The First To Get A way from us, Virginal Real Estate Agents
The First To Get A way from us, as Virginal Real Estate Agents, was a young couple looking to buy a home. A duty phone call from a gentlemen asking about a home he viewed in the Real Estate Ads of the newspaper. Would he be able to see it on Saturday with a few others? Of course, I said, as he rattled off some other addresses he wanted to see. Can we meet at the first house? Of course, I said as I scrambled to write everything down as quickly as possible. Thank goodness for caller id, I never asked for his name or phone number.
Wow, was I excited.. a duty call and I was scheduling showings for Saturday. As I started looking at the homes and scheduling appointments, I noticed quite a few of them were much older homes that would probably require some fixing up. Well, I guess that was what he wanted to see.
Saturday comes...Frank and I meet him at the first house and he has a young woman with him. He introduces her by her first name and doesn't say anything else. This is a bit awkward because we don't know if they are married, related, buying the house together .... we knew nothing about either of them... We walk thru the house talking incessantly about every nit picking thing we see... They walked thru the house in utter silence. We offer to drive together in one car, they said no thank you and followed us to the next house.
We are at a loss of what to say to them.. we were felt unprepared for our first buyer clients. We went to four more homes and tried our hardest to sell them the home, pointing out everything we could find they might like. They never said a word. We couldn't get them to talk about anything. We asked questions, but their only response was a yes or no.
At the last house we asked them if they liked any of the homes. They finally said something more than yes or no....He said this has been the most unpleasant experience we have ever had. We didn't like any of the homes, they were old and all of them needed work done.
Well I knew that from looking at the listings when I was making the appointments to see them. I didn't want to be rude to them and say well you picked them....but I did say, well, maybe we can get together another time to look at some other homes... Boy if looks could kill.... we were dead on the spot. They politely said no thank you, got in their car and drove away.
We never did see them again. I didn't get an email and didn't feel the need to call them again. What did we do wrong?
Well, at the time I didn't know what we did wrong. I thought maybe we talked too much and didn't listen....but they never said anything....we never asked the right questions, because we never got any kind of response from them. I tried at the time not to take it personally. I thought the price range they were looking in was very low and being near the beach, they weren't going to be able to afford much more...
I never asked them what they could afford, or if they were preapproved, or if they were paying cash or obtaining financing. The more I thought about that first duty call, the more I blamed myself for not being prepared. I had no idea if they rented or owned a home, if they were relocating or purchasing a vacation place. I didn't even know if they, were a they!! I didn't know anything about them!! Sheer excitement of the first duty call....what a disaster!!
Now we are pretty sure most Real Estate Agents prefer not to admit these kind of things happen, but we do admit to our mistakes and have failures. It is from our failures we have learned to succeed...
For us it was a major learning experience. We have learned from our mistakes.
We are prepared now for all of our clients. Five years later, we have acquired the experience and skill to qualify and counsel a buyer before going out with them. There is a real strategy to working with buyers because they are all different. The emotional aspects are important points to consider as well as their motivation and signals. Watching their gestures, body language, allowing them to lead, mirroring them, yet remaining emotionally neutral as they comment. We let our buyers buy the house now, we don't try to oversell it. We let them set the pace and give the opinions. We are relaxed, confident and totally focused on our clients.
We learn to observe, listen and find out what is most important for them. Each age group makes decisions differently and communicates differently.
After all is said and done, life is about learning, isn't it??
