Should You Solicit Ratings from Your Clients? First Start Answering Your Phone!

This month in the California Association of REALTORs Real Estate Magazine there is an article entitled "Missing Manners."

Several agents from different California Markets tell horror stories, to name a few:

• Trying to get agents to return phone calls.
• Trying to get agents to actually put the key back in the lockbox.
• Having agents showing up without appointments at their listings and asking the seller for a showing.
• Trying to get the other agent to produce paperwork in a timely manner and carry their weight in a transaction.

I have noticed some of these same occurrences in my market with the worsening economy and slowing real estate market.

A colleague in my office, Agent Highly-Professional, said clients she has been working with for over a year, the "Smith's," came in for a showing yesterday. The Smith's said their Eureka agent (Eureka is 85 miles away) suggested the Smith's work with a different agent than Agent Highly-Professional (no doubt so she could get a referral fee). The Smith's said the Eureka agent was not very nice to them, however they did touch base with the agent she referred them to, Agent Too-Busy. Agent Too-Busy asked the Smith's their price range. When the Smith's replied under $200,000, Agent Too-Busy said she did not have time to show them around...she was too busy. Can you believe it, because I can't.

With the median price home in our market currently at $120,000, $200,000 is a pretty nice priced home. Is that agent really so busy she can turn away business? Well our current market stats would say no. No one is so busy in our market they should turn away business and even if that were the case, there is never an excuse to be rude.

Agent Highly-Professional set-up several showings for her clients and had to call one particular agent, Agent Never-Answers-the-Phone, to set-up showings. She tried several times with no answer and no response to her voicemails, however Agent Never-Answer-the-Phone, did send a text message much later saying she is taking the week off and will get back to Agent Highly-Professional after she gets back to work. Well, the clients are from out of town and needed a showing that day. Maybe Agent Never-Answers-the-Phone should have made arrangements with someone in her office to cover her workload.

Regarding lockboxes - I was having such a terrible problem with them being left unlocked that I stopped giving the lockbox code in the agent only remarks in our MLS. I also watched a colleague give one of my lockbox codes to their client. I headed over to my listing and changed the code right away, but what a hassle.

Roberta Murphy, one of the agents interviewed for the CAR magazine article states, "Good etiquette means returning another agent's phone calls, updating your information on the MLS and keeping time frames as tight as possible." She points to the lack of MLS accuracy as a sign that more and more agents have almost no regard for anyone beyond themselves.

This happens to an extent in my market too. I pretty much know who the agents are who feel they are above the MLS rules of changing the status on a listing to pending or contingency status, so I take the extra time to call those agents before showing their listings, however, if they don't call back and their office isn't updated on the listing status, then what? I actually showed a home where the seller told me, in front of my client, that the home was in escrow scheduled to close in a few days. The seller wondered why I was there. My client looked at me and wanted to know why as well. I was irritated a colleague would put me in that position, but there it is.

Murphy calls this type of behavior a "lack of professionalism" and I agree.

Now what does this have to do with soliciting ratings from your clients? I just finished reading Sara Bonert's post on Zillow's launch of agent ratings by consumers. I took the time to read many of the comments and quite a few agents thought it was a great idea while a few were leery and concerned some agent's would "game" the system.

I've seen "gaming" happening on several websites including AR. If you look-up my market, Del Norte County and Crescent City, there are several "agent's" registered who aren't in my market. I also noticed an agent who appears to be cutting and pasting posts, has two profiles instead of one and shows as the top agent in his market with both his profiles. What are you going to do? There are always going to be scammers.

My point, and I'm finally there, is instead of looking for the next best thing to increase your leads, all you really have to do is:

• Answer your phone when it rings and if you can't, reply to the voicemail.
• Show the clients the homes they want to see, even if they are low priced. Happy buyers tell their friends and family about you by word of mouth, not by going to a website to see your rating.
• Make sure your showings are secure when leaving and that the lockbox has the key in it and is locked.
• Meet deadlines and quickly handle problems when they arise before they become deal breakers.
• Answer requests from other agents for feedback on showings.
• Cancel showing appointments if you can't keep them.
• Extend common courtesies to your colleagues and clients and treat them the way you want to be treated.

As Renee Grubb, broker-owner of Village Properties in Santa Barbara, points out in the article, "No one is interested in doing business with them [rude individuals]. Those are the ramifications of not treating your fellow agents in a respectful manner."

That goes for clients too. Agent Too-Busy lost the buyers. The Smith's are back at our office getting the wonderful customer service they deserve. They will purchase a lovely home and tell their friends not to go to the other agency because the agents there are too busy to show property. The Smith's will point their referrals to RE/MAX Coastal Redwoods because they were treated well.

Thank you Agent Too-Busy...keep up the good work.