How to communicate with real estate prospects

As more and more people are texting, those texting abbreviations are slipping more and more into email messages, blogs, and even newspaper articles!

But are you SURE everyone knows what you mean when you say TMI, IDK,  HMU, ROLF, NP, or IMHO?

They might not, and then the effectiveness of your message will be lost.

At best, they’ll puzzle over it for a while and then delete your message. At worst… they might become angry with you for wasting their time.

A true story:

I have a friend who once emailed me to ask what LOL meant. I replied “laugh out loud.” She wrote back and said “I know it’s funny that I don’t know, but what does it mean?”

She was an exception – and she was asking a friend, not a stranger.  The sad fact is that when people don’t understand, most of them won’t ask what you meant. People feel like they “should” know and they don’t want to feel foolish for asking.

A secondary concern:

The abbreviation you use could mean something offensive – or just idiotic – to your reader. After all, there are only so many letters to choose from, so your prospective client might have a far different definition than you do.

If you want to communicate with real estate prospects and clients, strive for clarity!

I can’t tell you how many times a real estate agent has included an abbreviation in their answers to my real estate bio questionnaire and I’ve had to look it up to figure out what they meant. In some cases I’ve had to give up and call to ask, because there were too many possibilities.

Sometimes it stands for a college they attended. Sometimes it denotes a professional organization or an award they’ve received.

Had I written their bio using that abbreviation, how many prospects or clients would have any idea what it meant?

If you want to brag about your real estate designations, spell them out.

And then, after you’ve spelled them out, tell your prospects why you bothered to get them. What value is it to your clients?

How about giving it a rest? How about taking the time for communication? Slow down and spell it out – make sure that your message can be clearly understood by all who read it.

I used to rant about the confusion caused by misplaced modifiers. Now reading that the “Driver hit the cow in the red car” doesn’t seem nearly as confusing as a headline I saw recently: “Is AR TMI?” (No, I still don’t know what they meant.)

Next, communicate with real estate prospects in plain language, not real estate jargon.

When you use jargon, you and the other agents around you will know what you mean, but your prospects and clients might not. And, human nature being what it is, at least some of them won’t ask because they won’t want to appear ignorant.

Some jargon, such as HOA, DOM, REO, TIC, and NDH are abbreviations that will cause some prospects to guess at your meaning.

Some jargon consists of words such as debt to income, due diligence, escrow, acceleration clause, Starker exchange, active contingent, iBuyer, hard money, bridge loan, “pre-qual,” and pre-approval. And while these are real words, they still might leave your prospects/clients confused.

Pre-approval is an important one – since many prospects (and alas, some agents) don’t know the difference between a pre-approval and a pre-qualification.

Note that these are just a few examples of words you might need to explain if you use jargon when you communicate with real estate prospects. This website offers a list of 131 words you should understand – so you can explain them to your clients.

The bottom line if you want to effectively and clearly communicate with your real estate prospects and clients…

Don’t be stingy with your words. If it takes a few extra to say what you mean without using texting abbreviations or  jargon, use them!