Creating Value for Buyers – Answering the Question, “What Have You Done For Me Lately”
In today’s podcast I’m going to share with you 3 UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITIONS you can share with Buyers who want to know, What Have You Done For Me Lately?
Welcome to the Helping real estate agents podcast with Tanya Eldert. I’m the owner of the agent success school, a licensed Florida instructor, a broker associate, leader of a real estate marketing team, and a certified coach. I have worn a lot of hats in my real estate career, but my primary focus has always been to help agents grow their business.
Any agents that are doing real estate nowadays understand how competitive a market we have right now.
Agents who work with buyers right now are especially frustrated because of the time, effort, and money they are putting into buyers who seem like they have no loyalty to working with you.
So the question becomes how do you create value for buyers, because it’s not only frustrating for the agent, it’s frustrating for them because they want a house and because of the limited market they can’t find one.
Unfortunately in today’s market I’ve seen buyers jumping agent to agent hoping that there is one that will have that secret formula to finding and getting a house under contract.
So besides trying to lock them into a buyer Broker agreement, how can you let them know that you are the agent they should work with?
The answer is creating value and making sure that you are educating the buyer as to what your value actually is! In other words when they ask you, “What have you done for me lately?” You have a unique value proposition that you can EASILY convey to them.
Let’s start with #1. Education and Expectations. When I started working with buyers years ago I created a buyers guide workbook. It was a very simple book inside a folder with pockets and my business card, and in it I outlined the entire buying process, what they would do in a checklist format, and all the steps I was doing in the background. In other words I explained in a checklist format what we did. So many times we are like ducks floating on a pond and the buyers don’t see how much effort is going on underneath the water.
I let the buyers know how we were going to work together and provided them with the resources. The workbooks have forms to fill out as to how they like the houses, places to put quotes, and information about the other stuff they would need like title, insurance, property taxes etc.
Every buyer I worked with loved it and I am so amazed that not that many agents are using them. In fact in one of the pockets when I presented it to him was the buyer broker agreement that I had them sign when I gave them the book.
#2 is all about finding out what those buyers truly want and making sure you are targeting your services to fulfill that need. Let me give you a hint they don’t just want a house, they want a home and that Home has to have very specific things. When I was sending out listings to the active buyers I always used concierge mode. I would look every morning and usually at lunchtime to make sure what was popping up in the MLS feed was truly what they wanted. I had numerous buyers tell me that the houses I sent them were spot on and not the typical stuff they were getting from other agents.
#3 The third in my opinion is one of the most important and that is your role as a resource, not the end all be all of this real estate transaction. Agents in today’s market who are trying to work with five active buyers and showing each buyer 5 to 10 houses a week, write dozens of offers, and get the current contracts to close will drop some balls! In my opinion agents are professional resources and consultants and your job is to have a team of professionals either in-house or out to help you. This could include an in-house or outside transaction coordinator, marketing assistants, other agents in different regions that you partner with. Let me give you an example.
My plus team is not a traditional team where I am the rainmaker and everyone has to be under my brand. I do some marketing, but I also help agents do their own marketing and branding.
But what happens when a buyer comes in through the team marketing, and is someone moving to Florida but doesn’t know where they want to live. We can provide them with value because there are agents all over the state so one central “conductor” can orchestrate viewings in different cities and still stay with the group. A central person can write the offers, the Real Estate Help Team does our contract to close; the moving concierge helps with utilities and moving, and the team sets up the follow up for at least 5 years. This is what we do, and the best part of it is that the systems we have in place are all paid for at close, so nothing comes out of pocket up front.
The value to the buyer is a whole team approach versus one agent trying to be the end all be all. And any agent can do this and put these systems into place.
If you’re an agent and think that this is something that you would like to do, I would be happy to help and point you in the right direction. Go to TanyaEldert.com and you will see several ways to contact me.
