I may have discovered that I am a little on the stupid side.  Seriously.  I know that may not come to a “blinding flash of the obvious” to those that subscribe to my humble blog, but until yesterday I thought I understood our crazy and dysfunctional industry.   Just like your drunk uncle Joe or the mother-in-law that you wished wouldn’t have been part of the deal, there are a few things we all put up with in our real estate lives.  But at the end of the day, I thought creating income was the point of why our Broker of choice has the privilege of hanging our license at their shop.  I know, I know, with over 70% of or industry living below the poverty line I should have seen this sooner, but no – I held out hope. 

Here’s what happened - yesterday afternoon I got three, yes three, outbound corporate relocation leads (2 listings and 1 sale) that needed to be placed with agents.  Usually I have an admin person do this, but they were out of the office and we needed to get them placed by the end of the day, so I got to do it personally.  All I had to do was identify agents who met the following criteria:
1. They would return the call or email.
2. They have been licensed more than 3 years .
3. They were full time and could handle the referral.

If they met those criteria, they would get the deal.  Simple, yes?  I mean with over 1.2 million REALTORS it should be no big deal.  WRONG!

I called and emailed 15 agents and here is what happened -

13 never called or responded back
1 called back, thanked me for the consideration and said she was going to be out of town for August and thought she should decline for the client’s benefit (yes, she is going to the TOP of my list next time)
1 got all three leads (and it took her more than 6 hours to get back to me).

Before you get all high and mighty, let me tell you where I drew the pool from - for the listing leads I looked for CRS designees that worked for major brokers who made over $100,000 last year and were members of ActiveRain.  For the buyer lead, I only substituted ABR for the CRS designation. 

Has the lead generation companies jaded us that badly that we can’t afford a bit of professionalism and civility to our other real estate brethren?  It’s not like I am from Nigeria and asking you via email to send me $25,000 so that I can transfer King JKAdhLAIDT’s fortune to you.  I was going to send them along without even taking a referral fee.  I am a real estate broker who is looking for someone who can take good care of my people.  That’s all, nothing more, nothing less.

Carpe diem,

There are two main reasons why some of our greatest agents aren’t achieving the completely realistic benchmark of 50% for referrals from their active clients. 

First, Most of us assume that our clients know what to do and understand our love for referrals.  What we forget is that our clients are not in the Real Estate business and need to be educated on how to recognize the “referral moment’ and what to do when it arises.  If we incorporated a simple dialog at our first meeting together saying – “Now that you have made a decision to buy or sell, you will notice a strange phenomenon, much like when you bought your last car (got married, had a baby, etc).  When you were looking at that car and first got it, weren’t you amazed at how many others you saw around?  The same thing happens in real estate.  As you begin looking and throughout this process you will start seeing other people that are looking to buy or sell.  All I ask is that when those situations come up that you remember me.” 

The second is that we do a great job minimizing the great job we do.  Our standard of excellence is a part of our service package and has become old hat to us.  The challenge is that our clients have no idea that our service is exceptional because they don’t have a standard to measure it against.  Overcoming this is easy, especially since the service is there.  We need to start weaving opportunities to tell our clients the truth.  Drama happens in every transaction, and while I am not advocating dragging your clients through the drama, I am simply suggesting you communicate it to your clients with how you saved the day.  If we can also enlist our strategic partners (escrow, title, mortgage, inspectors, TC’s, etc.) to simply drop a note, phone call or comment to our clients to the effect of “I work with a lot of different agents, and I have to tell you how fortunate you are to be working with one the very best.”  Your clients feel like a million bucks and it creates an atmosphere for them to say “wow” and tell a friend, or two or twenty.

Carpe diem,

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There are two main reasons why some of our greatest agents aren’t achieving the completely realistic benchmark of 50% for referrals from their active clients.  First, Most of us assume that our clients know what to do and understand our love for referrals.  What we forget is that our clients are not in the Real Estate business and need to be educated on how to recognize the “referral moment’ and what to do when it arises.  If we incorporated a simple dialog at our first meeting together saying – “Now that you have made a decision to buy or sell, you will notice a strange phenomenon, much like when you bought your last car (got married, had a baby, etc).  When you were looking at that car and first got it, weren’t you amazed at how many others you saw around?  The same thing happens in real estate.  As you begin looking and throughout this process you will start seeing other people that are looking to buy or sell.  All I ask is that when those situations come up that you remember me.” 

The second is that we do a great job minimizing the great job we do.  Our standard of excellence is a part of our service package and has become old hat to us.  The challenge is that our clients have no idea that our service is exceptional because they don’t have a standard to measure it against.  Overcoming this is easy, especially since the service is there.  We need to start weaving opportunities to tell our clients the truth.  Drama happens in every transaction, and while I am not advocating dragging your clients through the drama, I am simply suggesting you communicate it to your clients with how you saved the day.  If we can also enlist our strategic partners (escrow, title, mortgage, inspectors, TC’s, etc.) to simply drop a note, phone call or comment to our clients to the effect of “I work with a lot of different agents, and I have to tell you how fortunate you are to be working with one the very best.”  You clients feel like a million bucks and it creates an atmosphere for them to say “wow” and tell a friend, or two or twenty.

Carpe diem,