In almost 20 years of selling real estate, I've seen a lot of
buyers' agents enter the real estate profession. Some have worked
part-time, some full-time; some have been lucky and some have
been not-so-lucky.
One thing I've noticed, however, is that intelligence is not an essential ingredient to being successful in selling homes. Friends, you can be as dumb as a stump and people will still buy from you. Even if you're new and work part-time.
Tom Hopkins has been saying this for years, and it still holds true today. People will buy from you as long as they like you and trust you.
In this chapter, I want to talk about ways to build trust with a client. How do you first get somebody to like and trust you?
By being honest. How else? By offering a sincere smile. Being genuinely interested in them. Using their name. By caring about people. By showing empathy for a person's situation. By selling yourself and your good qualities. By being a good listener. By establishing rapport. By finding out what the client really wants and helping him to get it. All of these are good answers.
The challenge is that in real estate, you can be the most honest person in town and can establish great rapport but if you don't have something good to show a client you can lose them as clients.
People in real estate have a problem because we don't always have the exact inventory available to show people what they want. Wouldn't it be great to have the perfect home to show every client? Newly carpeted, freshly painted, and competitively priced?
Part of the challenge of real estate is to keep in touch with clients until something good rolls around. But sometimes we lose them before that happens, isn't this true? We want to show clients that we understand what they want but it just doesn't exist and they think you don't know what you're doing. As a result, they go somewhere else. The challenge is: how do we demonstrate to our clients that we truly respect them or understand their desires if what they want isn't available?
Pleasing the customer should be job one but sometimes we blow it because we try to convince somebody to buy something that they don't want, even though they may have said that it's what they wanted. It's not just when the client wants a pool home so we should just show them pool homes. It goes beyond that.
Let me give you another example of what I'm talking about, and see if this rings a bell with you.
When I first came into real estate I made an appointment to show homes to a buyer named Mr. Lee who happened to be Chinese. Over the phone, he told me that he wanted to buy a two-bedroom home. So I was prepared to show him two-bedroom homes. But when he came into the office that morning, he said that he wanted a three-bedroom home. And he wanted a large lot.
So what did I do? I panicked.
I threw out my entire list of two-bedroom homes, went to the multiple-listing book, circled two or three listings, and then got into my car with him feeling kind of nervous.
Then do you know what I did? It still embarrasses me, but it's true. I brought Mr. Lee to a dirty, smelly, crappy old house.
I'd never even seen the inside of this house, but man was it a dog! Of course it fit Mr. Lee's price range, down payment and bedroom requirements to a tee, but oh man! What a dump! The people who used to live there I think were the Conehead family. After they took off in their spaceship, they left behind mass quantities of beer cans, garbage, and disgusting personal effects.
Then, here is the funny part. I looked up and smiled at Mr. Lee. The funniest thing about this story is that I actually thought that he might want to buy it. That's how naive I was. I mean it did have the right number of bedrooms, even though it was located next door to Muley's Body Shop. Hey, it was in his price range. Right? It could happen.
Later when I learned that Mr. Lee had purchased a freshly painted, spotlessly clean two-bedroom in a nice neighborhood, I repeated the following mantra: "It's not fair. He told me that he didn't want to buy a two-bedroom home and do you know what he did? He purchased a two-bedroom. He could have bought that home from me, that jerk!"
Has this ever happened to you before?
The point is: was it Mr. Lee's fault? No. Why should he have bought that clean two-bedroom home from me? Because I washed my car?
Think about it from his perspective. How did the first home I showed him make him feel?
Mr. Lee was probably thinking to himself: "That hot-shot buyer's agent with his brand-new car. He thinks I would want to live in a pig-sty! Why else would he bring me to one? I'm never letting him sell me a house!"
Is it any wonder that Mr. Lee never returned my calls? He lost his sense of trust with me on that first house.
Let's view the situation from another angle. Let's suppose that today you head to the local shopping mall to buy a pair of shoes. As you enter the shoe store, the salesperson looks up, smiles and says, "Hi. May I help you?"
You answer: "Yes, I'd like a pair of shoes in this style." (You point to the style in a magazine advertisement.)
The salesperson winks. "I have just the ones for you." He disappears and returns with a box, and then pulls out a dirty, old, smelly worn-out pair of shoes.
"These are nice starter shoes," he or she says to you with a cheerful smile. "Try them on and tell me if you like them. They're a real steal too! Everybody just loves them!"
Now, what are you thinking as you slip on the pair of old shoes? Are you feeling happy as he does a hair flip with his freshly washed hair? Or are you seething inside. You're probably telling yourself: "I am never returning to this store!"
Question: Are you going to refer all your friends to that person? No. Why not?
Some people tell me: "Bob, real estate is different. People don't care if the houses are dirty and smelly. Some people love to buy fixers."
Don't make me laugh. As Joan Rivers says: "Can we talk?"
I'm not talking about a contractor who's looking for a tear-down. A home that needs to be remodeled down to the studs with only one wall standing. Then after the inspector leaves, the buyer has to tear down that wall too and remodel it.
I want you to be honest with yourself and think back to the times when people didn't call you back after showing homes. Why didn't they call you? Maybe they lost their trust in you.
I'm not proud of it, but it's happened to me. The dictionary defines trust as reliance. Confidence. Hope. Something entrusted. If I showed Mr. Lee a couple of junky homes last Saturday, why should he trust me with his house buying decision this coming Saturday? Do you think he enjoys wasting time looking at smelly houses with me? No. He could have had more fun cleaning his sock drawer.
Some agents would argue: "Yeah, but Mr. Lee said that he wanted to buy a three-bedroom home. If you show him a clean two-bedroom home first then indirectly you're telling him that you don't respect his wishes. And the customer is always right, isn't he?
The point isn't that you shouldn't listen to your customer. It's that you need to treat the customer with respect and dignity. Be concerned about his well-being. Indirectly, by showing the customer a clean home, you're telling the buyer that you respect him.
I sell homes in Los Angeles which is a melting pot of various ethnic communities. If Mr. Lee happens to be Black and I tried to sell him a junky home, what might he think of me? Possibly that I'm a racist. That I'm saving the good houses for the white folks, right?
What if Mr. Lee happens to be Hispanic? Or if Mr. Lee is from India?
Their reactions will be the same. We're all human. We all want the best for our families. We're all suspicious of salespeople. We love to buy but we hate to be sold. Therefore, when I first meet Mr. Lee, I ask what is important to him in moving and I listen to him carefully. Hopefully I've got the perfect home. But if I don't have what he wants, I show him the cleanest house available first. But if a clean house isn't available, I'm going to have him concentrate on considering the neighborhoods I show him.
Example: "Mr. Lee, here is a list of homes that I pulled up from the computer. All of these are three-bedroom homes that are in your price range, but I've got to warn you, I haven't previewed all of them. I know that your time is valuable and so what I'd like to do today is just have you concentrate on choosing a desirable neighborhood. The first home I'd like to show you is a two-bedroom just to get your opinion on the neighborhood."
In other words, to gain a client's trust, when you are uncertain as to what the client truly wants, remember this surprisingly simple advice: show a bitchin' home first.
What you want to do is show them the best home in the best neighborhood first. I grew up in the 70's in Southern California so I call them "bitchin' homes". Show a bitchin' home first.
What is a Bitchin' Home?
Bitchin' is slang for something or somebody beautiful and exciting. Surfers pronounce it "betch-en." When you show a bitchin' home to a buyer, they instinctively think two things.
One: "I like this home." And two: "I like this real estate agent. He or she knows what I like and want. This home is bitchin'!"
The home may not be exactly what the buyer is looking for. But if the interior is clean, a buyer will think: "This salesperson thinks that I'm worthy of living in this quality home. He doesn't know that I live in a filthy roach-infested apartment." OR if the buyer is snooty, he will think: "Okay, not bad. At least this salesperson didn't show me a dump. Maybe I can work with this human to find this same kind of home in a better neighborhood, if one is available."
Note: There is also a side-benefit. When you show a bitchin' home, your buyer instinctively knows that you will show respect to his family and friends. You're their kind of agent!
Isn't that true? Buyers will instantly like you and trust you even if the next house you show them isn't as good. Even if the second home is a dog.
Now maybe in the past you were able to show a client two or three lousy houses and then a good house, but nowadays you may not get the chance. People are getting busier and don't have time to waste. What happens if the first house is a dog, and as you and the client, Susan, are driving away, her beeper goes off. Susan says: "Can we find a phone? I need to make a call."
Then Susan uses your cell phone to return the call. She says, "Gee Bob, I'm sorry to cut this short but work just paged me and they really need me to come in today. Can we set up another time?"
Bob: "Sure Susan, no problem."
What happens next?
After she ducks my calls for the next month, I later discover that Susan and her husband bought that third house that I was planning to show them. Remember that "bitchin'" home that I thought they'd like? They liked it all right. I just never had a chance to show it to them.
Bob's Insider Advice: Show bitchin' homes first. Why? They help to develop trust especially if the home or property that the client wants is unavailable.
At this point, I'd like to spend some time on the importance of locating a neighborhood that your client will be happy to live in. Selecting the right neighborhood not only pleases the buyer, it also helps the agent sell more effectively. To learn more about this important insider selling technique, keep reading!
From: Selling Homes 1-2-3 Copyright 1998 by Bob Boog. All rights reserved.