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COLLABORATIVE LISTENING

How Rick Uses Collaborative Listening Rick's approach to working with his clients is a testament to his commitment to the collaborative mindset. His dialogues with clients are like peeling back the layers of an onion, as he puts it. Rather than asking his clients for a summary of what they’re looking for, Rick delves deeper into their needs and motivations. Many agents have had the experience of showing a home that ticks off all the boxes of what the client has asked for, but the home still just isn’t the one. So how can you get better at identifying it–that indescribable thing the client really wants? As Rick puts it, "you go about seven layers deep on someone's needs and you finally start unpacking what it is." Take a look at these examples from Rick’s process that demonstrate collaborative listening, resulting in a deeper understanding of the client's needs and goals, and a more effective approach to finding the best solution for them.

As a framework, collaborative listening can be broken down to a series of strategies that include the following: joint attention in which 2 or more people (the collaborators) focus their attention on the same question or problem sharing in which the collaborators each share their observations based on the “shared gaze” (literally looking at the same thing) and their intentions or goals in relation to the question or problem listening in which each collaborator names their own understanding of the problem and possible solutions, while the other collaborators take note of the different perspectives perspective taking in which each collaborator analyzes and revises their understanding of the problem based on the new information gained from what their collaborators have shared

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