17 Nov Stop Making These Mistakes When You’re on the Phone With a Buyer
When you get on the phone with a potential tenant-buyer, there are a number of things you need to explain to them. Your job is to educate them on the process, make them comfortable with you, and help them understand that you're a legitimate business. They want to know that they're in good hands and that you have their best interests in mind.
We have scripts that explain how to do all of this. In general, if you follow the scripts, you'll be successful when you're on the phone with buyers.
But just as you need to know what to say, you also need to know what not to say. When we work with Associates who are just starting out, we often notice they're saying too much right off the bat. Here's how you can avoid that simple mistake.
Knowing When to Stop Talking
You're not on the phone to give a seminar. When you first get on the phone with a buyer, there's a lot of explaining to do—but there's a happy medium here. You don't need to explain every single intricacy or every possible thing that could happen with a deal.
Buyers generally just want to know what a terms deal is, how it works, and how it benefits them. They also want to feel comfortable talking to you and be reassured that you're running a legitimate business and that you have plenty of experience.
That's it.
A big part of talking to a buyer is knowing when to stop talking and let them ask questions. If you steamroll over them and deliver every possible bit of information they might need, they're going to be caught off guard. You want them to feel comfortable with you, so treat it like a normal conversation and hold back.
Once they're interested in the deal and you've built some rapport with them, then you can start to get into the nitty-gritty details. But if you get into that right from the beginning, you're going to turn them away.
Knowing When to Bring Up Numbers
Just like there's a time and a place for nitty-gritty details, there's a time and place for numbers. As an Associate, there's usually one thing on your mind when you're talking to a potential buyer: “How much can they bring to the table for a down payment?”
Ultimately, that is one of the most important questions you need to answer when talking to a buyer. But asking that right off the bat is not the right way to start a relationship with a buyer.
As mentioned above, there's a time and place for these kinds of details. When you confront a buyer immediately about a down payment, they're going to be on the defensive. They feel as if they need to negotiate with you—but that's not the case!
You should never be negotiating with buyers and you never want to put a buyer into a position where they feel as if they're negotiating against you. The reality is that they're negotiating and in competition with other buyers, not you!
Once they understand how these deals work, including that one little nuance, they'll be less guarded with you. When they understand that they're really in competition with other buyers and that you always have their best interests in mind, they'll be fully transparent about how much money they can put down. But if you bring it up too soon, you'll just be shooting yourself in the foot.
Listen to your mentor!
This stuff can be tricky when you're first starting out, so remember to always listen to your mentor. Your mentor will have made these mistakes before, so they can coach you on how to avoid them on your calls.
Record your calls or roleplay them with your mentor so you can start to understand when to stop talking when to bring up numbers, and how to build rapport with your buyers. This is the best way to improve your calls—otherwise, you're going to be making the mistakes on your own and learning from them.
Don’t have a mentor yet? Check out our blog post about the importance of finding a great mentor!
At Smart Real Estate Coach, we are blunt in our communications. It's one of our core values. So if we see that you're making mistakes in your calls with buyers, we're going to tell you about them. That's the best way we know to help you.