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1. An
Example of Real Estate Psychology 101 As
an agent in your real estate business
you are extremely familiar with the
activities you do on a day-to-day basis
to direct more business activity your
way. Some of these many activities include
prospecting, mailing, and following-up
on a daily basis
with your clients and prospects. However,
one very important additional activity
to add to this list is becoming more
proficient in your people skills.
Sometimes
as an agent it's easy to get wrapped-up
in being the
facilitator who makes the deal happen.
At other times, though, it's necessary
for us to take an aggressive stand to protect our own interests and
to preserve the emotional
"glue" between the parties that
holds our transactions together. This is
where your ability to read people,
understand what makes them tick
psychologically, and deliver the
appropriate responses to move your
transactions forward is of incredibly
great importance in your real estate
career.
As
an example of this, one time I was
representing a buyer in a transaction by
the name of Steve Gorman. (This isn't
his exact name, but it's close.) A
property had just come on the market
that Steve was interested in, and a good
number of other potential buyers were
interested in the property also. I ran
like crazy, enrolled the listing agent
in moving my offer from Steve to the top
of his list for consideration, and soon
we had successfully reached an agreement
for Steve to purchase the property.
During
his contingency period Steve began to
change the terms of the deal. First he
asked for and obtained a price reduction
because of some minor problems that he
discovered with the property. Then, as
we got within a week of the scheduled
closing date of the transaction, Steve
asked for another price reduction
stating that he wouldn't close the deal
unless the owner agreed to the new,
lower price. And, quite honestly, I
seriously doubted that Steve would even
close the transaction if he received the
ridiculous price reduction that he was
now asking for. He seemed to be having
buyer's remorse and was second guessing
whether or not he actually wanted to buy
this property after all.
I
stepped back from the transaction for a
moment to try and get a better
perspective on what was going on. Steve
was trying to beat the owner up for
every last penny he could get from him.
And along with this I sensed that Steve
was really wondering if he had offered
too much money for the property because
of the foot race we had run to beat all
the other prospective purchasers to the
deal. In addition to this, my assessment
of Steve as a person was someone who
loved to take as much as he could get
away with from people in business
negotiations and also someone who would
fight to the death against anyone he
felt was trying to take anything at all
away from him.
Once
the listing agent made it clear to me
that the owner had refused to give Steve
the latest price reduction that he
wanted, I came up with a strategy to
save the deal and began taking immediate
action on it...
I
called the listing agent and gave him my
assessment of both Steve and the
situation. As I knew that the owner had
already refused the latest price
reduction that Steve was demanding, I
then told the listing agent my
recommendation on exactly how his owner
should respond to Steve's request for
the price reduction in order to maximize
the probability of successfully closing
our transaction. Shortly thereafter the
listing agent called me back and told me
that his owner was responding in exactly
the manner that I suggested. So I picked
up the telephone, dialed Steve's number,
and delivered the following message to
him:
"Steve,
the owner is sick and tired of you and
he's got other people he wants to sell
the property to. He's not going to do
business with you anymore and, quite
frankly, he's canceling his agreement
with you and taking the deal away from
you. He furthermore demands that you
sign cancellation instructions within 24
hours."
Steve's
immediate, split-second response was,
"Oh yeah? You tell him that he's
going to close the deal with me next
week or I'll sue him for specific
performance!"
As
an agent, the better you are at
understanding what motivates your
clients to take action the more
successful you will be in your real
estate business every single year.
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