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Good Customer Service From a Sacramento REALTOR
On a real estate agent community website yesterday, an agent asked what makes good customer service. Some agents said under-promise and over-deliver. Others admitted it varies from each client’s perspective, while a few went off on whether customer service should be good or like Tony the Tiger says, GREAAAAAATTT.
I find this to be an interesting question because I’ve always employed just one tactic to provide good customer service: Keep the client happy. It seems so simple but it’s not. First and foremost, a Sacramento REALTOR needs to figure out what will make the client happy. Levels of happiness and the types of actions that make a person happy vary across the board. While one client might be happy that a REALTOR answers her phone, another might expect that phone to be answered on the first ring and disappointed if it takes 7 rings before the REALTOR picks up.
A potential seller who has several homes she wants to sell down the road and I talked yesterday about her listings, objectives, and how I work. She doesn’t like pushy agents who force an agenda or those who will say anything to close a transaction because they’ve got a mortgage to pay. Most of us don’t like high pressure sales or dishonesty.
I explained that her schedule is my schedule. If she is not in a rush, neither am I. If she wants to accept only an offer at X price, regardless of how long it takes, that’s fine with me because it’s what will make her happy, providing that X price is attainable. I’ll tell her if it is or if it isn’t. She can count on me to perform.
She’ll never wonder what’s going on in her transaction because I will tell her. Email, text, phone, pigeon carrier, whatever she prefers. Just joking about the bird. I will send a drone, heh, heh. Communication and keeping clients informed goes a long ways toward client happiness. I also know that when a person has a question, typically that person wants an answer and doesn’t want to wait forever to get it, which is why I try to always immediately respond. I hear more and more clients tell me that a fast response is what makes them happy.
Every client is important to this Sacramento Broker. I want that 5-star review and will earn it. Call Elizabeth Weintraub, Broker, #00697006, at 916.233.6759.
You Can Be Successful in Real Estate Without Eating Shit
You don’t have to eat shit to be successful in real estate.
There are some sellers in Sacramento who show signs that they intensely dislike real estate agents, all of them, me included, and they don’t even know me. They think we are all the same and it’s just a matter of picking one out of the police lineup who charges the least. A flipper dude with a high end property who has been unable to sell with some other agent sent me a text the other day claiming I was an “expensive girlfriend.” He wanted me to list his home. The more I thought about that completely creepy, disrespectful and discriminatory comment, the less I wanted to work for him. Ick. In fact, I made sure I did not.
Now I realize that most people have no idea what a successful Sacramento REALTOR does all day. They think we lie around the back yard in a hammock munching on grapes fed to us by slaves waving large fans, and no, that only happens at night, not during the day. My day generally starts around 6 AM. A few hours later, I hope to have completed writing several blogs and answering emails, and be dressed, ready to hit the streets.
I work continually all day. Answer emails. Write emails. Answer text messages. Write text messages. Answer phone calls. Make phone calls. Update property listings. Prepare paperwork for new listings. Write marketing comments. Rewrite marketing comments. Create addendums. Satisfy contingencies. Instill contingencies. Negotiate contingencies. Shoot photographs. Lots of photographs. Download photographs. Photoshop correct photographs and upload. Distribute listings to networks. Set appointments to meet with sellers. Conduct initial inspections of properties. Explain processes. Rearrange the order of my photographs. Negotiate existing pending sales. Negotiate new offers. Order inspections by third-party vendors. Double-check estimated closing statements. Handle special requests from clients. Set up open houses. Provide feedback on showings. Tweak existing listings. Take listings off the market and put them back on the market. Review present strategies for each listing. Prepare for closings. Change keys in lockboxes. Remove lockboxes. Install lockboxes. Advise sellers. Advise agents. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, and persuade others to view things a different way.
It’s not easy to be successful in real estate or everybody would.
You will notice that nowhere in that huge paragraph above is anything about looking for new business. Most agents spend about 1/3 of their time hunting for business. My business typically comes to me. They have read my reviews online and /or talked with other clients who have worked with me, and decided that I have a unique ability they desire. It is no accident that my clients are ecstatic and sing my praises. This Sacramento REALTOR produces results.
I’ve spent decades in this business and came up through the ranks the hard way — working with every person, asshole or not, who decided he or she wanted to hire a real estate agent. Those days are long gone. It took me a while to figure out that I didn’t have to eat shit. My track record speaks for itself; I can choose with whom I desire to work. There’s got to be a reason beyond financial to work with a person, but not with individuals who don’t respect nor value your abilities.
Financial reasons don’t drive me. Yet, I still sell $30 million or so. This is where I’ve always wanted to be, a successful person who maintains her integrity and doesn’t eat any shit. The way to do that is to work with people you respect who reciprocate. These people you can make happy. Happy clients provide personal satisfaction to the agent, and a reason to excel in the real estate business.
So, you have your choice among agents who are successful in the real estate business. You can be a shit-eating agent who is successful (and there’s nothing wrong with that), or you can decide not to be and still be successful. I hope to be an inspiration for others.
Why You Want to Work with the Elizabeth Weintraub Team
Josh Amolsch, Dianne Slutsky, Elizabeth Weintraub, Barbara Dow
If you’re a potential seller in the Sacramento valley who is ready to hire a Sacramento Realtor as your listing agent, you might want to consider an agent like me who is the team leader, for lack of a better term, of the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. I suppose we could have named ourselves like a garage rock band but it seems easier just to use my name because it has become its own brand of sorts. And besides, who has the time to sort through all of those goofy-ass names? We’re too busy selling real estate.
The reason you might want to hire a person like me is because I will represent you. See, people don’t think about fiduciary relationships, or even care much what they mean until you stop to ponder it. Why shouldn’t you have your own Realtor who works only for you and doesn’t work for the buyer? It just makes sense, right? Why should you purposely pay a large percentage of your home’s market value to a listing agent to work against your interests? Of course, dual agency can exist in just about any transaction if two agents who work for the same broker end up with their clients in a contract, but dual representation is slightly different, which is not our focus.
As a listing agent, I focus solely on the seller. I wear blinders on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. I’m not looking around at buyers who dangle double the commission in front of my face, and those guys know who they are. I’m working for the seller. My team members are working with buyers. They might be buyers for your home or they might be buyers for another home, but I focus on sellers. If the buyers are my former clients, I generally work alongside my team members to ensure the clients get the home they want, and I’m always available to my team members for consultations and brainstorming, should they need it. But they are extremely qualified and competent to start with, which is why I chose them. We watch out for each other and fill in when needed.
I love listing and selling homes. I excel at marketing, photography, home staging. I adore negotiations and finessing counter offers. Escorting buyers to look at homes, well, not so much. So I capitalize on my forte, on my strengths. All I do, just about every single day, is work on selling my listings. Tweaking, rearranging, networking.
It doesn’t cost anything extra to hire a Realtor who is a team leader of the Elizabeth Weintraub Team. Well all work for the same broker, like a small company within a larger company. I was first licensed in this business in the 1970s, and I have a background in title and am a former certified escrow officer. I almost went to law school, too, but then decided that career didn’t pay enough and would have interfered with my real estate business. There are only so many hours in the day, you know.
Some people think I’m sort of a doofus in the way I operate because I believe strongly in doing the very best job I can. They say: just take the job, sign that listing, and get on with it. But we all need to cling to something in this business, and I choose personal integrity. Doofus as that may sound to some, it probably doesn’t sound that way to you. You can call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Even after all these years, I still answer my phone.
