Is your estate agency feedback impressive enough?

RAT 60 (Rawlings Agency Tip)

One of the questions I ask agents during a training day is how soon following a viewing do they expect to let the client know how it went.

Some say “never - unless the buyer is interested”
Some say “during our next marketing review”
Some say “we phone all our clients with an update once a week”
Most say “within 24 hours”
Some say “within about 10 minutes wherever possible”

If you were a client, which would you prefer?

Surely we are in the business of delivery way ahead of expectation. It would not be unreasonable for a client to expect to hear back within 24 hours. So do it within 10 minutes!

If you have ever sold your own property, you’ll know the feeling of euphoria when a buyer appears to like your house. You then sit by the phone waiting, hoping, dreaming, longing, praying for the agent to phone with the good news. But then - nothing. You proceed to conjure up in your mind all sorts of reasons why they haven’t called. You become despondent that perhaps they don’t like it after all and you start to blame the agent, who obviously doesn’t care in any event or they surely would have phoned by now!

Even if the buyer hated the property, an immediate call to the vendor to tell them why goes a long way towards 1) relieving the vendor of his/her stress, 2) impressing them with your straightforward and punchy approach and 3) avoiding you getting the blame and 4) preparing the vendor for a possible price reduction (or rather “a repositioning in the market”) down the line.

Mobile phones were invented specifically to help agents phone their vendors immediately after a viewing!

And by the way, if you are thinking “what if the buyer hasn’t given me any feedback yet to report” then I suggest you may wish to review how you are conducting your viewings, as you should always be able to generate something very close to a “yes” or a “no” during the viewing itself.