Gokhan Polat interviewed Ghassan Ghellal who is the Business Development Manager at Halcon Real Estate.
How would you describe the successful real estate agent?
I would expect four things from a successful agent: strong, specialized product knowledge; confident and clear understanding of the procedures, laws and regulations; great negotiations and sales skills; and finally, fantastic networking skills.
Why do you need to be a good networker as an agent?
You need to be a good networker with agents and clients. Every agent knows the best clients are those that come to you via recommendation, they trust you and are loyal to you. However you need to perform well to continue receiving these recommendations, and that is why you need to be a good networker with agents. If you have a good network of agents, you can ultimately have access to all the properties available in the market. This will help you in arranging viewings faster and thus giving your client what he is looking for before the other competing agents.
How come agents are skeptical towards working together?
The simple answer is trust. However there are two parts to this lack of trust. Fear that disclosure of property information is followed by the agent being left out of the deal, secondly not trusting the agent’s ability to perform their job. Many agents complain that agents are contacting them to arrange a viewing on a property prior to fully valuing the clients need. Trust can be enhanced as the industry matures and develops standard in practice and the quality of agents. Furthermore agencies need to come together to fight off unethical behaviors and encourage agents to work together to achieve best industry practice.
How do you begin building a network of agents?
To be part of any network, there needs to be common understanding. Putting a few guidelines for everyone who is part of the network to abide by is a good start. Secondly for a network to work it has to have a group of people with different skills. In relation to real estate this may be, that one agent specializes in a particular towers and always has listings, while another has contacts with high net worth individuals or perhaps buyers from their country of origin. Allowing an agent to clearly highlight their strong skills can help other agents find them when they need them.
