Don’t Cry Over Lost Listings!
You’ve anticipated the morning of your new listing appointment for days, or maybe weeks. You rise very early that morning, just so that you don’t take chances with the traffic and make a terrible impression with your seller. Your suit is well-laundered, and your shoes are spotless for your big day.
Now, you’re seated with your potential seller client over two cups of coffee, and you’ve made a mental calculation of all you’d do with their property. But right in the middle of your presentation, your seller casually informs you, with their coffee cup an inch from their face, that they are also talking to two other agents.
There is nothing wrong with interviewing more than one agent for a listing, but you’ll undoubtedly have many questions run through your mind at that point. ‘Am I the last resort?’ or ‘did they discover a flaw in my service to have called upon two other agents?’. The questions may not stop, and you may gradually start to watch your confidence evaporate with the steam from your coffee.
By the time you’re informed – maybe a few days later – that one of the other agents got the listing, you can do either of two things. You can either languish in sorrow for days – or weeks, or decide that you weren’t cut out for real estate. Or you can get up and do the right thing.
What then is the right thing to do?
Understand the Value of Competition
If you’re wondering what the value of competition is to your real estate career, quit wondering and keep reading – please!
No one will judge you if you wish once in a while that you had no competitors. No Jonathan Nash, Ivy Zelman nor Cynthia DeLuca in the industry – just you. But then, have you ever imagine how boring your favorite car racing sports would be if one car raced alone all the time? It would certainly not be your favorite show anymore! Well, the same thing applies to real estate.
Until you come to understand the actual value of competition in real estate, you may never go beyond your current level. Competition makes you stronger, and better, and able to launder your suit again, fill up your confidence tank, and take on another appointment with another client.
The transparency in this industry makes your competitors become your coworkers, as you can easily find out what other agents are up to. But don’t get carried away. Knowing what your competitors are up to isn’t a guarantee that you’ll get better. What you do with the knowledge is.
- Know Your Competitors
Not as enemies. Instead, get a good grasp of what they do for, and offer their clients. In real estate, there is no big deal in keeping tabs on other agents. The system is even designed to keep things that way.
So, when you get the news, the right thing to do is do your research about that agent who got that anticipated listing. There’d be just so much information you can gather about them and their company on their website and social media feeds.
Of the things you should research about your fiery competitor, find out their level of expertise, their professional development activities, the services they offer, and any other extra value they render to their clients.
- Utilize the Knowledge
Don’t get it wrong here. You’re not researching your competitor to copy them. Neither are you doing so to stalk and tag them ‘client snatcher’ – funny. Instead, you’re checking them out to enable you to determine a unique service you can render to your client and improve your chances of getting selected for competitive listings next time.
From your research, you can ascertain if you and your competitors are on the same professional level or not. And if not, you can upgrade yourself to an even higher level by taking classes or joining associations.
You can also up your game by reading my #1 selling book The Standout Agent. It is a comprehensive guide to your unprecedented success as a real estate agent. It is also packed with further insight into what you should do with competition.
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Until next time…
