Real Estate Brokers: Let them know how important you are
The problem. Told in a story…
Last month, I had the pleasure (or displeasure) of being in a round table discussion with some investment bankers. The conversation drifted towards their general complaint that it was hard to get mandates to sell companies in these COVID times.
Trying to be helpful, I shared some strategies that real estate brokers employ to acquire real estate mandates. To my surprise, one of the bankers objected. “Excuse me, but one difference between them and us is we can’t just put up a listing and collect a commission…”
I replied, “Sir, with all due respect, that is incredibly ill-informed, disrespectful, and ultimately short-sighted. Cast not your pearls before swine; I wish you the best of luck.” Especially an investment banker should know that you only see the 1% tip of the iceberg!
What most people fail to realize is most of our customers drive their business through acquisition. They engage with owners, build trust, and discover the unsaid problem that the owners have. It could be a need to pay for a considerable expense… or the desire to change their life or environment… or a need to simplify their lives… whatever the problem.
Ultimately, the broker helps the owner find a solution to a problem that the owner might not explicitly verbalize. In other words, that house you want might not have even been for sale if the broker had never been there.
Unfortunately, many people still think like those myopic bankers. They believe that all it takes to transact on a real estate object is to list. That’s barely 1% of the jobs-to-be-done. Real estate marketing automation tools like FLOWFACT can list and optimize the marketing aspect of a property automatically. They don’t realize that listing is literally the easiest thing to do in the giant iceberg of actions required to guide the process of closing successfully.
We should do more to disabuse this common notion; it devalues the immense value that brokers bring to the market in terms of liquidity. Okay, agree, but how?
Let’s start with one method…
Let them know how important you are by over-communicating the process.
Raise your hand if you publish a checklist of the things needed to bring a transaction to close either on your website or through an email nurture campaign?
If you’ve raised your hands, congratulations! You are both:
a) better than 99% of the brokers out there and…
b) a weirdo for raising your hand while reading an article.
This checklist (or roadmap) should be over-communicated along every step of the way in your customer journey. It should both be high-level in the overall process and detailed in the customer’s current phase.
Here’s an example that is taken from one of the brokers I work with a lot.
Hello <Owner>,
Selling your home is a rewarding but complicated process. These are the steps that we’ll take together to meet your expectations, and the process results in the best possible outcome for you.
1. High-level evaluation and comparables (We are here)
2. In-depth evaluation
3. Jointly craft a strategy to achieve the results that you expect
4. Execute the strategy to find buyers
5. Decide on a winning offer relative to my goals
6. Coordinate the paperwork between all parties
7. Notary close
8. Key exchange and celebration
It’s complicated but don’t you worry. I’ll be with you every step of the way.
Currently, we’re doing a high-level evaluation and finding comparables. Every property is different, so we’ll have to do an in-depth physical assessment to get the final picture, but let’s start here. We’ll get an idea of possible outcomes based on the market activity happening in your area. We’ll look at some data regarding your house, neighborhood, and types of buyers looking for a home just like yours.
The high-level evaluation involves looking at a valuation based on your property’s general information, such as the exact location, area, and floorplan. We’ll then use that to find comparable transactions to do a CMA, comparative market analysis. Finally, we’ll look at multiple data sources like portals and our internal database to see how many people have an active search profile for a similar property. Putting that all together, we’ll form a thesis and hypothesis on how to achieve your communicated expectations.
That email is brilliant! Every time something happens, my broker sends me an updated version of this email. The high-level is always the same; it builds trust through consistency. The detailed step is always different and educational. It’s an invitation to partner, an invitation to engage, and an invitation to educate myself on the process. Every time I go through this process, I appreciate more and more what my broker does for me.
The best news for the broker is that it was set up once and continues to pay dividends repeatedly. A package like FLOWFACT allows you to set up funnels that are as large or detailed as you want and set up automated emails to communicate the roadmap. No muss, no fuss, super easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
