Over the course of my 27-year career, I’ve worked with or coached highly successful real estate professionals of nearly every personality type. How did they achieve success? Simple. They adapted their approach to real estate sales to fit their personality. In this article, I’ll share how you too can find success in real estate by aligning your approach to your business with your innate sales personality.
The first step is to take my 10-question real estate sales personality assessment. As a certified MBTI practitioner and real estate coach, I have used this assessment with more than 1,000 people—from brand-new agents to billionaire real estate CEOs. I sincerely hope that it helps you too.
For this assessment to work for you, you need to take it seriously. If you don’t answer the questions as honestly as possible, the results won’t help you, and they may even lead you down the wrong path. Once you’ve finished the assessment, return here for resources to help you tailor your lead generation approach to your personality. See you soon!
The Best Lead Generation Strategies for Every Personality Type
Here is a rough overview of the different lead generation strategies that work for each personality type. Just make sure you take the quiz to find your own real estate sales personality. Below the strategies, we include some helpful resources to get you started.
| Real Estate Sales Personality Type | Best Lead Generation Strategies |
|---|---|
| The Guardian | Trade Shows |
| The Advisor | Blogging |
| The Strategist | Business to Business |
| The Operative | Open Houses |
| The Designer | Pop-By Gifts |
| The Guide | Community Volunteering |
| The Debator | Marketing Lead Funnels |
| The Contributor | Door to Door |
| The Influencer | Client Experiences |
| The Visionary | Seminars and Workshops |
| The Entrepreneur | Exclusive or Unique Strategies |
| The Authority | Prospecting FSBO and Expireds |
| The Advocate | Farming |
| The Diplomat | Giving Back |
| The General | Build a Team |
| The Analyst | Newsletters |
Related Articles
37 Underrated Real Estate Lead Generation Ideas for 2022
3 Types of Real Estate Investing Every Agent Needs to Know
Real Estate Farming: How to Become the Go-to Agent in Your Neighborhood in 2022
27 Fresh Real Estate Blog Ideas for 2022 (+ Examples & Expert Tips)
Door Knocking for Real Estate in 2022: Will It Still Work? (+Tips & Scripts)
Why So Many Real Estate Agents Fail After 2 Years (and How Not to)
Why Finding Your ‘True Self’ Will Help You Succeed as an Agent
As Shakespeare said, all the world’s a stage and we all have many roles to play. In my life, I have three main roles: parent, spouse, and real estate agent. Each of these roles requires me to behave and respond accordingly to meet each unique situation.
Think of each role as wearing a different hat. When I am wearing my parent hat, I must be responsible, polite, and calm. My spouse hat helps me to be patient and loving, and when I wear my real estate agent hat, I must be confident, outgoing, and responsive.
But who am I really? Who am I when I’m not a parent, spouse, or real estate agent? What is my true self? The real Sean is the person I have always been. From the time I was four years old, through my twenties, today, and someday, into my sixties. It’s the part of me that doesn’t change.
In order to succeed at real estate, I had to dig deep and find my true self through tools like the MBTI. I discovered my true self loves reading, learning, and spending long periods alone. This doesn’t sound much like the personality of a nationally recognized, top-producing real estate agent and real estate coach, does it? Fortunately, I have found ways to incorporate the real me into my real estate career so I don’t lose interest or burn out … and so can you!
Why Aligning Your Personality to Your Business Is Crucial to Your Success
Your personality plays a crucial role in your success (or lack of it!) in real estate—but not in the way you might think.
Too many unsuccessful agents try (and fail) to adapt their personalities to “fit in” better as real estate agents. They think they need to be highly extroverted to succeed, so they push themselves way too hard to “become” the fast-talking extrovert they see on “Million Dollar Listing.” This approach is doomed to failure, and at the very least, it’ll make you miserable in your chosen career.
To achieve long-lasting success and happiness in real estate, you must approach your business in a way that’s aligned with your personality. Here’s why. Studies show that changing your personality is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for most people. The scientific evidence is clear. While most people understand that our upbringing and life experiences shape our personalities, modern researchers have discovered that our personalities are also partially determined by genetics.
So that means the harder you push against your personality type, the more miserable you will be, and the faster you will burn out. I’ve seen this happen many, many, times in my career.
Personality Is Crucial, but Sometimes You Still Need To Eat the Dog Food…
I would love to tell you that you will always enjoy every part of your real estate career, and you will never have to do the things you don’t enjoy, but that would be a lie. While personality is a critical factor in determining your approach to real estate, it’s not the only factor. Your budget and urgency will also play an essential role in determining the best strategy for your success.
Suppose you have an unlimited budget and the time to slowly develop your real estate business over many years. In that case, you could write a blog that ranks number one on Google or become a real estate influencer on social media. I know agents who have done both, but again, it took them years to get to this level.
Short-term goals and urgency to make money will often require you to do things outside of your comfort zone to achieve the results you want in the time frame you want them. The good news is, we all can “flex” out of our personality preference for short periods of time.
This means that even I can “eat the dog food” and spend a few hours each quarter calling my sphere of influence (SOI) to invite them to an ice cream social.
However, if we stay outside our comfort zones for long periods, we can become stressed, irritable, or worse, burnt out. This is one of the main reasons many top-producing agents eventually fail. They spend years forcing themselves to work outside of their comfort zone, and eventually, they burn out. Ask me how I know.
As a result, I sought out a personality assessment to help me better understand the agents I was coaching, with a goal of helping them build sustainable real estate careers that complement their strengths. I wanted them to be excited about the business again.
Next Steps: Learn My 16 Strategies for Real Estate Success
Want to stop pushing the boulder up the hill for good? My book, 16 Strategies for Sales, will help you laser-focus your lead generation strategy so that it works seamlessly with your personality, not against it.
Bottom Line
Knowing your real estate personality will provide you with a deeper understanding of the best approach to grow your real estate business. You can increase your sales by gaining awareness of your personality type and adapting a sales strategy that complements your innate strengths and abilities.
Tell us about you so we know what to send.
