Selecting an agent to sell my home has become a very important exercise I wish I did during my eleven year career of selling homes to discover what my competition was doing.
This research process will be completed over the following weeks and I am looking forward to seeing first hand how all the different real estate agents conduct their business. So far my partner and I have inspected 19 real estate agents representing 10 different Perth agencies, and to be frank no one has stood out. There wasn’t one agent that stood out above the rest which is a real shame as they all were professional and friendly people.
Each agent conducted their business well enough and we didn’t find any bad apples, one did challenge my opinion on price and the home but didn’t take advantage of the master sales agent offering them a golden carrot to act on.
But as this exercise is to find a selling agent not one out of 19 did anything different. This is a lost opportunity that a tech savvy agent will use to improve their business at an accelerated rate.
It has now been two days and all I have to show for it is one phone call and one email. The email was a nice touch and professional looking with some glaring omissions that an internet marketer like myself would change, but it was better than no email.
A brief comment on the brochures and handout materials is that I was flooded with 20c-40c brochures that provide me as a seller no real value or information to help me sell my home.
One company did provide a different information pack that does offer additional information but is still too generic for my liking, and it was all about them. The funny thing about one of the brochures is I designed it 10 years ago! It is 2011 for christ sakes, lift your game, stand out and be different.
One of the independents offered a selling pack, but alas it was all about how good they are and again all about them.
Now you are probably wondering why I am doing this. My goal from this exercise is to find the weaknesses within the real estate industry and address these by giving my customers the best information on how to be better, list more property, improve their teams and give their clients the best service in a streamlined and automated way.
We at Real Estate Connected want to build the best website, make you better and give you the best tools designed to feed you leads. We know how to do this and judging by this weekends events, it will be easy to do in this digital and connected age.
Over the next few weeks we continue to provide insight into the appraisal process and follow-up and keep you up to date by subscribing.
I did a similar exercise over the poast 14 months visiting 109 Open Houses in SE Qld primarily (I did visit two over near Floreat/Scarborough Beach) but amazingly similar results. Amazing !!
People told me I was making up the stats, and my response was ‘If I made them up they wouldn’t be this bad as I never would have believed it.’
I even had a WA person say to me, ‘Oh Glenn the WA agents aren’t like that.’ Well I guess we now see, that we ALL are like that. Well done Merv. Congrats for keeping us on our toes.
Check out my similar results mate at
http://glenntwiddle.com.au/blog/real-estate-agent-secret-shop-final-results/
Glenn Twiddle
Free Real Estate Training
Glenn, thanks for your comments. I am finding it hard to even produce stats when agents don’t even call back a potential buyer or seller! Real Estate agents should take notice, change and your business will excel.
Its a bit sad when you dont get a Call, Sms or email…
I hope that the brochure was at least printed in colour???
Surely with a bit of effort and training (insert Glenn Twiddle Plug here!)
Our home opens can stand out from the rest….
Cheers
Davide Palermo
professionals victoria park
0412249002
Dave, it really is very sad and it looks like my exercise is going to end up worse than Glenn’s… All the brochures were printed in colour but a lot looked like they were from the 80s.
Must you believe this.
There is no need for a Brochure – trainers and agents who are in the know, know this.
And calling someone back, why?
No need unless profile generation is involved.
So if you don’t call visitors back how are you working for your sellers then? I used to call everyone back to find out what they thought the property was worth and if they would buy it at all. Without proper feedback to the owners how did you educate them on price?
And on brochures, I’m talking about providing useful information to potential sellers to educate them in the process of selling their house. Most people sell every 5 to 7 years and haven’t got an idea on what takes place. When every agent is only providing a for sale brochure, I see it as a wasted opportunity to show that you are a different agent.