A great day to all of you focused businesspeople and dynamic salespeople! It’s always worth remembering that there is NO better day than today to be out in your marketplace looking for new business, listing salable properties, and putting sellers and buyers together … and as always we have to choose to be a part of what’s happening.

One of the ways we equip ourselves to be more effective at doing our job is to improve our ability to relate to others—especially those who are not like us. There are many words that define this trait, but the one I like is the word ‘versatility’. One definition of ‘versatility’ that I have been given over the years is the ability to adapt to a variety of different people, in a variety of different ways, in a variety of different circumstances. When others feel that you are ‘relatable’ they feel more willing to trust you. And how many listings are you going to take or deals are you going to negotiate if the client doesn’t trust you?

Okay, fine, James … So how do we develop a higher level of versatility? Well, one way is to put ourselves in situations that we haven’t been in before simply to expand our knowledge, our comfort zones, and our range of experience. I heard a great quote recently: “When was the last time you did something for the ~first~ time?”

Think about that. If we are willing to look for new opportunities to do something a little out of our norm … to spend time doing something that we’ve never done before … or WITH someone that is not the ‘usual’ type of person you spend time with you are almost always going to grow because of it. Your ability to relate to and adapt to different people comes as a result of being in those situations in the first place AND having a ~willingness~ to become better for it. Oftentimes the problem is that we are more concerned about trying to get everyone to conform to OUR way and our personality as opposed to working to become more relatable to them.

So, the challenge is this—see how many times in the next week you can recognize that you are dealing with someone who is ‘different’ than you in how they deal with life. Then ask yourself, ‘what can I do to relate better to THEIR perspective as opposed to just sitting back and waiting for them to adapt to me?’ When you do, you stand a much greater chance of them wanting to do dialogue with you, and ultimately do business with you.

This is just one more way that you can make today count …

(Photo courtesy of versatilityshop.co.uk)