Is a must! If you plan to successfully get through the selling or buying process and if you’re a real estate professional, the more confidence the better results you will create. It all starts with confidence. The genesis!! And hey, it’s contagious…isn’t it?
Is your agent confident? And how can you know or gauge this? Essentially, all agents take a two-week course and then a test, which honestly it’s pretty tough, but then they are deemed capable. It’s rather comical! The purchase or sale of a home is the single greatest investment of most people’s lives, and it’s a very complicated transaction. It is literally impossible for someone to be prepared to provide professional service after a two-week course. More truth you ask? Well yes, even a veteran in the business needs to be interviewed carefully. Technology has changed real estate dramatically and the process of buying and selling changes often. Let’s talk about the key areas you need to address in order to be truly confident in assisting people with this process and if you are interviewing to find a great agent these topics apply as well.
MARKET EXPERTISE
An excellent agent chooses a particular market area that is big enough to fuel their annual sales goals yet small enough to understand and follow carefully. You want to ask any agent you interview where they concentrate their business and what particular areas or neighborhoods in which they have true expert knowledge. Also and most importantly, someone that has the confidence and credibility to help you through this process will have phenomenal reviews online and or references/testimonials to offer. Dig a little deeper and read those reviews. Find out how many houses they have sold in those particular areas and when. It is relevant and critical to know if they are actively working in those markets (to confirm they are an expert today not two years ago). And as a professional, when you choose a specific market area, study the active, pending and settled data in that market daily or weekly. In fact, this is how you become an expert in a market. And obviously it’s how you maintain expert status!
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
To manage a real estate business where there are buyers and sellers being represented, an excellent agent has checklists and timelines they follow and share with their clients to follow as well. Talk to agent candidates about their management systems and support staff. They need to have systems in place in order to deliver on the promises they make to you; this is especially true if they currently only have two clients but next week, four new prospects come in…now they are overloaded and unable to service you at the level they had hoped. Systems and support staff solve this! All of this is equally true for top producing agents who have 50 listings. The more clients an agent has the less time they have to give you their attention and guidance throughout the process. Don’t underestimate this! At Agent06, we have a 54-step workflow from fully signed contract through to settlement. And we have other checklists and workflows to get a client to a signed contract. It’s an awesome process! Every great agent has them. So ask about their process and support team.
TIME MANAGEMENT
Because you are hiring an independent contractor (all real estate agents are; there are very minimal exceptions and even if you run into an exception, each is a salesperson solely judged on sales volume), you must discuss their schedule and overall availability. They will be working FOR YOU to manage every aspect of the single greatest investment of your lifetime. Pry away!!! As mentioned in the previous section, a commitment made today can be compromised by an influx of business tomorrow. You need to know they have systems and discipline in their work schedule to deliver on their promises. Ask enough questions, and you may discover they have ‘another job’ and actually do real estate part-time. This is a common issue. Don’t fall victim to this! For the size And significance of the transaction, you should demand a full-time and fully focused professional. Nothing less!
These are the key factors to an agent building and maintaining professional confidence and you determining if they have what it takes to represent your family’s financial interests.
What’s described here builds the foundation for an agent’s confidence which is contagious. You catch it! Their results prove it.
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