Are You Losing Business Because You’re . . . Unreliable?

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The real estate business, like all other businesses, is about relationships. To succeed, one must be able to forge and foster relationships. Social networks are great places to meet new people to accomplish that end.

Just connecting on a social network doesn’t mean that you’ve created a relationship with someone. It takes time, energy, effort, and follow-up, amongst other things, to establish a rapport and gain the trust of the other party.

You Must Be Reliable to Build that Trust!

One of the things that has come up for me over the past few weeks has been the fact that many people that I’ve encountered have been extremely unreliable. Once you stop being able to rely on someone, you no longer trust that they will come through to be there for you or for the task at hand. When that happens, the core of the relationship breaks down and you’re back at zero.

Most of my need to talk about this stems from potential employees being unreliable before a relationship is even created. I’m baffled at how bad things have gotten out there. We talk about how much trouble the economy is in, and I can’t seem to find reliable people to even return an email or call regarding a paid job position. If that doesn’t change, I don’t think we’ll see much change in our country’s future.

I’ve also been hearing too much lately about real estate professionals not responding to their clients needs, returning calls, submitting offers, and the list goes on. All of these things are just the death knoll of a relationship, and of good business practices.

What do you think? Are you seeing more and more people becoming unreliable? Are you losing business because you’re unreliable?

Share with us some examples you’ve encountered recently.

Photo Credit: Mark Hillary

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.