Ever call up a real estate agent to find out information about a property only to get their voice mail and then never to hear from them again?
Of course you have. We all have!
Even we real estate people sometimes have problems getting hold of each other. We'll call to get feedback on a property that they showed. We leave a message when they don't answer their phone and then never hear from them again. Some of us who are persistent will even call back several times, never getting through to a real live person. It's like the agent vanished from the face of the earth.
Well, fear not! Today, I'm going to reveal to you the secret you must know in order to get a real estate person to call you back. Are you ready?
Here it is...Never, ever tell them why you are calling.
If you are calling to find out about a house or for some other reason, just leave a message with your name and number and ask the agent to call you back. Don't tell them you want to know about the property. Don't tell them you drove by and thought the house was cute and how much is it. Don't tell them anything about why you are calling.
Unless the agent is a "short timer" in real estate, you should get a call back, usually pretty quickly.
I use this technique whenever I need to get feedback on a home I have listed. I just started trying it out because I couldn't ever get agents to call me back when I left them messages asking for feedback. Now I just ask them to call me, give them my name and number and hang up. Almost every time, the phone will ring pretty quickly.
Want to know why this works?
Because real estate agents are paranoid by nature. If someone calls us up and we don't know exactly why, our brain goes into automatic question mode. We start thinking thoughts like,
"Could be a buyer! I'd better call them up and fast!"
"Might be something important. I wonder what's up? I'd better find out"
"Who is that? What do they want? Maybe it's someone NOT working with another agent! Oh yeah!"
See, what happens is you tweak our client filter. Withholding information causes us to want to return the call. When you give us all the information up front, we automatically put you into our mental file system. If your call isn't all that important (translation: you aren't a hot buyer or seller who wants to write a contract right now)...then you have to get in line and wait. And sometimes what happens is we forget to call you back.
Blame it on busyness. Blame it on disorganization. Blame it on being too high on ourselves. Blame it one whatever you want. I call it being human. The nature of our business is that we are firemen (and women). We go around usually putting out fires everyday or taking care of the latest crisis or whatever may pop up. I don't think most of us don't care about your call. I just think we often are on overload.
So there you go. You might try this with your insurance agent or other service provider too. Unfortunately, I don't think it will work with doctors, lawyers or the government.
Oh well.
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