perfect and one person’s strength can often offset another’s weakness, providing balance. I’m certainly not saying ignore people’s weak areas but I know one thing...I’d rather use my management skills to help a top performer achieve and extra 20% than a weak performer improve by 20% ! Do the maths!

But before you can harness a talent, either in yourself or others, you have to discover and understand it. One of the best ways of doing this is to conduct a psychometric profile. If you have never done one of these on yourself, you’ll be amazed at how such a test can measurably identify your own strengths and weaknesses. Once you or your colleague knows what “others” think of you (as identified in the test) then this can help you recognise latent attributes that can then be readily harnessed.

You can easily do such a test yourself at http://www.personalDNA.com/tests.php Follow the instructions and I think you might be spooked by its accuracy. Then get your colleagues to do the same and, with their permission, discuss your profiles in the office. Not only will you get to know each other better, but you’ll be able to say things like “OK – no wonder you are rubbish at keeping records, but you were clearly born to cold call! Then that cold-calling genius can be tasked with more cold calling activity (which he/she probably enjoys) whist the opposing more analytical person can be taken off such onerous duties and charged with tasks better suited to their talents.

There is no right or wrong here – just observations that can be used to help people do what they do best. Psychometric analysis in business is a huge and fascinating subject, and a great management and recruitment tool.
In a future RAT (Rawlings Agency Tips) I’ll be looking at aspects of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) that can be used to help estate agents connect better with buyers and sellers alike. Of course, if you’d like any in-house training focusing on the psychology of selling in estate agency then please do get in touch here.

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© Richard Rawlings 2012
Richard Rawlings is the founding director of Estate Agency Insight, which specialises in helping estate agencies harness opportunity through innovative method, marketing, publicity, and training. He can be contacted at or on 0845 838 1354.

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