Yesterday, just before we here at Goomzee had had enough for one day, our Business Development Manager, whom we’ll call Joe, shared an interesting story. A few years ago he and his wife hired a contractor to build their new home. Instead of hindering the process with forests worth of paper, Joe chose to operate on a one-page contract, augmented with verbal agreements whenever a change in the build came up. At about the same time, one of Joe’s lawyer friends in the area also began the process of building a new home, only he elected to subject his contractor to a forty-page arrangement. When the dust settled, Joe’s contractor was finished on time and under budget, while the lawyer’s man was found in breach of contract and ended up leaving the state of Montana after losing his contractor’s license.
While the end result of this anecdote may be unusually extreme, it serves to illustrate the importance of the client-professional relationship being on a more personal level. Contracts, because they provide a legal safety net, are an important part of business interaction but also have the potential to negatively impact your personal relationship with the other side of the table.
Contracts have been in use since the era of Mesopotamia’s Fertile Crescent, so it is safe to assume they will still be lingering long after you or I are in need of them. Luckily, that’s beside the point; I would instead like to point out the immeasurable importance of customer service. Even a forty- page contract is meaningless if the parties involved are not pleased with the service rendered. Thomas Hall over at Bloodhoundblog.com posted just yesterday about a particularly customer service-oriented agent in his area who has seen nothing but profitability. She has shunned such presently popular social media mediums as Twitter and Facebook in favor of good old fashioned face-to-face lunches and meetings.
I can already see myself being spurned for speaking against social media, but I dare to press on. Social networking is a valuable asset to the real estate industry, but it is important not to put on the blinders and only focus on one front of your business battle. Defenses should be strengthened in all theaters, your online face being of lesser importaProxy-Connection: keep-alive Cache-Control: max-age=0 e than the live version. Sun Tzu once said “Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances”. This ties in nicely with the old adage “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, meaning just because your website produced your most recent quality lead you should not now neglect the people that show up at your door by spending all your time online. A balanced approach to interaction with your clients will yield the best return, and not just in commission but also in the form of rewarding relationships that will lead to open doors further down the road. That’s not to say online networking is unimportant, but to quote Mr. Hall: “I have learned that even in the absence of technology, real estate is transacted - quite successfully.”
And so I would like to challenge you, members of the real estate community, to increase your focus on cultivating the relationships you have with your clients. Hopefully, after the dust settles around your ankles, you too will have some new folks to call your friends.
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