Reading Okanagan Seller's Mind
A real estate agent, walking along the beach in Vancouver, was having a conversation with God. The Lord Said, “because you have tried to be faithful to me, I will grant you one wish.” The agent said, “build me a highway to Hawaii so I can drive over anytime I want”. The Lord said “there will be enormous challenges for that kind of project… the supports required to reach the bottom of the pacific… the concrete and steel it would take! Take a little more time and think of another wish”. The agent thought about it for a long time and finally said, “Lord I wish that I could understand my clients. I want to know how they feel inside… what they are thinking when they give me the silent treatment, and why they don’t return my call calls. I want to be able to make them truly happy.” The Lord replied, “would you like 2 lanes or 4 lanes to Hawaii?”
Communication is the key to all successful relationships whether it is with your client, spouse, friends, or employer. With the exponential growth in technology in the past 20 years the communication options have broadened immensely and with that come significant challenges. The past days of a simple phone call or a message on an answering service are long gone. Now with email, text, and Facebook, it is in some ways becoming harder to reach your agent or client live. It also may be in some cases, more difficult for clients to get their messages through to their agents if proper lines of communication aren’t set out from the get-go. Messages can be left unreturned if proper protocols or expectations on the best or most preferred form of communication remains unconfirmed. And clear communication is so important… so that nothing is lost in translation so to speak.
Many of our clients have a 3-platform process (phone, email, text) to reach them to set up a simple showing. Many clients will also ask that you go through a tiered approach trying each platform at different times of the day when contacting them about real-estate matters. They may also require feedback to be sent differently (ie: email instead of text) than their usual form of contact. Fortunately, interfacing with the showing realtor is usually a simpler task as agents in the valley communicate for showings on the same TouchBase platform. Sometimes, with rogue agents or agents from out of the area, we are back to chasing each other down on the various communication platforms presenting similar challenges to what we may be facing with existing clients. And more often than not, we will suggest for clearest communication an email be sent so that the office can put answers to various questions in writing.
Phone tag can be frustrating. All of this coupled with 24/7 access to the market means that we have buyers and sellers from all over the world reaching out with an expectation that their queries will be responded to in a timely fashion often not understanding why this is not the case. (All sales and marketing training & studies recommend less than 5 minutes for optimal interface in the business relationship…so it becomes even more important to assess where messages are being left for follow-up). Complicating matters, communication avenues are ever-changing and being added to. People answer their phones less and prefer texting. In some instances, texts are being sent to LAN lines and may be missed, voicemail now features voice to text so that calls don’t need to be answered, and most times, it is necessary to let clients know by text that we have sent the email. Although humorous, the complicated nature of this means, we have chosen to layer our communications, and we work as a team.
In a team environment, we can schedule individuals to cover communications at almost all hours and on all platforms. However, there are always those individuals who only want to speak with a specific person. I can’t tell you how many times I go to bed (shutting off my communications around 9 pm) and then see that someone is urgently needing to speak with me after 10 pm, sometimes insisting on the urgency well into the wee hours of the next morning, only for the critical nature of that required discussion to lose its massive urgency when I return the call the next morning at 7 am. Again, what I have done to conquer at least part of this challenge is, I’ve hired team members that work so closely with me that in most cases they can speak on my behalf and provide very timely assistance in the short term, until I am able to speak with the client or agent. In many cases, my team can very aptly handle most of the information queries and when it comes to the questions that can only be handled by a licensed agent, they are able to provide the time frame in which I will be available to return a call or answer an email. My team members are an extremely valuable tool in my ability to provide excellent customer service and meet the needs of both my clients and the agents I work with daily.
As an agent with a team, our ability to communicate on various platforms is critical. It is also important at the beginning of each client relationship to establish how (text, email, or phone) and when the best time(s) will be to communicate with our client and to establish this as a coherent and consistent response. On top of all that, to enjoy ongoing success at all levels with clients and others it is also strategic to ensure all those communications are captured (ideally on one platform) in a database for referencing and reminders. Additionally, our Real Estate Board and Insurers highly recommend capturing all this data and communications on a consistent basis so that it is available for review if required.
Until there is a technology that funnels all our communications into a single application that everyone else is also using or we begin to read minds, consistent communication will always be the biggest challenge and opportunity for everyone in our business to overcome. And so, we will continue to tailor our timely communication based on our Vernon Real Estate clients’ needs and provide as close to 24/7 coverage as we can and realize that if our clients have not returned our call, maybe they didn’t get the message 😊.
