Took a Poll – What Do Clients Prefer 10-0 Over ‘World Class’ Service?

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

The oft used phrase, World Class Service, has become as meaningful as the word ‘great’ used in virtually any sports context. As in, “Yeah Jerry, that was a great catch by a great center fielder.” How worthless is the awarding of greatness upon sports figures nowadays? The same ‘experts’ who rightly called Mohammed Ali one of the greatest fighters, if not THE greatest of all time, called Mike Tyson ‘great’. How can the steaks at both Ruth’s Chris Steak House and Denny’s be great?

The point is that words mean things, or we’re all screwed. The concept of ‘winning in real estate brokerage through world class service’ has a fatally flawed premise. Do you know what it is? Your client sure does, which is why he’s with someone else now, regardless of your superior service.

Fact is, he didn’t come to you for service, though many consumers out there make that mistake, falling on the petard created by the same false premise. Ironically, the #1 criterion used in choosing their agent/broker was definitely not service. I know, cuz new clients tell me this all the time. One newish client put it the best way I’ve heard in quite awhile:

“I learned the hard way that much of the time, getting the best service possible meant I got everything I wanted from the relationship, except for the achievement of my primary reason for hiring the agent in the first place.”

BawldGuy Axiom: Surveys show conclusively that my stellar results trump your ‘vastly superior’ service every time.

The false premise assumed by both agents/brokers and consumers is that superb service automatically means equally superb results.

Let’s don’t just do a drive-by with that statement. Let’s look at an example, someone we all know. Let’s pick Greg Swann.

There is much on which Greg and I don’t agree. He insists on doing everything himself. I prefer to ‘call the guy’. He’s crazy knowledgeable AND effective when it comes to applying technology to his real estate practice. I’m a TechTard. He works (though he’d surely say ‘plays’) 5,000 hours yearly. Though I rarely log less than 2,000 myself, it’s equally rare for me to log as many as 2,500 hours. He thinks double-ends are from Satan, while I think they’re from the lost third tablet Moses must’ve dropped on his way back down the mountain. Those differences are, I think, the tip of the iceberg.

What do we agree on always? Getting the desired result for which our clients have employed us.

I suspect a third party blind survey done on clients involved in Greg’s last 12 months of transactions would show two things to be universally true.

1. They arrived at their Point B as defined by them to Greg.

2. They’re ecstatic that point #1 is true, and will use him again, along with giving him many referrals along the way.

Universal Truth Real estate brokers/agents have one thing to sell — period, end of sentence, no debate. R-E-S-U-L-T-S.

The rest is happy talk supplied by the graduates of the University of Kumbaya — But We Tried Really Hard College — who for the most part, haven’t been supplying those very results the public so deeply craves, or not in the volume they’d like. And for the record? Nobody gives a damn about how hard you try. As I was told very early on, “Don’t makes excuses Brown, make good.”

When I’ve taught small groups of rookies, the first thing I tell ’em is a twist on an old sayin’ citizens of the defunct Soviet Union used repeat often: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” I told the newbies, “Every time you almost get the results for which you were hired, you’ll almost get paid.” I don’t remember even once telling them anything about service, one way or the other.

But what about you, Jeff? What kinda service does your firm provide?

First and foremost it provides results — which is, like it or not, at least 80% of what service is all about. Do we provide ‘world class’ service? Not in my estimation. We return phone calls/emails etc., immediately if possible — though well over 75% of the time our phones are answered by a live human, usually me. We do what we promise — or if not, we don’t make excuses about why. Sometimes Murphy intervenes in our perfect world, and stuff gets delayed or even derailed.

I wonder what your clients would say matters to them most — service, or results? Or, like most folks do, even if they don’t realize it, do they equate service as getting the results for which they hired you?

I’d love to here your take on this.