A while back, I held a heavily attended open house at a fairly spectacular $500,000 condo. Lots of worthy-looking prospects wandered about, nodding approvingly, asking the right kinds of questions. A very promising turnout.

But then there was this rather scruffy-looking teenager in jeans, t-shirt and flip-flops checking out the art and the decor. And as he signed in I asked him if this was the kind of place he was looking for. It kinda was, he said, but this particular condo didn’t excite him. I asked what this lacked that his ideal place would have and we began a conversation about what he wanted. I told him I’d run a search for his kind of places and get back to him. I followed up with a search that evening, sending him a link to the best of the condos that fit his criteria, then called him the next day and got him to talk with a loan officer. Over the following couple of weeks, we took in eight or nine condos as I learned his taste and refined my search parameters.

Then the following week we found IT. Our offer was accepted a couple of days later and we closed a month after that. On the way out of the settlement, I told him I was curious why he happened to choose to work with me since he'd been going to open houses for months before he came to mine. I’ve not forgotten his response: I was the only agent who spoke to him. It was that simple. This shabby-looking kid had turned out to be a 27 internet entepreneur with a significant seven-figure net worth. And I made a $15,000 commission merely because I treated him like an actual prospect.