Face Time or Facebook?

by Kris Berg

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

You hear it here, you hear it there (there being here), and you know it in your heart. Real estate is so darn personal.

Ah, the personal touch! That is why I blog, and why I am very responsive to my emails and voicemail. That is why I love, and my clients love, the ability to electronically sign contracts and to view all contracts online from any Wi-Fi hotspot in the Delta Quadrant. Heck, what’s more personal than that daily auto-generated online update of home sales activity in your neighborhood… with MY PICTURE at bottom and YOUR NAME at the top?

I know what you are thinking – All that stuff is impersonal, but we are in a “people” business. Well, it depends on which “people” we are talking about. It’s a matter of communication, which we all know requires a sender and a receiver. When wearing the sender hat, I need to know in what form my client prefers to receive, which means I need to listen carefully to what my clients are telling me.

Times, they are a-changin’. That doesn’t mean that our business is becoming, can become, fully automated and physically detached. It simply means that our world is different now, and we are redefining “personal”. The ways in which we interact today are dramatically different than yesterday’s methods (smoke signals and dot-dot-dash). My children phone me from their bedrooms asking for the ETA of dinner, and they IM me from 100 feet removed to tell me that the Jonas Brothers are coming to town (to marry THEM!). I suspect they visit my home blog periodically to take a peak at the Trulia side bar widget of our active listings just to gauge the likelihood that I will be available to drive carpool to the movies on Friday.

As agents, we work with a wide cross-section of people and personalities. The key is to understand their definition of “personal”. My grandmother does not have a Meebo account, and you won’t find her on Facebook; she is the type of person who would prefer a phone call, a personal visit, and contracts in triplicate. My typical Qualcomm client, however, would be happy to never to lay eyes on me, and not because he has seen me in the mornings. His “personal” is my grandmother’s “impersonal”. Most clients fall somewhere in between, but the scales are rapidly tipping.

So, why do agents cling to antiquated practices? Because they are out of touch. Their dial is stuck on Talk Radio, while their clients are all hip-hop all day. Sure, your “music” speaks to you, but are you tuned into your clients?

Presenting the Offer IN PERSON

I am already bracing myself for the counter arguments, but personal presentation of the offer by the buyer’s agent is mostly a dumb idea in today’s environment. Fax machines and scanners have made this time-honored ritual about as contemporary as Wayne Newton. “But it gives me a chance to explain the nuances of the contract and to put a personal face on my clients”, you say. If you are listening to the sellers in today’s market, you will hear that they do not want to spend an hour at dinner time hearing your pitch. They have spent weeks or months being inconvenienced by the promenade of strangers through their home. They have their own agent whom they have entrusted to represent them, and who is fully capable (in theory) of presenting the offer on your behalf. To demand an audience when the audience doesn’t want to see the show does nothing to further your (or your client’s) agenda.

I recently had a listing agent insist that I present in person. I was happy to do so, but sitting across from his client at the table, it became instantly obvious to me that she, more than anything else at that moment, wanted one of us out of that room. The agent on the other hand, who was the textbook throwback with no website or email, was visibly puffed with pride that he had delivered a living, breathing member of his network to the negotiating table. Who were we really doing this for?

Then, as a listing agent, I have seen agents virtually assure that their buyers would never see an accepted offer. Through sloppy appearance, poorly chosen words or outright stupidity (“My clients like your home ‘OK’, but there is so much they would have to fix to make it habitable given their superior and distinguished tastes”), they alienated the sellers irreparably.

So, how do you convey emotion, sentiment, and other intangible influencing factors absent face time? The Sappy Cover Letter, of course.

The Sappy Cover Letter

Make no mistake, this is a powerful tool and should be used with great care. Every offer should include the sappy cover letter. Crafted well, not every seller will buy into it, but none will be put off. At a minimum, they will be amused by your ol’ college try, and with a little luck and creative writing skill, it just might work.

On a cautionary note, be careful what you write. We know your client wants to buy the home for pennies on the dollar, and we know that you want to be the one responsible for hammering out the smoking deal, but insults and threats have no place in the sappy cover letter. I received two recently which serve as ideal examples of bad letters happening to good people, and I suspect the agent’s clients were unaware of the lobbying taking place on their behalf.

My clients and I believe that we are currently in a Buyer’s Market. We also believe that the bathrooms could use some updating.

Nice. What they just told my clients was that they are in charge and that the (8-year-old) bathrooms suck. The sellers like their bathrooms, and now they don’t like the buyers. The agent killed his own offer dead.

Our clients have narrowed their search down to their top two favorites and have decided to write an offer on both. The other property is actually their first choice.

Just in case we might have missed the point, they proceeded to list all of the ways in which they found my client’s home inferior to their first choice. What the sellers heard: “I am but a pawn in your negotiating game, and you do not like my home nor do you have any real intention of buying it.” Another offer killed at the hands of the procuring cause.

Here would be an example of a good sappy letter:

“Mr. and Mrs. Captcha are Ph.Ds in the biotech field, their life work being the search for a cure for cancer. While they enjoy extensive travel abroad in connection with their third-world missionary obligations, they look forward to making their permanent residence in this, the most desirable neighborhood in this great land of freedom we call America. They welcome the opportunity to raise their young quintuplets in the magnificent home you have made and would be honored if you would allow them to continue your legacy of love and family values. Oh, and they really adore the 14th Century motif, and won’t be changing a thing! Please tell us the gargoyles convey!”

I double-dare you to deliver a powerful message like that in person! Then you can beat them up on price. After all, the bathrooms are hideous! 

Not Your Grandmother’s “Personal”

The key to providing exceptional representation is giving the client what they want, how they want it, which means you have to listen. As I type, Steve is meeting with a client to get contracts signed in the client’s home. Steve knows this is the client’s preference, his definition of service. Others would find this an intrusion, and would rather meet at the office, while still others want ”just the fax, ma’am”. To be an effective agent today, you need to embrace the new while every so often dusting off the old. If you are representing my grandmother, don’t rely on email. But, if you want to talk to my children, you need to be their Facebook friend, and it’s my children and yours who will be buying and selling the homes of tomorrow.