As real estate professionals we spend an incredible amount of time managing our Sphere’s and prospecting, always in search of the “Worthy Customer”. While, there is often great debate about methods, I tend to subscribe to the simple philosophy scribed by Dave Beeson, “everything works and nothing doesn’t’”. In other words, there are too many who were in our industry, who no longer practice real estate, yet make blanket statements about what works and what doesn’t and surprise, surprise, they typically have a solution that you can purchase to prove their point! Of course, that is a subject for an entirely different post in the future, so now on to the topic.
As a practitioner and teacher of real estate sales (yes, it’s a sales profession), I am as equally concerned about our brokers understanding what constitutes a “Worthy Customer” as I am them understanding that they must be “Worthy Brokers”. So, to establish the basics for the discussion, let’s define what a “Worthy Customer” is first… A Worthy Customer has:
- · Motivation/Need
- · Financial Capacity
- · Authority
- · Competitive Position
- · Realistic Expectations
- · Accessibility
- · Mutual Trust
If you agree that the above constitutes a “Worthy Customer”, then the question I am posing is what constitutes a “Worthy Broker”? In fact, I have significant concern that there are too many “unworthy” brokers because they fail to practice the most basic functions that will keep them knowledgeable and capable of representing our industry well, and thus keep their clients by successfully fulfilling their clients’ needs and wants and resulting in a level of trust that when their future needs arise, the client inherently desires a real estate professional to do the job.
Utilizing the “Worthy Customer” as a template, I ask the following:
- Motivation/Need – Are you focusing on real estate and your current clients through the lens of real estate career or just a commission? The client always knows the difference.
- Financial Capacity – Are you truly capable of fulfilling your commitments to marketing your listings and keeping abreast of the market by subscribing to the necessary publications, websites and taking continuing education? Do you invest in yourself to benefit your clients?
- Authority – Are you keeping your clients informed and ensuring that, with your counsel, they are making the final decisions? Our job is to provide clarity and assist in removing obstacles to the sale and not become the obstacle. When our egos compete with the cooperating broker or our client, we derail our client and lose.
- Competitive Position – Are you using your MLS and other statistical tools (Trendgraphix, for example) to review real-time data to justify your advice and ultimately your clients position? When a cooperating broker has a client with unrealistic expectations, your data and justification could tip-the-scale by creating a discussion that for whatever reason the cooperating broker was unable to broach before.
- Realistic Expectations – Like competitive position, researching, understanding and using the available data is critical to helping your clients and/or the clients of a cooperating broker to understand why either your clients or their client’s expectations are realistic or unrealistic. And, if you continue to work with a client with unrealistic expectations, what is the opportunity cost(s) for business that you may be missing by working with someone who will not likely buy or sell in their current mindset?
- Accessibility – We operate under the principle that “time-is-of-the-essence” when under contract; are you able to meet the time needs in order to capitalize on opportunities for your clients in this highly competitive seller’s market? Do you have an agreement in place with a broker from your branch/office to provide coverage when required? Do you have systems set up to keep you informed of new opportunities as they arise? Is your technology established to allow you to respond quickly to inquiries, feedback loops and circumstances that benefit your clients?
- Mutual Trust – Do you consistently establish trust through your actions, not your words that result in successful outcomes and ultimately referrals and repeat business from your clients? Once again, do you use the tools to provide the best information available at the time and are you the most knowledgeable in your market area to serve your clients? Trust is earned and nothing is more unprofessional than marketing yourself or trying to represent a client in an area or market where you are not an expert. Doing so damages our entire industry and is so easily avoidable by simply referring the business to a colleague or broker in the area where a trusted expert practices real estate.
This is a big topic and I realize that I/we could expound into multiple arenas, though the notion of being “Worthy” is simply rooted by being a practitioner of real estate and accepting that if we are going to be held to the standard of a practicing attorney, then we have to do so by being career-minded life-long learners and always using the tools, experience and knowledge to the benefit of our clients. We expect “Worthy Customers” and therefore we must be “Worthy Brokers”.
- Mike Winkler, Coldwell Banker Bain - Issaquah, WA
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