Listen to What Your Short Sale Client Needs!
This does not mean that you are getting consumed by their needs when you work their Short Sale. It means that you remember to listen to what matters to them. Is it, for instance, where their children go to school? Or avoiding foreclosure so they can begin to rebuild their credit? Or keeping their favorite chandelier?
One of my clients biggest concern was avoiding a public notice of a foreclosure auction in their local paper. Their son had a couple of months until graduation from the local high school, and they did not want him to be embarrassed. Once he graduated they would move, and it would be a nonissue to them. Once I knew what was most important to them, I could help them meet their goal - and make money doing it.
A young man wanting to start doing short sales and having some difficulty recently asked me to join him on a meeting with a potential client for a short sale. He requested that I give him feedback to help him become more effective. I found that a challenge to do in a nonoffensive way! Here is what happened on the call…
As the homeowner was trying to talk about her situation, he interrupted her repeatedly with talk about his own goals in life. He was so far off her wavelength, I was not sure how to bring him back. I was amazed that anyone could be so focused on what he wanted that he could miss completely what another person was saying.
What I did was I asked him why he was in this business. He said it was about his making money and building his investment portfolio. I told him I understood he was in this to make a good living. And then I told him that he needed to think about what was going on for the potential client, their distress, their pain, their needs. And the lights went on for him. He understood that when he was with them, it was about them and their situation and what he could do for them. That they did not need to know - and did not care, did not have the emotional room to care - what doing their short sale would mean for him and his family.
I know that you are in this Short Sale business to make money, sometimes very large amounts of money. I know this is not a charity project! To do that, you are performing a service that impacts peoples’ lives in very fundamental ways. And our clients have to invest in the process, to give us the information we need to help them. We need to listen to and provide a service that meets our clients’ needs in order to be successful at short sales.
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