I had lunch with a very successful real estate principal in Brisbane recently, and we talked about building relationships. As we walked the 200-300 metres to the café he said hello or had a very brief  conversation with four people who live and work in the area. The agent was a little puzzled that I was genuinely impressed that he seemed to know everyone in the area. He responded, with a curious glance, “It’s my job to know them”.

He spends 1-2 hours every week walking around the business precinct talking to people – butchers, café owners, solicitors, bankers, travel agents – even politicians!!! He rarely talks to them about real estate because he’s known as THE real estate agent in the area. The topic of conversation yesterday revolved around who was going to win the State of Origin match and the upcoming local school fete. The real value to this story is he is their real estate agent – they might need him in 5 days or 5 years, and that’s who they’ll call.

As a KPI (key performance indicator) for his business he compares the number of listings each month against whether or not he was the ONLY agent the seller called in to list the property. Are you THE real estate agent in your patch ? Do you talk to business owners and the community for 2 hours every week about things other than real estate? If you’re wondering whether or not it works, this agent sells between 85-100 properties each year, and he’s the only agent called in to list a property for more than 58% of his listings.