An article by Peter O'Brien.

Almost every day I spend time answering questions.

Real Estate Agents and other clients of mine will contact me for some advice on various topics such as; what is the best practice for certain property management procedures or how to best handle and produce a successful outcome regarding a particular scenario.

A Client may ask me what is happening in the current market or perhaps they may request a valuation as to how much one of their properties in their investment portfolio is worth.

How do I know these answers?

It is important for me to be able to provide all my clients and colleagues the correct advice or at be able to pass on my professional opinion. I can only do this by previously asking many other questions myself.  No matter how many years experience I have or being confident in real estate matters, I firmly believe that you never stop learning and never should stop asking questions.

Asking questions can reveal new knowledge about your Business. I believe that one of the most important leadership skills is learning how to ask the right questions. Asking questions drives creativity. It gives us an open mind.

Questions often drive us to answers we never thought to consider until we asked the question!!

While many of our questions may not be worth exploring and spending much of our valuable time contemplating, for every ten questions there’s always one that causes us to stop and wonder. It is these questions that give us the opportunity to implement change and improve our businesses.

In my own business I ask myself the following questions:

1. Why do we do what we do? I was hoping my answer would not only be, “To make a profit?” Obviously, any business needs to earn a profit to survive. However, I would be pretty miserable if the reason for doing what I do was just profit. In my businesses, ultimately, profit is a result of client engagement, which is a result of client’s experience.

Thankfully, my passion and love of what I do leads to my clients having a rewarding experience. This gives me motivation to keep going.

2. How are we doing it? Listening to the client and understanding their wants, needs, and desires is critical to the success of my business. Sometimes we can become “used” to our processes and services, so much so, that we forget to review them and therefore we don’t improve them or let them evolve as needed. .

It takes listening to feedback from clients, employee reviews, mystery shopper exercises, client surveys, etc., to determine if the service I am providing is working or if it needs reviewing and changing. There’s always room for improvement.

3. What are we doing? I want my Business to be successful. I want to deliver a great service. I want to be a known and trusted advisor. I ask myself this question in my Business often to ensure I keep as focussed as possible.

I am happy with how my businesses are currently progressing. I am happy with maintaining my industry knowledge and experience. To make sure I remain happy with this journey I will continually keep asking questions.

I encourage others to do the same.