I was recently interviewed about what vendors should look for in a real estate agent.
It got me thinking about what is really important when it comes to choosing the best person to manage this most important transaction.
Sometimes agents forget that many people may only sell one property their entire lives.
It’s often the largest asset that people will trust us to manage, and it can be critical to think about what really matters when making this decision.
Before I get into what is important, I want to dispel some myths agents sometimes tell themselves are important when it comes to how vendors choose their agents.
I will also underline why agents can fall into the trap of thinking this way.
Myth number one
You have to be the cheapest or have the lowest commission.
Our agents survey all of our sellers when a sale is completed in the Ray White network, that is almost 90,000 sellers asked why they chose their agent of choice.
Do you know what’s almost never mentioned?
Being the cheapest agent.
Remember, you are selling a premium service.
This is not an area where being ‘cheapest’ is frequently aligned with ‘best’.
However, you may argue that sellers have told you, you’re too expensive when you have been unsuccessful at a listing presentation.
Generally, when a seller tells an agent they were unsuccessful because they were too expensive, it’s usually a nicer way of saying that the agent wasn’t good enough.
When sellers decide an agent based on overall costs, it is typically because none of the agents they interviewed stood out as better than any other.
Most agents who discount their fees are fundamentally lacking confidence about their ability to achieve market best price or even about their ability to pitch well at the listing table.
If this is you, please take some time to work on your skills.
Gather case studies to demonstrate your stand out results, role play your listing presentation with your teammates.
Work on your unique selling proposition, why should they choose you over your competitors?
Myth number two
You’ve got to tell the vendors their home is worth a really high amount to get the listing.
While your job is to sell hope at the listing presentation, it’s not your job to destroy all credibility by panicking and naming an unrealistic price just in order to entice greed.
When agents do this, it often sets off the suspicions of the sellers, (who in most cases have a very good idea of what their home is roughly worth).
It can create the impression that you are less experienced than other agents and that you are desperate and trying to ‘buy’ the listing.
The best practice with price is to try to understand the sellers expectations of sale price.
This is the most important piece of information you can gather, ideally before, or at the listing presentation.
Once you know that figure you can determine how you handle that expectation, whether it aligns with your read on current market performance.
Myth number three
Vendors don’t want to spend money on marketing.
Of course no one wants to spend money without need, but many agents feel that similar to myth number one about commission, vendors want to spend nothing to achieve a maximum outcome.
Marketing is an investment in the sale process and when explained and presented adequately, many vendors will often choose to invest more in ensuring a higher net result.
Remember, the best agent is the one that puts the most money in the vendor’s pocket after costs.
Investing in more marketing or more high quality collateral can result in a wider marketing reach, which can create more interest, more competition and higher eventual sale price.
Many agents fail to give their vendors the choice of a broad marketing selection due to a misconception that they simply have no interest in making that type of investment.
Case studies are a great way to win here showing the investment, how it resulted in more traffic, more bidders and a result over reserve expectations.
Now that we’ve dispelled the myths, what are the fundamental skills that really make the difference between the average agents and industry leaders?
It comes down to three critical core skills.
Skill one: communication
Good communication skills are one of the most critical attributes of top performers and great leaders.
It’s a skill that isn’t found in all people.
Communication is at the heart of all that we do in real estate.
Firstly, in acquiring potential customers, building relationships, pitching for business, canvassing potential buyers, marketing, negotiating and all levels of customer service.
Our best agents can demonstrate how they’ve helped other clients, maintain consistent communication over a sustained period and coach sellers through tough decisions.
The simple adage many agents are taught in real estate is to ‘under promise and over deliver’.
Are you delivering on your promises?
Are your clients comfortable and well informed with every interaction you have with them?
Skill two: marketing
The second critical skill our best agents have is being good marketers.
I’m not talking only about vendor paid advertising or plastering your face on every vacant bus stop.
Aligning very closely with communication is marketing, and understanding that when you are communicating to your client base, you are marketing yourself to them.
The function of marketing is to help to create brand awareness, drive profit and growth, acquire and retain customers, and enhance engagement.
Great marketers will naturally do this with every interaction.
So much of what we do is marketing, whether it be our own business or the property we are selling.
Skill three: negotiation
Last and certainly not least, our best agents are expert negotiators.
Negotiation sits in most of our daily activities from building database relationships, conducting listing presentations, driving traffic to properties, encouraging people to register to bid at auctions and of course, negotiating a final sale price.
This is a skill that can be honed over a lifetime and is crafted from increasing your product knowledge, working on your emotional intelligence and self confidence.
With negotiation happening every day around us in many different scenarios, please shadow your leaders, watch what your best agents do, attend as many auctions as possible and watch people’s body language.
Not all negotiations will follow the same course, sometimes you will need to speed up and other times you will need to slow down.
Ensuring you maintain open lines of communication will enable you to keep the conversation going to explore all possibilities.
Being good at negotiation is demonstrating an ability to influence others.
What’s your level of influence? Do you shy away from confrontation?
Agents are paid a professional fee in order to be just that, professional.
Your job is to insert yourself into sometimes difficult conversations, represent your client and obtain the optimal result on their behalf.
How would you rate your performance in communication, marketing and negotiation?
There is so much upside to mastering these three core skills.
