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In this marketplace, selling a home has been easy.
Multiple offer scenarios drive up prices and when you combine that with great agent negotiation skills, we’ve seen extraordinary results.
It’s easy to believe we are heroes of the real estate world, and because of these great results, we might dangerously assume we have created another raving fan.
However, let’s not kid ourselves. Behind the scenes, sellers might quietly be questioning our fees and value. Many would think our job has been made very easy with this current competitive landscape where properties spend few days on the market.
The takeaway? Great agents don’t sell homes. They offer service and value that creates raving fans.
So, how exactly is that achieved?
Get ahead of the game
To create a sales experience that’s memorable and worth raving about, you need to be ahead of the game.
Have a ‘project management’ approach to your sales campaigns. Have agendas in place, action lists and trigger points.
Identify any possible friction points in a sales campaign and actively eliminate them.
This involves putting yourself in both the buyer and seller’s position, and anticipating what each party is thinking.
Demonstrate your value
There has never been a more important time to demonstrate your value. After all, if sellers and buyers think your job is easy, they quickly question what they are paying for and why.
An agent’s value is their expertise, their market insight and their negotiation skills. It’s in the communication they proactively provide and the attention to detail they seamlessly offer.
Communicate with your vendors after each inspection and provide comprehensive market/buyer feedback.
Make sure they also hear from ALL your team using all the tools available to you, including phone, SMS, digital feedback reports and email.
The more team members they hear from, the more value they perceive and let’s face it, as an agent you might be the face of service, but you don’t actually do everything.
Don’t rob your vendor of all the behind-the-scenes activities you undertake and all the tasks you do. Sellers and buyers don’t know what they don’t know, and silence implies no activity.
Together this communication and insight makes people feel important, understood and reassures them you have their back during a transaction that is not just financial, but often emotional.
And we all know, value is partly determined in how you make people feel.
Be exceptional
Be exceptional before, during and after the campaign. Too often agents provide excellent service during the sales campaign but lapse once a contract is signed.
This is a critical moment to demonstrate how important that vendor or buyer is to you, and how much you have valued the opportunity to assist them.
Once an offer is accepted, both the seller and buyer are often in a holding pattern, waiting for the critical date when the property formally changes hands. And that period can feel long, where sellers find themselves asking important questions like should I have held off for a higher offer? Could we have negotiated more?
On the flipside, buyers might be pondering whether they paid too much or if their finance will be finalised in time. They might also have technical questions about the property that you are well-positioned to answer.
Make yourself available to guide them through this period. Continue to make your follow up calls and communicate daily. And once that property changes hands, check in to see how people are feeling and help them where you can with their new property chapter.
In other words, go above and beyond, especially AFTER the sale. Don’t be a transactional agent and become complacent. Let the opposition do that.
Remain top of mind
Creating raving fans is one thing, but to always be top of mind you must leverage your personal brand.
Never allow the passage of time to be your enemy by not sending those subliminal messages that you continue to be an active agent.
Communicate with previous clients with information about the market that might interest them, touch base on those important anniversaries and most importantly tend to your personal brand as a whole using the array of tools available.
Never forget, consistency builds trust and omnipresence. It sees you become the first name that springs to mind when people are considering that next property move.
If you have created raving fans throughout that real estate journey, there will be no other name a potential buyer or seller needs to consider, and no other expert they would trust more.
Your job is not to sell homes. Your job is to create raving fans.
Manos Findikakis is CEO & co-founder of the Eview Group
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