Back in June when the s first started hitting the fan for me, I decided I needed to sell the house. I contacted a RealtorTM, and a week later this lady comes out with 300 pages of sales comps for the neighborhood. She went through the house pointing out the obvious ("paint this room, replace the carpet..."), then told me to call her once the changes were made. So I spent a ton of money inside and outside the house, including the new roof. Circumstances change, I decided to keep my humble tractshack. But in three months this lady never called back. No follow-up, no e-mail, not even a postcard.
My #1 rule in sales and marketing is if a potential customer initiates the contact, you should treat that lead as manna. They want action, and even if they don't act now they may in the future. So you build up a database and contact them with new offers until they either buy or tell you to bug off. This isn't rocket science.
Based on my limited experience with this one RealtorTM, I am not sure why I should sacrifice 6% of my profit from the sale of the house. She didn't strike me as being much of a salesperson, but she sure does like to use that printer of hers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
So is she still practicing? So many have left RE lately that there's always the chance that she'll be serving you at the JC Penney's this Christmas shopping season.
I've been in sales, and I agree with you: If a customer comes to you, treat 'em as gold -- unless there's some problem. Right now in real estate the problem is an oversupply of sellers.
A friend of mine in the industry (in Baltimore) is turning away listings right and left. His reason is that he can't sell 'em unless the sellers price 'em low. And if you won't price it low, he just doesn't deal with you. He doesn't have the budget or time to spend on a house he knows he can't sell.
He's working like a dog but having a hard time getting turnover, what with very cautious buyers and financing problems. Worse, he thinks RE sales are going to stink for several YEARS, no rebound "next year" like some are wishing.
But heck, he would at least call you back just in case you WOULD sell for cheap, I know that. Maybe that's why he and his wife have been successful in that industry for decades.
But heck, he would at least call you back just in case you WOULD sell for cheap
This is the thing. NO FOLLOW-UP. It takes a minute to make a phone call. I should at the very least be in their database. All I got from this is two pounds of printouts. For this, they expect to receive thousands of dollars in commissions for each sale?
Actually Lou, it's not 6% of your profit, but 6% of the sales price, which makes it worse than you imagined. We've negotiated the commission down to 5% on a couple of sales, especially when we've had a prior relationship with the agent.
The only business I've ever conducted with a realtor was very disappointing. Fortunately I was the buyer but I remember her partner saying I was the easiest client to work with. Too right - I did all the work! The only thing she really helped with was the closing and the confusing amount of papers I had to read and sign. And then it was "you should just sign there".
I don't think I'd ever sell my house without some realtor help, but I'll definitely do some research if I have to sell. There are too many realtors out there wanting to make money without actually doing their job. It's a shame because I suspect there are some good ones that are worth the money.
Having done sales, yes, a customer actually wanting to do business with you is ridiculously rare. So that fact that there wasn't even a postcard or callback by an assistant says that they were a) lazy b) ridiculously disorganized c) not very good.
Chances are, with the great market, ahem, that was going on they weren't really looking for inventory but were looking for buyers. So one more seller was an irritant to her. Very shortsighted.
I deal with a wide variety sales people all day long, and I've dealt with realtors for 25 years. What you said about customer-initiated calls is true and most sales people react accordingly. However I am not the least bit surprised about your realtor experience. They generally recieve little to no sales training and the vast majority of them are extremely low-functioning, so-called professionals.
Guys like me have put most Realtors out of business. :-p
Every experience I have had with a Realtor(R) (Realtor is a registered trademark, btw, not just a TM) has sucked. Several times when looking to buy a house, I'd call Realtors(R) numbers from the sign in front of the house. Only a scant few ever bothered to call me back, and those that did never provided the equivalent of 300 pages of comps. They felt they were doing me a favor by calling me back at all.
I would go to great lengths to avoid using a Realtor(R) in future househunting (or selling).
A friend of mine is a Realtor(R) (go figure), and he says that the Realtor(R) thing is a scam. The National Association of Realtors just colllects their dues, and you look like a cheapskate skinflint among other Realtors(R) if you don't pay up.
Pfffft.
Post a Comment