Has this ever happened to you?
It’s five minutes after the first showing for your new listing, and the seller is on the phone.
“Did they like it? Do they give any feedback?”
You roll your eyes. You tell them you haven’t heard anything yet, but you’ll follow up and get back to them ASAP.
Meanwhile, you’re thinking to yourself, “This is such a waste of time.” After all, here’s the kind of feedback you usually get, if any:
The house was too small/too big…
They didn’t like the floorplan/the location…
Passing this feedback on to your sellers is indeed a total waste of time. But worse, it makes you look bad. Even though there’s nothing your clients can do about any of those things, you’re still dashing their hopes every time you deliver bad news. After a while, they start to associate you with bad news!
Here’s a super easy and obvious way to eliminate this problem forever. Educate your clients during the listing presentation. Give them the straight-up truth, like this: “Mr. and Mrs. Seller, I want you to know that I do my best to get feedback from every showing. However, despite my best efforts, my response rate is typically around 30 to 40 per cent. This is better than the industry average. However, out of all the feedback I do get, about 90 per cent of it is completely useless. They’ll say the house is too small for them, or they don’t like the floorplan or the location, or whatever.
“Of course, there’s nothing we can do about any of those things, so if it’s okay with you…
(drumroll)… I won’t waste your time (or my time) giving you useless negative feedback. Of course, the minute I get any useful or positive feedback, I’m going to let you know right away. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes, of course. Thanks for the explanation!”
Problem solved.
The “feedback talk” is just a single example of many different ways to set proper expectations ahead of time. If you understand how to improve your client communication systems, you will eliminate at least 75 per cent of your stress.
Bonus: You can stop being the bad news delivery person.
After Ted Greenhough’s first year as a Realtor, he earned between $590,000-$865,000 every year for 12 consecutive years, all as an individual agent, without ever once making a cold call, reciting a canned script or doing any other “salesy” stuff. Now he runs Agent Skills, an online learning program for agents across North America.
