the importance of relationships

[Jason Malabute]

The real estate business is all about relationships. When building your business, the worst thing you can do is make prospects feel like everything with you is transactional. Grant Cardone famously says, “Contacts = contracts. The difference between those two words is the letter R. The letter R stands for “relationships”.

It doesn’t matter whether you are talking to brokers, trying to convince an owner to sell their property to you directly, raising money from investors, or partnering with a KP so they can sign off on a mortgage. It is all about building and maintaining relationships.

Brokers will not vouch for you to the seller about you. If they don't, you can close. You do this by having a track record and staying top of mind with the broker. Going the “direct to owner” route normally takes 4 to 8 attempts to get in touch with the owner. Then it will take another 4-8 contacts from them to feel comfortable selling to you. When raising money from investors or trying to find a KP to sign off on a loan, you better not wait last minute to ask. People don’t like to feel rushed, nor do they like to work with people they are unfamiliar with. If you wait last minute to ask for money or for someone to sign off on your loan, people’s walls go up. Another mistake people have is that they ask for money or ask people to sign off on a loan on their first interaction. That is a red flag for many people.

My suggestion is to obviously let your intent be known but come from a place where you are interested in building a genuine relationship with them. Remember that people help the people they know and like.