Start talking money…because I’m not really listening!

Until I know how much you're going to charge me and why…I’m really not interested in your sales pitch.

ALT TitleWhile driving between appointments this afternoon I heard a radio ad for replacement windows. The owner of the company explained that one of the biggest distinctions between him and his competition was that he would give you the cost of the windows and installation right over the phone. There was no need to have him come out to your house to give you “the hard sell” if you were just interested in a price.

To someone like me,  that’s music to my ears. I can’t focus on anything that you have to tell me until I know the price.

When it comes to real estate related services, in many cases you still need to sit through the “dog and pony show” before the fees are discussed. Trying to find a real estate broker/agent’s marketing ad or brochure that outlines commissions and other service fees is nearly impossible. In the past, it’s been all about personal promotion and plastering head shots on everything. It’s a sales technique that served the industry well for decades, but the game is changing and changing quickly.

Disclosure and transparency are the buzz words in an industry that has struggled with offering the consumer very little of either. I once read the following comment from a real estate broker who was questioning why the federal government was putting an emphasis on making sure real estate brokers and agents accurately disclose when they have a business relationship with a mortgage or title company where they receive compensation when they refer their clients.

“If the government mandated disclosures aren’t written in plain English, why do ours need to be.”

We’ve taken a completely different approach with all of our marketing endeavors and judging by the success that we’ve had, I’d say that our customers love it. Especially those customers who have either purchased, sold or refinanced real estate before and thought that they’d been taken advantage of by the people supposedly working in their best interests.

We provide our customers with all of the fees upfront. We waive all of the “junk fees” and give them clear and accurate answers to all of their questions. No sales pitch, no industry jargon, no hidden relationships with other service providers and you don’t have to know someone to receive a fair deal.

In a recent article published on Inman.com titled Serve Me, Don’t Sell Me, the author talks about how the real estate industry is changing and how consumers don’t want to be sold. Today’s consumers want information and not a slick sales pitch. We live in a society where younger generations were witnesses to the mistakes of their parents caused in part by bad advice from sales associates who claimed to be industry experts.

Well, in many cases these parents are still digging themselves out of a mess, and their children aren’t interested in repeating the same mistakes.

Transparency, full disclosure and all fees right upfront so that I can decided if the conversation is going any further. To some it might sound like a pipe dream, but I believe that it’s the future of our industry. Not only because consumers deserve it, but because they’ll demand it.

As always, if you have any questions about the standard vs. enhanced policy, or just a general real estate question that you’d like a second opinion just text, email, call or contact us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.linkedin

 

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