How many properties can your customer digest in one afternoon?
I often hear agents in the office say they are going out to show a customer 10-12 properties in one afternoon. Really? WOW! That's a lot for one person to digest in one afternoon, don't you think?
Only one time did I show more than 5 properties at one time. The time I did that was because the customer was only going to be with me for one day. She was not sure if she wanted ocean front or Intracoastal front, so we saw 5 of each.
In preparing for these showings, I decided to prepare an EXCEL SPREAD SHEET, where I listed each property in the order we would be seeing them with 5 columns where she could rate each property. The columns were to rate the kitchen, each bathroom, style of floors, square footage, and overall condition of the units.
I made her a notebook so that she had the ease of writing on a hard surface rather than just a CB folder.
After we saw each property, we took 5 minutes to answer the questions pertaining to the property that we just viewed. She also took her own pictures of things that she wanted to remember when she returned home to go over the properties with her husband. Before she started taking pictures of the next property, she took a picture of the address on the MLS sheet that I also provided her for each listing.
Even with all this additional preparations and note taking, she still on occasion had some questions about which property was which.
After she went home, two of the listings that were her favorites (and apparently some others) already had offer's by the time she discussed the listings with her husband and called me with her list of favorites.
SPECIAL NOTE: With all that, I ended up finding her one that she had not viewed while she was here with me in Florida. I sent her pictures of the unit and extra pictures of the view. They made a full price offer - SITE UNSEEN, based on my understanding of what she liked. They arrived a week later, we had the appraisal done the day after the offer was executed, had the inspection the next day and [unbelievably] had their condo interview the next day. We closed 3 weeks later for her 50th birthday. Thank goodness, it was just perfect for them!
My point here though is about the number of listings to see in a day is that less is best. Showing to many properties at one time leads to confusion and on occasion - NO OFFER at all.
I choose what I am going to send to each customer based on my interview with them. I ONLY SEND them 10 listings at a time and tell them to choose the top 5. Prioritize for me so we are not wasting either of our time. This has worked out well for me for the most part. If after the first 5 don't work, we sit back down and preview other available listings in the office in front of the computer.
What are your thoughts on how many properties your customers can digest in one showing period of time?
Karen Monsour, REALTOR(r), SSRS, 954-464-4194 cell
www.KarenSellsFloridaWaterfront.com
(Copyright© 2011 Karen L. Monsour, All Rights Reserved.)
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