Are you an honest agent?

Hello everyone ..on my way down to London as I post this. You can either listen to me talk through my post, on my podcast, or read it on the transcript.

The podcast has a couple of extra minutes on the end, telling how HOW you can get vendors and landlords, good quality ones to come to you.

PODCAST LINK here ..  https://soundcloud.com/christopher-watkin/are-you-an-honest-estateletitng-agent

Transcript here ..

Are you an honest agent?

In lettings or estate agency, your honesty, your truthfulness and your trustworthiness allow you to secure the listing. Whether you are a letting agent with the portfolio landlord or the estate agent with that realistic vendor with the top draw three bed semi in the best street in area, both that landlord and vendor have to trust that you, as an agent, are honest, truthful and trustworthy,  in order to use  your agency. Think about it fellow agents, nobody uses anyone if they don’t have these three things?

.. but cards on the table time here fellow agents.

Are you all honest, truthful and trustworthy? Of course we are Chris I hear you reply. But let me ask you another question, a question where I ask you to put your money where your mouth is.

In your hearts of hearts, swearing on everything that is important to you  (which in my case would be my awesome Mrs, Joey the Lettings Dog, my family and decent glass of Sav Blanc) ... The second question I ask, for all those in the estate and lettings agency game,  a question who’s answer cannot be just be an exaggerated statement, given on whim, or a claim not meant to be taken literally.

Are you willing to give your landlord or vendor the whole-truth at any price, including the price of losing that property to a competitor?

How many of you have lost to competition who were prepared to lie and to tell the landlord / vendor that they could deliver the landlord’s / vendor’s vision in order to win the listing. I know sometimes some of your competitors will be found out, eventually losing the property/portfolio because they could not achieve the result that they promised and I bet eventually you won some of those landlords / vendors back as a result of that. 

However, don’t you find it strange that most of these landlords/ vendors don’t change agents?

So why don’t  these competitor agents lose the landlord / vendor that they gained, even when the promises you know they made to that landlord/vendor, could never be and were never actually kept? (and I would say that the promises were never intended to be kept).

Don’t you find it strange these landlords/ vendors accepted a substandard service from those competitor agents, but because they didn’t want to undergo the hassle of change  and more importantly, because that would mean they would lose face with you because you were right and they were wrong) .. even if changing agents enabled them to achieve the outcome that they wanted in the first place, they stay put with the competitor agent, preferring to believe that they could keep the status quo and hope eventually that the improvement they needed would come.

But before you all turn into the $hy-sters the public believe us to be, there are advantages to telling the truth, one that doesn’t end with you losing the property. In my time as both an estate agent and letting agent, the more properties I lost, my honesty TO MYSELF as to what was required to achieve the listing and what my landlord/vendor needed, enabled me to get the listing .... even when what I said conflicted with what the landlord / vendor wanted to believe.

All of you reading this, just like myself, have bagged many listings, bagged many a vendor or landlord because we were willing to tell the truth even when many of our competitors were not. On more than one situation, I have found myself  talking to a landlord / vendor who told me that I was the only one who told them that they couldn’t have what they wanted and what it would take to give them what they wanted. 

Thankfully, I was able to support my opinions with rational, reasonable, rocksolid and indisputable facts. The best bit was the fact I was presenting  my thoughts to a landlord or vendor that knew that achieving better results would require some serious effort, some effort to change their perceptions, wants and needs. .. and the best bit is these landlords and vendors are the best you can have and they will recommend you to the masses.

So if you believe in Honesty, Truth and Trust at any price, you are going to have to go to the free val / market appraisal open eyed to the fact by being honest, truthful and trustworthy  100% of time comes with a potential cost, you need to be prepared to pay the price of losing the listing.

And that’s the problem with being honest with your dream landlord or vendor ... it is not always without a cost. Sometimes it can cost you your listing, and sometimes when you most desperately need the listing. But if you said you wanted your honesty, your truthfulness and your trustworthiness to be the thing that you lived by as an agent,  then if you live by that sword, you must die by that sword

Honesty, Truth and Trust at any price, even if it costs you the listing. .. if it were easy – every man and his dog would be  doing it!