Why oh why is it so fustrating dealing with your own kind?

I am on the market for a property and it just continues to flabbergast me as to how poor the service is from so many agents.

Let me provide you with a list of my frustrations:

a.       Phone calls not being returned

b.      Emails not being responded to

c.       Information not being provided on properties

d.      Poor photography – blurred pictures

e.      Not enough photos

f.        Photos that do not really showcase the home

g.       No floor plans

h.      No follow up from agents – I have to chase them

I am not going to name agents or agencies however be assured that this experience is being provided by a number of different companies and agents, most who the market would consider as being high profile.

Yet the most common issue I hear from agents today is that the market is tough…. Is the market tough or are you making it tough for yourself?

You don’t have to be Einstein or Trump to be successful in real estate, going to conference and taking pages of notes is a complete waste of time and money if you are not prepared to do some simple things. Which are:

a.       Return phone calls and emails in a timely manner

b.      Provide information the client requires to make a decision

c.       Ensure the property regardless of whether it is for rent or sale is showcased

d.      Find out what the client wants and give it to them

e.      Keep in touch and try and be genuine when building a relationship – show that you care otherwise you will not get the business

Move from being transactional focused to relationship and service focused. I was listening to a Red Balloon ad this morning and they aim is to ensure that every client they interact with has a memorable experience.

It isn’t that hard – real estate people – why are we not ensuring that every client we interact with whether online, face to face or on the phone is memorable.

Just imagine an industry where we did provide memorable and exceptional service!

Back onto my search today and I really hope that I meet an agent who frankly just simply returns my call!

If you dont like change you will like extinction even less

Not sure about you but as a kid growing up my life was full of changes. Moving homes, living in different countries, new teachers, change to decimal system (yes that happened while I was at school), new friends, people dying – and I never ever remember my parents or teachers saying to me that change is a bad thing.

We never questioned it, in fact we just accepted what changes were occurring, adjusted, learned new skills or ways to manage the situation and life went on.

Somewhere along the way to adulthood however we go from being people who accept change to challenging and fighting against it. When does this happen and why?

I have worked with many adults who will plot, create drama and leave organisations simply because management is making changes which will benefit the whole organisation however the individual does not see it that way. 

I agree there is a change management process that needs to be followed and people need to be engaged in the process and have ownership in the changes etc but my question is at what stage do we stop accepting the fact that change is constant in our lives!.

There are a number of sales agents in our industry who have never sold real estate in a market that is soft or changing or challenging.

But should that really matter?

Isn't it about skill sets you have that you can apply regardless of the market you work in?  Shouldn't agents be investing in more training and up skilling themselves to suit the market?

Change is constant; to survive we need to get better at reading what the changes are and adjust our behaviour, performance, expectations and training – just like we did when we were kids.

I am here to preserve your price!

In all my years of real estate I have never heard anything more ridiculous. Let me tell you the experience my brother has had trying to sell his home recently in Melbourne.

Now one would have thought that as his sister is in real estate and well-connected into the Melbourne market that perhaps a referral to an agent would have been the sensible thing to do. No that wasn’t the case – he is of course the idiot younger brother.

A well-known agent was appointed – I will be fair and not mention any names and a price point quoted that I found quiet interesting.

I suspect it was the quote them high…. listing process!

Auction date was set, open for inspections were conducted, groups of 16 plus went through, 8 section 32’s were provided for but not one offer was made. One would have thought that the listing agents would have had conversations with my brother week two about the expected price…- they didn’t.

My brother leading up to the auction asked the agents if perhaps they should review the price. The response was – we are here to preserve your price and ensure that your property is sold.

One week prior to auction they had a bite – an offer was made which in hindsight was quiet reasonable, however the agents advised my brother to reject the offer as they were confident of selling on auction day for the listed price.

Their company had listed other homes in the area that had sold, were on par to my brothers home however no referrals were made from that sale, the agents never had the conversation on the fact that the market was perhaps still soft given that similar homes in the area were not selling for the price that had been quoted, in fact they knew very little about the homes listed by other agents from their offices. I suspect that this is a company where agents protect their buyers, don’t share information or data to the detriment of the clients.

On auction day guess what – there were no bids!

Can I also add that during this whole time my brother was the one who rang or emailed the agents, they were never on the front foot on communication.

A few weeks later a cheque was forwarded to them by a contact in the UK who said that their agent had been through the property and that when the cheque had cleared from the bank account they would sign the sale contract. My brother rang me up and I nearly choked on my coffee – I did explain to him that it was probably a fraud or laundering syndicate and best he not get involved in it. Plus where is the signed offer/contract that the agent is supposed to get.

Guess what, yes it was a fraud syndicate and I won’t go into the details but quiet interesting how it works. The only thing that saved these agents from not losing a 10% deposit was that they didn’t bank the cheque within 24 hours of receiving it. Yes against our regulations but it saved their bacon.

My brother then called me and asked for a referral. Thank you Toby Parker and his team at Hocking Stuart in Balwyn, they did a great job in getting in touch with my brother and stepping in. 

It amazes me how many mistakes these agents made; they:

• got the price wrong
• didn’t share data and information across their network
• did not communicate with their clients on a regular basis
• went on a campaign to preserve the price as opposed to understanding what the market was willing to pay
• did not use their database effectively
• lost a buyer due to their efforts to preserve the price
• did not work the buyers who attended the open home
• accepted a cheque without a signed offer/contract
• did not bank the cheque within the required time frame
• were close to becoming victims of a fraud campaign that was obvious

What i find incredible is that these agents are from a well-known Melbourne brand, I know the directors and if they actually found out this is what was occurring in the field I suspect they would turn very grey.

I do have to ask however what levels of accountability are in place in this business for agents to get away with the above. You have to question the type of culture the office has where buyers are not shared across their network.

These agents are used to working in a market where listings have been easy to get, buyers are easy to find and all they need to do is fill in the paper work.

Negotiation is a skill, from the moment you take on a listing your role is to negotiate the best possible price for the vendor as well as ensure that they understand what the market is prepared to pay for their home. Buyers in this market are too valuable and any agent who is being trained to “preserve their vendors price” may be in for a short career in real estate.

How process killed a raving fan!

I love my food, wine and restaurants with great atmosphere. One such is Porteno in Surrey Hills. Great Spanish food, fabulous atmosphere, excellent wine lists and rather polished looking staff.
I have been a regular at this establishment and enjoyed many a wonderful night out – a raving fan. However a recent experience has left me rather disappointed and vowing never to return.

What happened?

Well I am taking a group of 10 business owners out for dinner in June and Porteno fitted the bill in terms of food, location, atmosphere and budget.

So we make the call and explain that we will most probably have between 8-10 diners and because I am a regular and know their menu quiet well we would like a table downstairs and order of the al-a-carte menu for food and wine.

One would have thought that the answer would be that’s great, lets confirm details and we look forward to seeing you on the night.

Quite the opposite, phone calls were exchanged over a number of days debating firstly that any bookings over 7 required us to have a set menu, tables were not readily available downstairs but if we went upstairs the menu would be different again. The set menu cost was $85 per head plus wine.

Now I know that there is no way the food was going to cost me $85 per head from the al-a-carte menu. We explained to the staff that we did not want a set menu and that we would be ordering wine upon arrival.

After several conversations it came to light that the owners had created a policy that clearly stated that anyone over 7 had to have the set menu of $85.From the customers prospective this policy was designed to maximise the spend on the night. Not to ensure that we had a great night at a reasonable price point.

Nothing like being told what you are going to eat just because you have 7 or more people at a dinner!

The staff we not given the ability to change the policy and were quiet happy to lose the booking. A little arrogant perhaps!

Interesting not only have they lost a booking of potentially 10 diners on the night, but a regular customer, potentially 9 new customers and with the power of social media you also now know and will make a choice of whether you go to Porteno or not. It certainly creates a question in your mind doesn’t it?

Can I suggest that perhaps you review the processes in your business from the clients prospective; are they designed to suit you or them? Are your people trained to offer over and above the expected levels of service? Do they have the ability to change the process without any risk to the businesses and ensure that you keep clients for life, retain raving fans and most importantly don’t lose business?

Permission to Please

We often talk about delivering customer service over and above our clients’ expectations. However this isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Your clients have a level of expectation on your service delivery that is based on what others have said, your brand and past experience. When they walk into your business they have a picture in mind as to what experience they will have.
I recently had dinner at Bannisters and I knew the food was going to be magnificent based on past experience, and the service exceptional, made all the more delightful with the company I had.
A few simple things occurred that exceeded my expectations.
The young waiter who served us introduced himself and informed us that he was on a work experience project where he spent three months in each department. He had just come from the kitchen and would be more than happy to make a recommendation from the menu.
His honesty was fresh and delightful. The couple I was dining with knew the owner of the restaurant who also turned up for dinner. The drinks waiter came up to us promptly and informed us that our pre-dinner drinks were a compliment of the owner – a very simple yet effective gesture.
As we started eating our dessert (which was to die for), the security personnel came into the restaurant, stopped to have a chat and sent us dessert wines with compliments of his department.
Bannisters now has a raving fan not just because of the food and service but because of the three individuals who in their own way had permission to delight their clients.
What do your people do to delight your customers?

Are lead generators the way of the future

If consumers were surveyed on their biggest issue with real estate agents, the answer would most likely be the lack of follow up and relationship building. This seems to be an ongoing issue in our industry and the changing market does not seem to have an impact on agents’ habits. In every business, one of the key KPI’s for agents in prospecting. It’s simple – two hours a day of prospecting calls will provide results. However, the key feedback I get from sales managers and business owners is that many agents simple won’t do this. So, as an industry, do we continue to accept it as the norm that or do we take this responsibility away from the agents completely? Do we need to head down the path where we have lead generation teams who make all the calls, hand the leads over to the sales agent who is then charged a fee for this service? This model guarantees that the calls are made and that other added services are sold to the client such as property management and mortgage broking. It’s the McDonalds upselling theory of “would you like fries with that”. We know many agents don’t sell finance or property management, resulting in a loss of prospects to the business. The question then becomes who builds or holds the relationships with the clients? Agents will push back on handing over the client relationship to a third party and when they leave they often take the relationships with them. Therefore at the end of the day, does it not make sense to ensure that the relationship with the client is first and foremost with the business and not the agent? Who in the business then builds this relationship – a faceless third party or the agent, or both? Or do we then build a hybrid system where the lead generators make the calls and we hold the agent accountable for building and maintaining relationships based with people they have transacted with and the lead generators keep in touch with others? These are all interesting questions. The even bigger questions becomes at what point will these calls be outsourced to call centres in the Philippines and India. I know of a number of businesses outside of real estate who do this quiet successfully. The usual objection is that how is someone offshore going to build relationships but if the agents are not making calls who is building these relationships. As the market changes it will become more and more important for businesses to capture that gold dust which is the business that flows out the holes in the bucket because agents are not returning or making calls, doing follow up from OFI’s, responding to emails in a timely manner, not using a CRM to help build relationships and therefore have a listing and selling graph that has extreme highs and lows. Maybe lead generation teams is the way of the future for our industry.

 

Single focus at being the best

Does your business and the people who work in it have a single focus on being the world’s best at what they do? Too often we get distracted by our competitors, the market, other team members and life in general. If you are the best at what you do others will copy, your challenge is to stay focused and remain the best.

What are the actions your team are taking to ensure that they are the best at what they do? Getting them focused is a start however the actions that are taken will define the results you get.

I was recently in Jaipur, India and I saw four shops next to each other, each selling the same product. What fascinated me was that the customers still seemed to go to the first shop.

It turned out that this was the original “Lassi Wala” (yogurt drink) and due to his success three others had opened up in competition but were unable to provide the same tasty drink, service and experience. He sold nothing else just lassi.

When you have the best of something – for example, product, service, team – people will flock to you no matter who enters the market to compete with you.