I ghosted a client. I know. Mature, right?
Like something teenagers do in high school.
All of a sudden, one day, I decided not to return a client’s email. A request for a showing. The umpteenth showing.
I know. I left a lot of money on the table. A possible purchase and a sale.
But my piece of mind has been worth it.
I am sure we have all had clients like these. Clients we have worked with for years, always in the hopes that one day it will result in a paycheque or two. After all, that’s why we are in this business. To pay our bills, to buy our gas, to put food on our tables.
This client and I met at an open house I was hosting several years ago. We kept in touch and I showed them numerous properties over the years. They were always almost ready to put their house on the market.
But there was always something that came up that was holding them back.
A job opportunity. Or, it just didn’t feel right. They weren’t sure that was the community they wanted to move to. The house just wasn’t up to snuff to warrant such a big change.
You know.
I am sure we have all had clients like that.
Well, when I started to feel myself cringing every time I received a new email from them wanting to see another property, I knew a change was needed.
Perhaps I could have referred them. Deferred them to some other unsuspecting soul to ferry around and be wasting their time. Because that’s how it feels. It feels like I have ultimately wasted my time.
All those hours spent researching properties, setting up showings, driving to those properties, finding out information about zoning and severancing and permitted uses.
Always with the carrot at the end of the stick that it may all indeed result in a purchase one day, and the sale of their home too.
Well, that carrot has turned rotten. My patience has been worn down to the last thread.
When leaving money on the table, a potential paycheque or two up in the air, feels more like the right choice, the freeing choice, than setting up another showing, I think I have made the right decision. When I would rather not work with somebody because I feel that my good nature has been taken advantage of, I know I have made the right decision.
There was no Buyer’s Agreement signed, thankfully.
And of course, it will be this house that is THE ONE. And another Realtor will reap the spoils of that purchase, possibly, and the sale of their home too, if it all comes together.
But I feel nothing but relief that I won’t have to listen to another excuse about why that property wasn’t perfect for them. And sure, I could have handled it perhaps in a more mature manner, offering a detailed explanation in a politely worded email.
But no.
That client has taken enough of my precious time already. And it is the disrespect for that time that has led me to make the choice that I did.
And I made off like Casper.
Sharon Posius is a Realtor with Century 21 B.J Roth Realty in Barrie, Ont.. She is a former broadcast journalist who keeps up her writing chops as a contributing writer to the monthly Focus 50+ News Magazine. She also hosts and writes her own blogsite, SharonsBlurb.org.
