Well it happened to me last week. I received a referral in which this person was ready to go in terms of being ready, willing and able to purchase a home. Of course I jumped on the situation, called my “new” client right away and began the conversation to understand what she was looking for. At the end of the conversation I said we needed to sign a buyer’s agency so I sent her one. She was EXTREMELY motivated and wanted to see properties right away and said she wanted her attorney to look over the agreement before she sent it back to me. Nothing wrong here. In the meantime, I proceeded to spend quite a bit of time weeding through hundreds of properties to narrow it down to something she might like. My goal here was to start the process, develop the relationship and get properties in front of her so she could provide feedback to me in terms of likes/dislikes. I sent this right before the weekend and I went out of town. Coming back on Monday, I followed up to get her thoughts on the properties I sent and to get our agreement. I received a one line response saying that the properties didn’t fit her criteria and this just wasn’t going to work! Needless to say I was beside myself, especially since she verbally told me that she would sign with me.
Well I’m what you would consider a lovecat. If you haven’t read the book “Love is the Killer App”, I recommend it. I’m a nice, smart person but I leaned too heavily on the nice side in this situation; meaning I got ahead of myself in an attempt to expedite the process before I had an agreement with my “sure client”. Now, it’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and our nature is to help people, but this was a painful example of how crucial it is to slow down and proceed by not skipping steps.
My thoughts are running wild and what other conclusion can I draw other than now that she’s armed with properties and the back door is wide open.
The moral of the story is build the relationship, sign and agreement and THEN start working for your new client!
Jared Carlson
Denver, CO
www.JaredCarlsonRealEstate.com
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