How to communicate more effectively

As a real estate agent, you have two different types of people that you get to work with. The first one is the people that you already know, made up of past market appraisals, buyers, past clients, etc. The second group of people are those that you want to get to know, these are potential sellers that sit inside of your marketplace.

Attraction based marketing is when the customer comes to you, the secondary type of marketing is when you target them. Inside our real estate office we actually don’t really understand the type of marketing that actually works for these two types of people.

People you know is far easier to target as you have already built up a relationship with them, however people you don’t know you have to go out and seek to get them into your database to start to build the relationship. One of the greatest challenges inside our business is trying to do both at the same time, however we aren’t doing either very well.

I want you to start thinking about the categories inside your database and focusing on how you you work the category. The five key groups within your database is;

Buyers
Potential Sellers
Market Appraisals
Current Clients
Past Clients

We need to have a process in place to work with each of the client categories, whether it is just making contact with buyers with new properties on market or following up with past clients and potential sellers about how their buying process is going.

Your challenge for this week is to get on the phone and start to call buyers, your potential sellers, your past market appraisals, past clients, and see how many face-to-face appointments that you can book.

What is a real estate pipeline?

We need to understand what a real estate pipeline really is. The first part of a pipeline is knowing when your potential clients are looking to come to the market, and communicating to them on a regular and consistent basis.

Most people when you ask ‘When are you planning on coming to the market?’ will tell you in 3, 6 or 12 months, and you will generally call them at that time and they have already listed or sold their property with another agent.

It is time to start to be sceptical about what your client says and ask them what they are planning to achieve with putting the home on the market down the track. Ask them the questions:

  • What’s going to be different by the time we get to that point?
  • If I had to buyer today, could I mention your place or should I sell them something else?

Have real conversations with your customers, via the phone, or even better, face to face. When you are working with a customer, you need to learn how to get a deep understanding of the reason why the client is moving. Most people move because of only a few reasons:

  • Birth
  • Death
  • Marriage
  • Divorce
  • Relocation
  • Financial gain
  • Financial loss
  • Lifestyle.

When you’re working with that potential seller, you should be asking more questions around:

  • What’s the reason for the move?
  • When did you want to be there?
  • If you could do it faster, would you do it?
  • What are kind of the road blockages?

Start to identify more of the objections around what the client is actually doing.  And if you can take those objections on board, then you start to work the relationship.

Moving the client into a market appraisal meeting is where they will work out the price of their property. What most agents don’t understand is when we deliver on price; it’s a red, orange or green light for the customer. At this point, we should be asking:

  • Is there is a particular price you need to get here?
  • If you didn’t get that price, would you be able to move?
  • What do you need me to do to help you to get to the next stages? Eg. Do you have a mortgage broker, solicitor, etc.

What I want you to do is have a look at all of your past market appraisals and all of the people that you know are thinking of selling. Get back on the phone and see – not if they’re ready to sell – but if you’re good enough to be able to get a face-to-face meeting with the client.  The more clients you can get face-to-face with; the more likely you’ll convert.