Anyone of note that heads onto any sort of speaking stage in front of agents generally says the words ‘It’s all about relationships!’ at some point when directing agents towards a greater level of success.
It’s understandable that, when in a service-based industry, there is a common vernacular around building ‘relationships’ with clients and potential clients in order to earn trust, and therefore build a business.
After all, without humans, we have no business right?!
But what I’m seeing as a result of this narrative…is a whole raft of agents that are fading into obscurity & out of the industry. And here’s why.
Forgetting why we are there
Have you ever heard the phrases:
‘We really liked you, but this time we decided to go with the other agent.’
‘If it doesn’t work out with this agent, we’ll definitely give you a call.’
‘So sorry, we already listed with someone else.’
A lot of agents, particularly agents that are new to the industry, hear variations of these fairly regularly, and it’s met with a tremendous amount of frustration because they missed out again to someone that they ‘know’ doesn’t have the best interests of the client at heart.
Now we could point the finger at the standard of listing presentations, or at the volume of follow up in their pipeline, or (as is often the case) that the other agent ‘just had more experience’…but the reality is that this industry narrative around relationships is taking their focus away from the primary reason that they are in someone’s property.
Agents have become way too focussed on building relationships that they are forgetting the need to demonstrate their abilities & knowledge to be able to do the job of selling the place!
We’re too busy working on being liked that we miss the bit that lets the customer know that we can do what they called us in to do!
Hear this loud & clear – Sellers don’t call us because they need more friends! They have a problem in their lives that needs solving via the sale of a property, and they called you to help with that solution.
It’s definitely not to build a relationship!
Become a DOCTOR, not a councillor!
When talking about something such as ‘methods of sale’, I bet that a lot of you have said words to the effect of ‘I’m happy to do what you’d prefer to do’, or ‘what would you like to do?’.
At various stages of a listing presentation, many agents become ‘order takers’ in the sense that they present their information, but then end up succumbing to the will of the owner when it comes to the best plan of attack.
We do that because we don’t want to feel like we’re telling these sellers what to do, & we want them to feel like they’re the boss in all of this, which is because we’re focussed on that fabled relationship.
But let me ask you this – if you went into a GP surgery with an ailment or illness, would you want your doctor to say ‘I’m happy to do what you want’ or hear your symptoms & ask ‘what would you like to do?’….?! You would probably brown your undies at that point, right?!?
Here’s my point – all of this chat about building relationships has turned a wave of agents into councillors who are afraid to say what they believe or think is the right thing to do, purely because of the fact that they’re too focussed on building a bloody relationship!
What’s more important than the relationship? CONFIDENCE.
As agents, there are loads of qualities that we try to show when in a presentation, but in reality, there are only 2 things that a client looks for in selecting an agent that encompass all of the others – Relatability & Credibility.
Relatability is the sense that the client feels understood.
Credibility is the feeling of safety & certainty that the agent knows what they’re doing.
Amongst all of the other stuff, if you can make a client feel those two things, then you’re not far off winning the business.
The current narrative is putting far too much emphasis on the relatability piece, which will decrease your chances of getting the business on board because they think that you’re a ‘nice human’ and not much else.
But go too far the other way & you become the arrogant stereotype that society despises!
Balance these two things out, and you generate something that is far more important than building a relationship could ever be, and that is CONFIDENCE.
Confidence that you know what you’re doing & can be entrusted with the keys, and confidence that you understand the purpose that requires using Real Estate as a vehicle to reach & achieve.
It’s a balance that happens along what I call ‘The Line Of Confidence’.
How to tell what you need more of
Here’s a question for you – when you lose a listing presentation, is it predominantly because of fees or experience?
If your main challenges are fee-based, then the reality is that you are not showing any real value beyond the transaction, which would suggest that you are heading too far down the IQ path and focusing too much on ‘what’ we do only.
It means that you potentially haven’t heard ‘why’ the client has you in their home & struggled to put your information in a way that the client understands.
But if you’re losing through a perceived lack of experience, then you clearly haven’t articulated a level of understanding about the mechanics, & have spent too much time ‘getting to know’ the client without flexing your knowledge.
Sure you’ve built something of a bond, but that bond hasn’t settled their anxiety that you know what to do to get the most out of the market.
Now this is not to say that the way you’re presenting isn’t ever going to work, but then again, a broken clock is always right twice at least!
There’s no exact science to any of this, so instead of educating ourselves in absolutes, we need to work on increasing the probability of success, much like a doctor.
But my point is this – you need BOTH in order to win more business than you lose, and until now, the recent focus has taken our eyes away from ensuring that we can make our clients feel better by simply showing that we can get the job done.
So, before you start trying to hold hands with these clients of ours (which inevitably comes across as fake most of the time anyway), let’s make sure that we can give them the security that you’re a safe pair of hands for their biggest financial assets.
