Whether you’re helping a first-time buyer with a $200k home or working with a high-income client with a $2m home, you’re likely asking them to trust you as a professional and their primary expert involved in what is likely the largest financial decision they’ve ever made. That doesn’t mean you need to be super formal or stay away from building a relaxed rapport and relationship with a client. But it does mean you should always appear professional in any communication with you client, whether it’s a conversation on the phone or in-person, or written in a text or email.
One of the easiest ways to come across as unprofessional, or maybe worse, to appear lazy or like you don’t care, is by not taking the extra 3 seconds to write your emails and texts with correct spelling and grammar.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use emojis, or should never use abbreviations, or need to check every message as if it’s an English paper you’re submitting to be graded. But it takes almost a negligible amount of time to capitalize your sentences, use some paragraph breaks in your emails, and make sure you have spell check turned on.
Don’t assume people know anything. If they know something and you explain it to them again, it’s not going to hurt them or you. But if you assume they know something and don’t explain it to them, it could cost you their business and could cost them their dream home.
This applies to small things, like not assuming they know who you are or why you’re calling, to really big things like the terms of a contract or what a contingency in a contract means.
People are more receptive if you explain what you’re going to explain before you explain it. And it helps prevent a lot of potential anxiety that they may have if they aren’t aware that you’re going to be explaining different things that they don’t understand.
Use phrases that assume (not presume) you are on their side and are working together with them: