Hi Everyone,
As the number of coaching clients has grown here at Jared James Enterprises (JJE) one of the best benefits is the amount of stories we get to hear from agents. Some are funny, like the one I just heard about the agent that had just received surgery but didn't want to cancel his meeting with a builder and ended up fainting at the lunch with him due to the amount of drugs he was on (True Story I Promise), and some are your ordinary run of the mill stories.
No matter who you are, if you have been in this industry for longer than 6 months you have had a bad experience with a client or two. There are some people that you are just simply never going to be able to satisfy. Those are not the people I am going to talk about. Then there is another group. They did not have the best experience with us or our team and in large part it is our fault. We were either too busy, distracted, or have just made human errors that have lead to their displeasure. My experience has shown that this is when you find out just how good of an agent you really are.
A recent survey showed that the majority of customers in any industry do not expect the company or representive they have been dealing with to fix the problem they are upset with. They will complain and state their position, but ultimately in the back of their minds they do not realistically expect anything to come of their rant. This survey showed me a window of opportunity for us to set ourselves apart from their colleagues because you really don't find out how good you are when everything is going well. The true test of yourself as a professional comes when you screw up and have a family of people so upset with you that they could not be trusted to be in the same room with you. What would you do at this point? Would you avoid them and wait for them to move on to someone else, while you justify in your head that the whole situation was their fault anyway? Or would you decide to stand up tall and fix the perceived problems and explain to your clients that you are not perfect but you will not be happy as their Realtor until they are?
One of my greatest and longest lasting relationships from when I was a full-time Realtor came from one of these relationships. Yes, it was awkward at first but the people I am speaking of learned to respect me even more because they, like the survey said, expected me to run and hide when things went bad instead of admitting my error, fixing it and moving ahead stronger than ever. When you think about it, what do you really have to lose? If you avoid your clients because of a bad situation, you are guaranteed to lose their business and referrals forever. Why give up on people that you worked so hard to cultivate a relationship with?
Food for thought. Have a great week!
Jared James
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