Too busy for a home staging consultation
There is a home stager in Oakland CA who regularly sends out emails and postcards promoting her business.
I’ve seen her work but I’ve never used her services.
An opportunity came up for home staging...but the sellers and I are uncertain of which way to go. It’s a large Victorian home with just over 3000 sq ft, 4 bedrooms, 4.5 baths. The sellers still live there, and their furnishings are a mish-mash of old and new.
I thought this would be a good time to try out this particular stager, so I called her and introduced myself and the reason for my call. She seemed to be in a rush to take the call, but she brusquely told me her consultation fee is $100 and that “I'm too busy to do any consulting right now.” And it was all she could do to terminate the call.
If she didn’t want to talk right that very minute, she could have said something like she will call me back when she can devote more time to answer my question.
If she’s really too busy to do any consulting, it’s good for her, but it’s not a good answer to give a REALTOR who could refer her for future business. I didn't even get past a phone call. So from now on, all her outreach will be treated as spam.
As it was, she may have lost out on a possible home staging project, and not merely a consulting fee.
When did people get too busy for new customers?
We cannot stress this too often how important customers are to our business. There are enough quotes about it...but here’s my favorite
"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.
He is not dependent on us; we are dependent on him.
He is not an interruption in our work; he is the purpose of it.
He is not an outsider in our business; he is a part of it.
We are not doing him a favour by serving him; he is doing us a favour
by giving us an opportunity to do so. "
--- Mahatma Gandhi
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