Tactical empathy is an important soft skill for real estate agents to achieve outstanding results for the sellers.
Tactical empathy is a concept often associated with negotiation and interpersonal communication. It involves actively listening and understanding the emotions and perspectives of the other party during a negotiation. The term “tactical” implies that this form of empathy is strategic and intentional, used to achieve specific goals in a negotiation. Here’s a deeper look at tactical empathy:
- Active Listening: Tactical empathy begins with active listening. This means giving your full attention to the other person, focusing on their words, tone of voice, and body language. It’s about truly hearing what they are saying without immediately formulating a response.
- Understanding Emotions: In addition to listening to words, tactical empathy involves recognizing and acknowledging the emotions of the other party. Emotions play a significant role in decision-making and behaviour during negotiations.
- Empathetic Communication: Responding with empathy means showing that you understand and respect the other person’s perspective and feelings, even if you don’t agree with them. This can involve statements like, “I can see that you’re frustrated about this issue,” or “I understand why you feel that way.”
- Building Rapport: Tactical empathy is a tool for building rapport and trust. When people feel heard and understood, they are more likely to be open to finding common ground and making concessions.
- Gaining Information: By actively listening and empathizing, you can often gain valuable information about the other party’s motivations, concerns, and priorities. This information can be used strategically to craft proposals that address their needs.
- Conflict Resolution: Tactical empathy is particularly useful in resolving conflicts. When both parties feel heard and understood, it becomes easier to find mutually acceptable solutions.
- Maintaining Control: Despite its empathetic nature, tactical empathy doesn’t mean losing control of the negotiation. It allows you to stay in control by understanding the emotional landscape and using that understanding to guide the negotiation in your favour.
- Influencing Outcomes: Empathetic communication can influence the other party’s perception of you and the situation. It can encourage them to be more cooperative and willing to work toward a resolution that benefits both parties.
- Avoiding Confrontation: Tactical empathy can help prevent confrontations and escalating conflicts by defusing tension and promoting a more collaborative atmosphere.
- Win-Win Solutions: Ultimately, the goal of tactical empathy is to create win-win solutions where both parties feel satisfied with the outcome.
Tactical empathy is a valuable skill in negotiating with buyer. It involves combining emotional intelligence with strategic communication to achieve positive outcomes while maintaining respect and understanding for the perspectives and emotions of the buyer. It is a very useful soft skill.
When a seller is selling their house many times there are lots of emotions involved, and same thing with buyers, when a buyer is looking for a new place to live in, they have been looking at so many houses and thus have lots of frustration and tiredness. Dealing with 2 parties involved, getting the maximum outcome and win win to all parties are sometimes challenging. My longest negotiation was 6 weeks, it was tiring, lots of emotion involved. This is just an example when Tactical Empathy is very very useful. I use this a lot, it has become a second nature to me. In the end I got the best result for the seller and the buyer got the house. Happy days!.
When you see me in person, I look far away from intimidating, very unthreatening. In fact many people said I look very young just like someone who just finished Uni !! 😅.  I love one on one chat, far away from being pushy or salesy.
My negotiation style is very soft and more on persuasion side. But with this skill, I help my sellers make good profit in their selling price. Love it!