Face it, the listing appointment is an audition. You dressed to impress, you brought your fancy iPad presentation, and you promised them the world, but the relationship, the one where you either get a five-star or a blistering one-star review, doesn’t really begin until that sign goes up in front of their house. After the honeymoon is over, and the dust has settled, your clients will go into a form of madness, and it’s called the Midnight Zillow Refresh Syndrome, and it’s a time when they are stressed, territorial, worried, and waiting for you to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Agents are good at the first part, the ‘hello,’ but horrible at the second part, the ‘what now?’
If you want to get the unvarnished, uncensored, and unedited explanation of how I figured out how to stop losing clients during this ‘quiet time,’ then you should check out the video on the Your Real Estate Podcast, available on YouTube, as it’s the “thorough analysis” that your business may need.
Setting the ‘Reality’ Stage (Before the Meltdown)
The best agents are not necessarily good at selling houses; they're good at dealing with human emotion, and you need to prepare your seller for the ride before they're puking over the side of the car. On day one, you need to tell your seller, "Listen, some people are going to love this place, and some people are going to walk through in four minutes and go, “It smells like cabbage,” and leave without ever saying a word, and my job is to filter all of that nonsense, and yours is to keep the lights on and stop checking the MLS every twenty minutes.
You need to prepare your seller for "The Wave." The first two weeks, it’s like a feeding frenzy, and then it’s like, you know, nothing’s happening, and it doesn’t mean the house is haunted or the market has collapsed; it means we've been past the initial surge, and if you don’t tell your seller this on Monday, they're going to fire you by Friday, and they're going to say, “The phone stopped ringing.”
Stop Being a Messenger, Start Being an Advisor
I think one of my biggest mistakes when I first started my career was being a "feedback forwarder," and this is a lazy approach and a good way to ruin your client’s feelings for no reason, as if someone says the kitchen is ugly, what are the sellers supposed to do, renovate the sky? You should translate the data, not forward the insults.
Rather than forwarding an email with the feedback that the kitchen is ugly, you should tell them that two out of three feedbacks mentioned the kitchen, and this says to us that with our current price point, we are seeing a pattern of competition with other houses that have quartz and stainless steel, so we should be keeping an eye on this. Sellers should be protected from the absurd, and if someone does not like the neighbor’s fence, you should keep it to yourself, as your job is to be the emotional shock absorber, not the person with the stick.
The "Silence is Not Golden" Rule
In the absence of communication, sellers think you're at the beach, drinking margaritas on their tab, so even if there’s no news, that’s the news. I have a strict routine to avoid the dreaded "Any news?" texts before they even have to ask.
I have a Monday weekend recap phone call, a Wednesday mid-week pulse check email, and a Friday weekend game plan text. If it’s slow, show them you're working, not waiting, by telling them about the twelve agents you nudged, the social media boost you ran, and the open house prep, because movement creates confidence.
The "Hard" Conversation
If three weeks have gone by, the crickets are chirping loudly, so don’t wait for them to call you; call them and have the "Market Correction" conversation because while it’s hard, losing the listing because you were afraid to have the conversation about price is much, much worse.
Review the goal with them, because they're not just selling a house; they're getting to Seattle for that new job or closer to the grandkids, so review the goal. You're the pilot of this plane, and if the plane hits turbulence, don’t hide in the cockpit, grab the microphone, and tell them how you're going to land the plane.
Need more scripts for those "I'd rather have a root canal" conversations? Hit up LabCoat Agents or grab the REALTOR and seller psychology guide before you lose your mind.
