Real Estate Collaboration

Written by: Gary Horsman

Collaboration and Team Work

Real Estate Blogging Collaboration

In the words of Henry Ford: “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success”.

As operators within a business we need to find a competitive advantage. If we identify something significant then we need to do what it takes to realize this advantage. We need not put up barriers that prevent us from realizing the full potential of a advantage.

I was involved in two significant situations this past week where unnecessary barriers were being put in place. I will expand on one of them to provide some food for thought on a way forward.

Within a real estate office there is some natural competition. This competition is good to some degree but if it prevents or hinders collaboration then I wonder how this internal competition serves their customers and their clients.

If I am looking for a home to purchase and engage a real estate office then I would like to think that the office agent will come to know my desires and will collaborate internally with other office agents to help me find the right home. Conversely, if I become a client of the real estate office by listing my home with them then I would like to think that there will be excellent collaboration between the agents in the office to sell my home properly.

As a home owner listing my property for sale, I expect a win/win/win/win situation. The agent listing the home wins. The agent bringing the buyer to the table wins the home buyer wins and the home owner (me) wins. A proper transaction should have four winners.

Can a team of real estate agents

collaborate on a marketing approach

that involves blogging?

Now here is a key question. Can a team of real estate agents collaborate on a marketing approach that involves blogging. Will they see this collaboration as mutually beneficial or counter productive? Will agents let internal competition prevent them from delivering the best real estate blogging informational service to clients and customers?

First let’s examine the skills needed to collaborate? Here are some behavior indicators:

Collaboration to Build and Maintain Relationships

If the agents will collaborate on blogging then these behaviors will help to create a more successful marketing approach to blogging.

• Give and receive feedback from peers or other team members in order to perform the task of blogging.
• Share credit for good blogging ideas with others.
• Acknowledge others’ skill, experience, creativity, and contributions.
• Listen to and acknowledge the feelings, concerns, opinions, and ideas of others.
• Expand and improve on the blogging ideas of a peer or team member.
• State personal opinions and areas of disagreement with tact and sensitivity.
• Listen patiently to others in any conflict situations.
• Define problems in a non-threatening manner.
• Support group decisions even if not in total agreement.

Collaboration to Achieve Top Blogging Performance

• Give and seek input from on blogging ideas and materials from others.
• Sharing blogging materials (photos, copy, videos, ideas, feedback)
• Share external resources (photographers, graphic artist, copywriters, webmaster and techy gurus)
• Share software, subscriptions and other enhancement tools
• Share costs
• Assist others in a blog post to make it better and to support the parent company.
• Ask for help in identifying and achieving blogging goals and solving blogging problems.
• Check for agreement, and gain commitment to shared blogging goals.
• Notify others of changes or updates that may affect the blogging collaboration.
• Make procedural suggestions to improve the blogging process.
• Check for understanding.
• Always seek to achieve a “win-win” outcome internal and always consider the client and customer.
• Be motivational and up-lifting to others on the team.

I once took a course on competition versus collaboration and was astounded to discover the difference in performance when collaboration was used versus a prime motivator that was based on competition.

Everyone who took the course was surveyed at the beginning to establish a baseline on the improvement expected by learning how to collaborate versus compete. The baseline was in the 10’s of percent as the incremental boost with the assumption being that we would all be competing.

When we participated in exercises where competition was allowed to be the norm the result was never a win/win (someone always lost) and the wining individual or team outperformed the losing individual or team by 10-50%. It is certainly worth finding ways to out-compete the (external) competition.

However the epiphany for me was that when we were engaged in tasks where the norm was collaboration then there was no clear winner or loser. In fact all participants won. The result was an improvement in performance or end result not of 50% but rather a factor of 4 to 10 times.

Collaboration clearly won the day.

I encourage any real estate office that blogs to work as a collaborative team and strive to achieve the best blogging service in their target geographic area.