Stage 1 – Set Expectations Before The First Meeting

When you first get a request to meet with a buyer or seller, that’s where your plan should kick in. Even before setting up a meeting with these potential new clients, it is important to start setting expectations.

The methods for doing this vary. For sellers, some top producers will pre-send a brochure or listing presentation to give customers a chance to get familiar; for buyers, agents need to qualify customers to find out what they’re interested in, what they can afford and when they hope to move. Setting expectations at this stage is important – even if customers aren’t sure of what they want, an agent should find out motivations and any preconceived notions.

Many professionals, like Michael LaFido, the vice president of marketing operations at ERA Team Feinstein, require both potential buyers and sellers to submit a preliminary questionnaire in which the client states his or her preferences for nearly every aspect of the process.

For buyers, it involves preferred ZIP codes, experience with homebuying and how much importance they place on various methods of searching for available properties, and whether or not you, as an agent, require a buyer agreement contract or fee; for sellers, it includes experience with home selling and preferred methods for listing their home. Most importantly, however, is the question of preferred communication methods – how often they wish to be communicated with, via phone calls, emails or texts, and what they expect to hear from agents in terms of updates, information, etc.

Although communication should be customized for client preferences, LaFido says, it is important to develop communication standards as a baseline for proactively managing the client relationship, and keep in mind that the amount and delivery of communication will change based on your client’s situation. To assist your client communications, develop standard templates and tools to increase efficiency, and customize existing content to suit the specific needs of clients. For instance, as you identify client leads and update the client record, you can collect required and additional information as needed.

This preliminary questionnaire lets LaFido know not only how to possibly communicate with these prospective clients, but also how realistic buyers and sellers are. He also takes this one step further, and asks potential clients to submit to a personality test. ERA Feinstein uses the DiSC profile assessment, which organizes people based on four basic personality components: dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness.

LaFido’s team will prepare presentations and compile listings for each client based on the information contained in their DiSC profiles. In theory, the way in which a direct and bottom-line-oriented client will approach buying a new home will be fundamentally different than the way in which a more detail-oriented, skeptical buyer will.

Once you understand the type of buyer or seller, LaFido explains, clear expectations can be established.

“We try to paint a picture of the next step,” he says. “We are also setting the expectation level of the frustration that comes along with the process. There are lots of things that we can’t control … I want to prepare them for anything.”

Though an agent can’t price a seller’s home before walking through it, it is still important for agents to mention comparative market analysis data, the client’s neighborhood absorption rate and other data to set expectations before a meeting.