Coach Your Agents to Greater Success When Representing Buyers Through Preparedness and Hustle
When navigating highly complex, multiple-offer negotiations in the current real estate market, it’s important for agents representing buyers to be prepared, proactive, and provide the best chance to win a bid for their dream home.
Your agents should employ strategies that will give them and their clients a leg up in the market. For best results, host a training class or have a sales meeting discussion to review the following six buyer strategies designed to provide the highest value and achieve their buyer’s objectives for purchasing a home:
Over-communicate how to compete as a buyer in today’s market. Agents should over-communicate to their buyer-clients that they need to be motivated, financially prepared and have a sense of urgency to act on a home they want to purchase, as well as be ready to go when they see a house they want.
Over-prepare on pricing strategies in advance. Agents should educate their buyers on a solid pricing and negotiating strategy before they write an offer. Explain and re-explain what the “over ask price” may be based on the price point of that home and neighborhood. By doing this, buyers will be prepared to go to their highest and best in the moment without losing the opportunity.
Be relentless and resourceful. Agents can help buyers write the very best initial offer by contacting the listing agent to find out their preferred terms for closing dates and occupancy, rent backs if necessary, financing or cash options, so that they can put the best terms in their initial offer. This requires speaking to the listing agent directly, even if that means calling and texting them multiple times.
Prepare buyers to be creative and flexible with terms. It may take an escalation clause for their buyers to offer more than other competing buyers. Other options include using an appraisal gap guarantee or inspection cap on repairs to be creative and keep the buyer’s best financial interests intact while being super competitive and attractive to the seller.
Focus on today’s market price. Explaining the benefits of buying in today’s market to help a buyer maximize their buying power with low interest rates—or for a buyer to maximize the current value of their home as-is and sell at the peak of the market—provides agents with great financial real estate advice to share with their clients. The combination of high buying power, low interest rates and increased value of homes makes for a perfect incentive to buy and sell now.
Go find the inventory for your buyers. It takes more than waiting for the right home to appear in the agent’s local MLS, and in today’s highly competitive market, it has never been more important for agents to go find the listings for their buyer-clients.
This can be done by connecting with your sphere online, in an email or on the phone—or even better, creating a video market update that you send to your sphere or post on social media.
Going after the listings is a way to reengineer your real estate brain to stop relying only on the MLS. Network with the agents in your office or surrounding offices and send out consistent messaging that you are taking new listings in specific neighborhoods because you have qualified or cash buyers for their home.
It is so important for agents to be resourceful, creative, relentless and devoted to giving their ultimate “A-game” for their clients. Buyers today are stressed out and scared, but agents can add value to their experience by offering the highest level of solutions-based methods to help them purchase a new home.
Following these strategies and providing real value to the process will result in more referrals and repeat business from their buyer-clients, and will also result in more success and retention for the brokers and managers that teach agents these proven strategies.
To learn how an affordable, branded agent training platform can help you train your agents, drive more sales and increase agent retention, set up a free call here.
Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 25 years of experience in real estate as an agent, broker and executive, Johnson now shares her proven methods through coaching, consulting and keynote speaking services nationwide. She is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour and is the Official Real Estate Coach for McKissock Learning and Real Estate Express. Johnson has also been named an RISMedia Real Estate Newsmaker in 2020 and 2021 as an Influencer and Thought Leader. Schedule a free 30-minute coaching strategy session or visit www.sherrijohnson.com for more information.
