What Does your Phone Voice Say about You?

Pretend you didn’t know you. Listen to your phone message. What ‘first impression’ are you making?  Do you sound happy to hear from that caller? Sluggish? Disinterested? Timely?

When I phone an agent today, I have no idea where that agent will answer his or her phone—or from what phone the call is being answered. And, I don’t really care. Technology allows the phone to follow the agent. That’s great. Here’s what’s not so great. Many times the agent’s message is so dull, powerless, or mumbled that it doesn’t sound as though the agent wants to talk to me. Or, the agent’s message is so long, that I’m impatient by the time I get to leave the message.

What Impact Do You Want to Make?

Surveys show that consumers want their agent to be enthusiastic. So why do many of the agents’ phone messages sound as though they are terribly tired or uninterested in the caller? Here’s the principle.

We use our senses to make snap judgments about people.

The less senses involved, the more important it is that we communicate properly. On the phone, there is only once sense involved—that of hearing. You have no ability to communicate your warmth, your interest, etc. visually on the phone. You have only your voice.

Decide What You Want to Communicate

What conclusions do you want your caller to have about you? Write down the five most important judgments you want your caller to make about you and your business approach. Now, listen to your own voice message. Do you believe you are communicating your ‘best self’? Ask five other people to listen, too. Decide what you like and what you want to change.

Research your Competition

Don’t listen only for your own communications. For three days, listen carefully to the tone, intent, and messages you hear on answering machines or voice messages of other agents and brokers. Listen carefully to how agents answer the phone at their offices. What do you think those agents are communicating? Do you believe they are communicating the kind of qualities they want to communicate—and think they are communicating?

Four important tips to remember when recording your own message:

1. Stand up—you’ll sound as though you have much more energy.
2. Write out your script first—and be sure it’s not too long. I don’t really care where you’re going to be all day!
3. Modulate your voice pleasantly. Try to get some resonance.
4. Sound as though you’re looking forward to hearing from me! 

These simple tips will increase your trust rate and your business. Get to ‘hearing’ today! Best news for budgeting: These tips cost you nothing, but reap you great benefits. First impressions count: Create your best phone voice.

www.realestateratingz.com

www.incredibleagents.com

www.zillow.com

These are agent feedback sites. You’ll see the good, the bad, and the ugly. In fact, you’ll be stunned, I think, at the impact a testimonial has in writing—on the net. This is a huge trend: Clients providing feedback that can be accessed by everyone. Now, even Realtor Associations, like the Houston Association of Realtors, is regularly surveying members’ buyers and sellers for feedback. Expect this trend to get bigger quickly.

Two New ‘Players’ in the Agent Information Business

In addition to the sites I told you about above, Bank of America and USAA are getting into the ‘information about agents’ business. Check them out, too.

It’s So Easy to Stand Out from the Crowd

You don’t have to be a top producer. You don’t have to be a technical genius. All you have to do to succeed is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think,

“How would I like to be treated? How would I like to be answered? What makes me trust a person? What makes me walk away from the product or service?” You’ve got it. You’re on your way to a stellar reputation and business.

Survey, Survey, Survey

Are you surveying right now? Would you like a copy of my survey? If so, click here. Let me know how it works for you!

Question: Why are agents afraid to survey? Studies show that only about 10% of agents actively and regularly survey.

In this blog, I want to share with you how to assure your commissions don’t shrink.

After all, if you’re a committed agent who invests monetarily and emotionally in a long-term career, you deserve the commissions you want to charge.

What it Takes to Preserve the Commission Levels you Want

There are two things you can provide that more than earn your ‘generous’ commissions (and that a computer search can’t do for a buyer or seller):

Expert consulting

Expert negotiating

In fact, negotiation skill was one of the skills California buyers said they wanted (and 82% said they didn’t get) with their buyers’ agent. 

Becoming that ‘Value-Added’ Consultant and Negotiator

There are some specific steps you can take to provide truly deliver immeasurable value to your clients. Here they are:

1. If you haven’t taken interactive, tough, to-the-point consulting and negotiating workshops, do so now. Unfortunately, most agents aren’t trained consultants or negotiators, so they’re missing the opportunity to differentiate themselves from other agents—and impersonal web-based services
2. If you don’t use a written questionnaire to interview prospective buyers and sellers, get and starting using them now.  (see The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit and Your Client-Based Marketing System for comprehensive consulting tools)
3. Regularly survey your clients, at least at closing, to find out how you did—and keep refining your buyer and seller systems based on client feedback

Surveys Now on the Web for the World to See

A huge trend: websites have been created that feature surveys from real estate clients. The client has been feeling let down by agents, and now can either vent or brag! Take a look at

www.incredibleagents.com

www.realestateratingz.com

www.zillow.com

Ask yourself: If I were a client, what kind of feedback about an agent would cause me to want to work with her? What would cause me to avoid this agent? Some of the client surveys you’ll see on the site are awe-inspiring—and some are exceptional for entirely different reasons!

Down to the Wire

I believe that, very soon, companies will be either full service, generous commission companies, with dedicated, career-focused agents, or limited service, “less generous” commission companies. Which level of service (and fee structure) will you offer?

A Resource to Guide You to Today’s Representation of Buyers

Whether you’ve been in the business 3 minutes or 30 years, it is time to polish your buyer presentation skills. I’ve put together all the resources you need: Buyer presentations, with a PowerPoint presentation, and your own guide, where I coach you as a presenter. This is a really comprehensive guide, with over 150 pages and several presentations–plus dozens of checklists and documents.

Take a look at The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit.

The market is slowly improving. Yet, many agents are not changing how they do business to take advantage of it. Historically, agents have ‘snared’ clients by promising they could get something for them, do better than that other agent, or represent them so client always won–and made the other client lose. (Not always legal is it?). In a market ruled by short sales, foreclosures, and other ‘not-controllable’ outcomes, that sales strategy just comes back to hit the agent in the face!

Stop Over-Promising and Under-Delivering

According to a recent California Association of Realtors’ survey, buyers gave agents an overall satisfaction score of 4–out of 100!

Obviously, this over-promise strategy didn’t work very well with buyers! One of the areas buyers said agents were deficient in were negotiation skills. Although I think that’s true, I believe the anger is caused by something else. Unfortunately, many agents are still using that old-style sales technique of making promises they can’t keep. I think they made promises to buyers, and, when they couldn’t get what they promised, the buyers thought the agent didn’t have negotiation skills. Better negotiation skills isn’t going to make a bank sign something the bank has not intended to sign!

This is not the era of ‘over-promise’ and ‘under-deliver’. It is the era of ‘under-promise and over-deliver’!

For example: The agent is attempting to get the bank to accept an offer on a foreclosure. To get that buyer to work with him, the agent has promised he will ‘get that bank to sign on the dotted line’. NOT! Now, the agent has over-promised to get the client, only to let the client down. The client believes the agent doesn’t have sufficient negotiating skills. Actually, the agent has used deceptive, over-kill sales tactics with the client. It’s a situation the agent can’t hope to win. Agents who are working like this must think clients are really, really dumb.

The Customer Doesn’t Know What He’s Getting–Until He Doesn’t

Have you heard that marketing saying? We all want to believe there’s a tooth fairy. We love to find ‘found money’. We want to believe all those smooth salespeople that say they can get us something for nothing. But, when it doesn’t happen, we turn against the salesperson. That is certainly happening in the real estate industry.

The Answer: Learn to ‘Tell the Truth Attractively’

Instead of using the old sales tactic of over-promising, learn to do a consultative interview with your potential client. Tell him what you can and can’t do. Give him your credentials and testimonials. Promise him you will rely on other experts in areas where you aren’t an expert. Become a ‘partner’ in solving problems. You aren’t a magician, you don’t control sale outcomes, and you aren’t an attorney–or a judge, or a bank.

Be Ready to Lose Once In Awhile

If you want to build a loyal clientele over time, you must be ready to lose to win. Sometimes you will lose a client to that old style manipulative agent. But, that client will come back to you, and be more loyal that ever. Remember, ‘the customer doesn’t know what he’s getting–until he doesn’t. And, when he realizes what has been done to him, he will appreciate your candidness and steadfastness. That’s the way to build loyalty over decades.

What do you do to build loyalty and counter the claims of that old-style ‘over-promising’ agent?

A Resource to Guide You to Today’s Representation of Buyers

Whether you’ve been in the business 3 minutes or 30 years, it is time to polish your buyer presentation skills. I’ve put together all the resources you need: Buyer presentations, with a PowerPoint presentation, and your own guide, where I coach you as a presenter. This is a really comprehensive guide, with over 150 pages and several presentations–plus dozens of checklists and documents.

Take a look at The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit.

 How Would you Rate a ’10′?

For example: What would constitute the consumers rating you a ‘10’ (out of 10)? It’s very frustrating when you don’t know what great performance looks, sounds, and feels like. If you’ve ever been evaluated and gotten a less than stellar evaluation, you know how frustrating it is to be rated as less than stellar—but not know what constituted ‘great’ in the eyes of those rating us.   

Read What Consumers Want from Buyers’ Agents

 Besides surveying buyers and asking them to rate agents, the California Association of Realtors asked buyers exactly what they wanted from those buyers’ agents. Here’s what buyers said:

 What We Can Learn to Help Us Get those Great Ratings

 As you can see, consumers expected us to be experts at whatever we were doing. They don’t want us to try to help them in areas where we’re not competent (like trying to sell foreclosures without adequate education).  What does that mean to us? The obvious. If we’re going to delve into short sales and foreclosures, we need to dedicate ourselves to becoming an expert.

 What are you an expert at? What are you working on this year? How do you explain this to buyers?

In my next blog, we’ll discuss how to show buyers your value.

Would you agree? The more we can fulfill the client’s expectations, the more referrals we can expect from that client.  And, we all know referrals is the name of the game. Referrals cost us much less, and the client referred to us loves us already. Plus, by making the client ecstatic, we have a reason to charge those generous commissions we love—and we should.

 Obvious Question–Not an Obvious Customer-Agent Service Match

You may the above question and answer are obvious. But, we should slow down and really think about it. Why? Because the gap between client expectations and general agent performance has, in the evaluation of the consumer, become a chasm. And, unless we can breach that gap, our commissions will keep sliding downward.

 Time to Think ‘Outside In’

 As you read this, stop yourself from thinking ‘inside out’ (What we like to think about ourselves). I, like you, have spent most of my adult working life as a Realtor. I sold hundreds of homes. I hired, trained, and coached thousands of agents. It’s painful for me, as it is for all of us, to look at ourselves from ‘the outside’. But, if we want to sustain our practices in the best way possible, we have to close that gap between what we think of ourselves and what consumers think of our practices. We have to think ‘outside in’ (look at ourselves from the consumer perspective).

 Buyers Talk—Let’s Listen 

Take a look at this survey of 2009 from the California Association of Realtors.

 CAR asked buyers to rate the overall satisfaction level with their buyer’s agent. Wow! 4 out of 100! Now, I know that’s not true of you, but, it is what those thousands of buyers rated those thousands of agents they dealt with. Is 4 out of 100 good enough to get referrals? Is it good enough to sustain ‘generous’ commission levels? I don’t think so, do you?

 Our Reputation as an Industry is Impacted By Every Agent’s Practice 

Yes. I know most Realtors are independent contractors. We like to think we are not impacted by others’ practices. But, in truth, study after study shows we are. The consumer judges us generally by the level of practice of the agent with whom they have contact. Then, we ‘inherit’ that reputation—whether we earned it or not. And, when we have that less than sterling reputation, we have to dig ourselves out of the hole to prove we’re not ‘one of those’. It’s there, and we have to recognize it. 

What do YOU Think?

What do you think the consumer wants that he/she’s not getting? In the next blog, I’ll show you what they said (what they wanted from buyers).

The listing sold quickly

The listing sold for close to full price

 The Agent-Centered Process

You can guess what that is: The agent creates dialogue to get the seller to list with him/her at any price–so the agent will have a listing he/she can market to snag buyers.

The Cient-Centered Approach Gets You Referrals

If what the client wants from us is a “sold” sign on the property, and that’s the only way they rate us highly–and give us referrals, then, it makes sense to do a  listing and marketing process that creates the higher levels of customer satisfaction. By the “client-centered” approach, I mean to keep the client’s best interest first at heart—not the agent’s!

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

Here are five questions to ask yourself, to see which kind of process you use—and tips to change your process to true ‘client-centered’.

1. Do you have an ‘information-loaded’, prioritized listing system? If you don’t have a complete process, you aren’t instilling trust and confidence in the seller.

2. Do you educate from the beginning, or do you just sell, sell, sell (tell) ? A pre-first visit package educates seller and shows your professionalism.

3. Are you a ‘property information gatherer’ or a ‘people consultant’? An in-depth questionnaire focusing on their needs proves you care more about them than getting a sign on the property.

4. What’s your objective? The statistics prove that most agents’ objective is to list the property. That is not in the client’s best interests. To change to client-centered marketing, you must focus on listing only saleable properties.

5. Do you provide the seller a written marketing plan? A professional marketing company always provides the plan in writing. Shouldn’t you?

Looking for guidance in how to make your process truly client-based? Take a look at the CRS-recommended resource, Your Client-Based Marketing System.      In it, you’ll see all the questionaires you need, a PowerPoint presentation, ready to use, a marketing plan, and much more. Save time and compete with the mega-agents.      

we believe what others say about us, not what WE say about us.

Are you sending out your surveys regularly, at least at closing? At the end of this blog, I’ll give you a link to get a format for a survey, if you need one.

According to Stefan Swanepoel, in his 2010 Trends Report,

Consumers are looking much harder at ‘proof of experience’ in the form of comments from past clients.

If you are sending surveys at closing–congratulations. But, what are you doing with them? Are you reading them, then putting them in the drawer? Not so fast. You need to publicize them. You need to let others know that clients believe you are competent.

Watch Those Websites

Take a look at 10 agents’ websites–at random. How many of the ten have posted testimonials or evaluations? I’ll bet not more than one or two of them. So, you can see how easy it is for you to stand out. Just start by posting 5-10 of your testimonials on your website. By the way, always have a place on your evaluations where your clients can check that they will let you use that evaluation publicly.

Take Advantage of LinkedIn and Facebook Endorsements

It’s getting to be a really big deal–evaluations and endorsements. So, get in the habit of asking for endorsements on these sites. There’s just too much information today available for the potential client to know who to choose. Help them.

Check Out Evaluation Webites

These websites offer clients an opportunity to provide feedback on their agents. Take a look at this feedback:

After the Sale Survey

My definition of the ‘new normal’:

A real estate market where practicing real estate successfully requires a much higher level of dedication and mastery than in an ‘on fire’ market.

Just Getting By Isn’t Enough Anymore

To create even a median business, the agent must act like the mega-agent acts– in any market. That means:

* The median agent must pro-actively lead generate (can’t wait for leads as they were able to do in an ‘on fire’ market)
* The median agent must be practiced and packaged (must have good sales skills and presentations)
* The median agent must devote more than 30 hours a week to selling real estate (the consumer has rejected the part-timer)
* The median agent must have an active database
* The median agent must come to work every day

Reading this, do you believe success waits for the non-committed part-timer in this ‘new normal’ atmosphere?

Do you believe the part-timer can deliver what the consumer expects? In later blogs I’ll share with you the consumer expectations and ratings of today. Could it be hurting you to be affiliated with part-timers or low producers?

In my next blogs, I’ll be showing you the traits of the ‘new normal’ agent. What do you think they should be?

Pro-Active: You go find the lead (like calling on for sale by owners)

Re-Active: You wait for the leads (like lead generating companies,

floor time, and open houses)

Too often, agents like George (see my earlier blog) blame the re-active lead generating source for lack of quality of leads. On the other side, lead generating sources (like relos and agent rainmakers) feel that agents don’t convert enough of the leads provided. Instead of blaming each other, we can take positive steps to assure that you can screen your leads effectively, and turn good leads into appointments. Now, both agents and lead generating sources are happy!

The First Principle: Follow Up on the Lead NOW!

A web site lead costs $215 to generate, on average. Yet, a majority of real estate agents don’t even get back to a ‘lead’–ever! (The National Association of Realtors says 1/2 the leads NEVER get a response!) Why? I think there are three reasons:

1. Agents mistakenly think that the lead will be theirs forever—that there’s no time sensitivity to answering that lead
2. Agents believe there’s no competition for the lead
3. Agents don’t know the cost of a lead—in both time and money—so they don’t treasure that lead as if it were gold

Reply Now or Forget It!

With the instant information age, you can’t just get back to a lead three days later. The consumer today expects to get a reply quickly. In fact, the majorit expect a reply in 2 hours or less!

I’m constantly amazed when someone thanks me for responding quickly about a product or a question about our coaching.  Our standard for answering product and coaching inquiries is within the day. What’s your standard for answering lead inquiries? (Which require much faster responses, in my opinion, than my ‘leads’).

There’s Competition for that ‘Lead’

A few days ago, I was visiting with my cousin, whose daughter just went into real estate (she’s twenty-two). She has immediately put technology to work, creating an awesome database and contact management system. She’s selling up a storm—and making the agents in the area mad at her. Why? Because she’s getting to the consumers before the other agents do. They thought they ‘owned’ those consumers’. But, my cousin’s daughter is proving that no one owns the consumer. She’s demonstrating that those who put technology to work effectively today capture the consumer’s attention and loyalty.

Bottom line: If you want to make money from your leads, create a rapid response system–and use it!