I had a question from a lovely lady in a great group the other day, and I thought my response to her question could help a few others of you guys out, so here’s her query of me….
Hi Glenn,
Thanks for your motivating session yesterday.
I am employed as a PA with the role of gathering listings and then passing them on to the sales staff here. Whist some exclusives take a little time of building repour I also target opens which are reasonably easy to list (with the hope to then converting to Exclusives at that time or at a later date). I have found on a few occasions that we are greeted by very aggressive vendors that are just about at wits end and are not too fond of real estate agents in general. This both has its good points and bad. What do you suggest would give us the best out come:
Stay, reassure them of your services and be treated like we are awful people.
Say something like “you seem unhappy with this situation, maybe it is a little confusing with so many agents, why don’t you see how this situation goes for the next week. We can come back and discuss other options that may be more successful” – take it away and don’t sign – and another agent does in the interim.
What is the best way to handle this situation as it actually is a great opportunity and there are many like this on the market ?
Ok, so we get the point there. Angry client, ‘all you guys are idiots, go away, you’re all the same.
Well, Lara (not her real name – I don’t want to mention her name without permission) here is almost there. The fact that you have an obviously emotional client is agood sign. In fact if they were all happy and stuff, they don’t have a problem for us to solve.
In some of my training I address this with the statement –
‘An undisturbed client or customer will not sell or buy !!’
The goal here now is to get these clients to see past their emotion and see you as the one agent, or agency given you are in a ‘business creator’ type role.
And actually, if you are in the position of just booking the appointment, that would be great. In that if you utilise a technique called ‘Pacing and Leading.’
I go into this in more detail in other courses but here’s the short version.
– Make 3 statements to which the person agrees. (or better yet, ask 3 questions to which prospect agrees)
– Make a third statement, or question, that leads them where you would like them to take their mental focus.
eg
‘I can hear from your voice, Mr or Mrs Potential Client, that something must have happened that’s less than ideal, would that be a fair statement?’
‘ I understand that the current financial market has some other agencies are struggling to make sales, is that what you’ve found?’ (point or gesture away from yourself towards the other agencies – for more info on body language gesturing with intent, email or call me)
‘Are you currently selling?’
‘Are you currently looking for a solution that actually WORKS ?’
‘If I could show you an agency that is doing some things differently, and it won’t cost you anything to find out what, would that be worth 20 minutes for you to take a look?’
Remember, all your job is here is to BOOK AN APPOINTMENT. That’s it, so if you can pace their anger, acknowledge it, respect the person, and edify your colleague in the office, then the appointment should be a cinch, as this upset client obviously has a problem to solve.
This won’t work unless you genuinely believe in your gut that your office DOES indeed have a superior skill set to your competitors that have upset this client.
Again we are back to the reality that many agents have been hanging around real estate with little or no skill and training and still making sales despite their skills. Those days are over so get the scripts, dialogues, belief and intestinal fortitude to get in these doors and help these people, because you guys who are trained well (or are currently training diligently) ar ethe only ones who can.
Definitely don’t let this client go, Lara (again, not real name). Stay with them, help them, in fact if you let their anger push you away and scare you away, YOU ARE HURTING THEM, by leaving them to the hacks who are currently (dis)serving them. Don’t do that to your clients.
Glenn Twiddle
Real Estate Training
