Cruise control is a wonderful invention. It allows us to simply press a button and maintain the speed of our desire, take our foot off the pedal and relax into a nice rhythm as we drive. However, it can be just as easily dangerous. It can cause us to disengage from surrounding traffic, perhaps getting too close to the car in front of us or missing our exit altogether!<\/p>\n
Often sales professionals set their sales process on cruise, enjoying the pace and settling into a comfortable process that may work \u2018well-enough.\u2019 In Erik Therwanger\u2019s book Dynamic Sales Combustion, he warns against this, instead challenging us to \u201cfocus on the deliberate acceleration needed for success.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery buyer is different. Not every style will work with everyone.\u201d (Therwanger, 2018)<\/p>\n
Do you treat each perspective buyer\/seller the same as the last? Is the \u2018presentation\u2019 of your process and services almost identical each time you make it? Each buyer and seller have different goals, concerns, fears, motivations. It\u2019s your job as real estate professionals to truly get to know your clients, so you can be sure to meet those needs and desires.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour presentation is an opportunity to communicate your belief level in what you offer and demonstrate your personal commitment to your client.\u201d (Therwanger, 2018)<\/p>\n
Nothing could ring truer for real estate agents. Without a physical \u2018product\u2019 to offer, you are presenting yourself as the product\u2014so how much do you believe in yourself and to what ends will you go to in order to serve your clients? These are the questions your presentation needs to answer.<\/p>\n
When a homeowner or buyer decides to go with you as their agent, what comes next? Do you have a process in place to meet their needs, to keep their trust and establish rapport? Or is this the step when you set the cruise, certain you have a sale already? According to Therwanger, three steps are essential in setting up your client: guidance, processing their order, and gathering referrals.<\/p>\n
In real estate, the first few days, and sometimes weeks, of a new client relationship is a tender time of building trust and \u2018guiding\u2019 your clients. You\u2019re still learning about their wants and needs, and they are observing your process. Therwanger compares this time it to the first year of a child\u2019s life\u2014fragile\u2014as they watch to see how you\u2019re going to take care of them, building trust as you meet their needs.<\/p>\n
The next piece is delivering. Whether it\u2019s their dream house or their ideal buyer, you made a commitment to your client and it\u2019s time to follow-through. For agents, this can be a grueling, maddening time: lots of showings, lots of emotions, little progress. But eventually\u2014with persistence\u2014you can be the person who coaches them across the finish line, and if you do it well, they won\u2019t forget.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not consider a sale completed until I have received at least one referral from my new client and that referral has become a new client.\u201d (Therwanger, 2018)<\/p>\n
Is this your mentality? Maybe it will help you to know that the buying rate from referrals is 300 percent higher! Or that referrals are 2 \u00bd times more likely to refer you in the future! Asking for referrals may seem awkward at first, but if you\u2019ve truly met the needs of your clients, they\u2019ll be happy to help you.<\/p>\n
For those of us in the real estate business, once the sale is complete, it\u2019s easy to lose touch. The relationship between buyer\/seller and agent may feel like a one-time transaction. But what if it wasn\u2019t? Does it surprise you to learn the average homeowner lives in a home for only ten years, with the average millennial living in a home for just six years? (White, 2017) This means you may help a buyer purchase their first, second, even third home\u2014if you keep the relationship strong.<\/p>\n
Following up with your buyers\/sellers shows them not only that you care, but that you\u2019re the person to call when a friend or relative needs an agent. Perhaps to do this well, you\u2019ll need to use a client database, or schedule reminders to call previous clients and check in. Perhaps it\u2019s sending a bottle of champagne on move-in-day or writing a hand-written note of congratulations as their family grows.<\/p>\n
Follow-up can be creative or basic but shouldn\u2019t be non-existent. It may just be the one thing distinguishing you from the other agents on cruise control, who have forgotten all about their past client and are moving on to the next. Charity Malmberg<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cruise control is a wonderful invention. It allows us to simply press a button and maintain the speed of our desire, take our foot off the pedal and relax into a nice rhythm as we drive. However, it can be just as easily dangerous. It can cause us to disengage from surrounding traffic, perhaps getting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":2185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,10,15,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketing","category-columnists","category-spotlight","category-twin-cities"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realestateagentmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}