Customers come first
(and last and in between)

by Walt Frey   To truly serve a customer, you must find out who she is and what she wants. So many agents prospect by listing all their personal awards or announcing they have made the Zillion-Dollar Club. Buyers and sellers don’t care about that. They do want to know what their homes are worth. Ninjas place a premium on gathering consumer information through surveys and use that information to better serve their customers’ needs.

What else do customers want from a REALTOR®? Here’s what a recent survey said:

• Caring and concern for their needs. Consumers often perceive that agents’ main concern is for themselves.

• Knowledge. That once meant access to the MLS, but now it means help in negotiating and in putting and keeping the transaction together. From contract to closing is when they need REALTORS® the most.

• Honesty. Consumers want the truth–the good and the bad.

• Contact. Stay in touch at least once a week while in contract and within 30 days after closing.

• Make the process easier.

• Make the process faster.

• Time and money savings.

• Solve problems.

• Promise and deliver (especially closing on time).

• Consistency.

• Reduction and/or transfer of risk.

• Assistance recovering from a mistake.

• Patience.

• Counseling. Talk to consumers, then let them go out on their own to look at properties. Help in the negotiations and keep the transaction together. Customers perceive that REALTORS® don’t counsel much, throw them into a car and show lots of houses, write up the transaction, and then disappear.

• Access to information. Consumers think REALTORS® are their greatest impediment in getting information. Don’t block it.

• Openness. Ninjas hang the asking price as a rider on their for sale signs.

Buyers & sellers, visit www.texasrealestate.com.
REALTORS®, visit www.tar.org.