GEORGIA 11-5-18

GEORGIA EDITION

BE THEIR REALTOR® FOR LIFE:

How to Build a Relationship with Your Clients that Will Last a Lifetime

COVER STORY

SCOTT DAVIDSON

ADDING VALUE TO LISTINGS

GEORGIA EDITION

9

SCOTT DAVIDSON

SCOTT DAVIDSON CONTENTS 4) ADDING VALUE TO LISTINGS & THE ADVANTAGE OF IDENTIFYING NEIGHBORHOOD AMENITIES

6) BE THEIR REALTOR® FOR LIFE: HOW TO BUILD A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR CLIENTS THAT WILL LAST A LIFETIME

15) DEVELOPING YOUR PRICING PHILOSOPHY 21) TRY VS. DO

Phone 888-461-3930 | Fax 310-751-7068 mag@topagentmagazine.com | www.topagentmagazine.com No portion of this issue may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior consent of the publisher. Top Agent Magazine is published by Feature Publications GA, Inc. Although precautions are taken to ensure the accuracy of published materials, Top Agent Magazine cannot be held responsible for opinions expressed or facts supplied by its authors. To subscribe or change address, send inquiry to mag@topagentmagazine.com.

Published in the U.S.

2

Top Agent Magazine

mailto:mag@topagentmagazine.com

Top Agent Magazine

3

Adding Value to Listings & the Advantage of Identifying Neighborhood Amenities Everyone knows the famous real estate phrase: location, location, location. In fact, it is hard to underestimate the pivotal role that a region can play when it comes to determining a home’s value. In today’s competitive market, the littlest things can truly add up—especially when it comes to neighborhood amenities. While most savvy agents know the figures regarding school 4

district ranking and local property taxes, have you ever considered the under-the-radar amenities that drive buyers and bidding wars? To derive the highest value from a listed home, you need to paint a complete picture of the area in which you’re selling. With that guiding principle in mind, let’s consider a few modern amenities and how they add drastically to your bottom line.

Top Agent Magazine ®

Top Agent Magazine

Walking a fifteen-minute radius of the area or performing a deep-dive into customer review sites or food blogs can help you identify hidden gems or local favorites.

A little can go a long way: restaurants, coffee shops, and entertainment

Know thy history: creating a narrative of the neighborhood

Everyone has a favorite take-out spot, coffee shop, or neighborhood watering hole. Identifying the key players in an area—such as restaurants, nightlife, and entertainment hotspots—will create a livable picture that prospective buyers can latch onto. Walking a fifteen-minute radius of the area or performing a deep-dive into customer review sites or food blogs can help you identify hidden gems or local favorites. While a cute coffee shop down the street may seem like a bonus instead of a foundational amenity, you never know what kind of homebuyer you might net if you include the cozy characteristics that make a house a home.

As humans, we’re drawn to narratives. Sales pitches and marketing campaigns hinge on an alluring storyline. That’s why understanding a neighborhood’s history can frame and contextualize a property to great effect. After all, buyers aren’t just drawn to sturdy foundations and bedroom counts; they like to imagine their lives unfolding inside those four walls.

Get a sense of the area’s historical timeline, architectural style, noteworthy community members, and the like. Conveying this intriguing information to buyers helps them connect more personally with a property, while understanding the holistic picture of their potential new home.

From here to there: public transportation and commuter access While this rule may not apply to all properties, considering access to public transportation is a major draw for today’s buyers. Especially amidst the more eco-conscious Millennial segment eager to buy within city limits—knowing public transportation access points and schedules can add serious value to listed properties. Also, think outside the box: do nearby thoroughfares boast dedicated bike lanes? Are there plans to expand rail lines to the area in the future? Deliver a confidant picture of the area’s public transportation access and prospective buyers will trust your expertise.

Top Agent Magazine

While it is always good to cover the basics of school districts and property values, it is even more useful to expand your knowledge base and bring a warm, human element to locational knowledge. Not only will you appeal to a younger demographic of homebuyers who values this strategic information, but you will also broaden your understanding of your service area at large. Think of it this way: a neighborhood is far more than a collection of homes on a block. A neighborhood is about atmosphere, access, and a sense of community. If you authentically appeal to this guiding truth, and buyers will surely rise to the occasion.

Top Agent Magazine ®

5

Be Their REALTOR for Life: ®

How to Build a Relationship with Your Clients That Will Last a Lifetime In the world of real estate, an agent’s relationship with their clients can make or break their career. This industry revolves around working well with people, and being able to develop a strong relationship with your clients is the foundation that you business is based upon.

Just like with a house, if that foundation is weak, the rest of the structure is also going to be unsteady and fragile. The mark of a good REALTOR® is their ability to build up a good referral network and following of loyal clients. This isn’t something that just happens by accident. Building healthy, strong relationships with your clients takes work and knowing how to gain another person’s trust, respect, and friendship. Here are some ways to make sure you are building the right kind of relationship with your clients.

6

Top Agent Magazine Top Agent Magazine

1. Use Your Friendliness and Optimism to Win Them Over: No one wants a pushy, overly confident salesperson for a REALTOR®. Clients are much more inclined to put their trust in the hands of someone who is friendly when it comes to one of the biggest financial transactions of their lives. A pleasant, outgoing disposition will win you more clients as well as friends. You want to establish rapport in the first few minutes of first meeting prospective clients. Rather than starting with business right off the bat, begin your meeting with some small talk such as similar interests, hobbies, and family life. This will immediately help to put your clients at ease, and show that you are not simply trying to “sell” them something.

People also respond well to optimism. During what can be a very stressful time, clients need someone to help them stay positive when a situation looks difficult and challenging. Optimism also tends to radiate charisma, and people want to be around and do business with charismatic people. You want to learn how to understand, motivate, and inspire people.

2. Be an Inquisitive Learner and an Empathetic Listener:

out any potential concerns they might have.

After you’ve gained as much information as possible, you can then gauge their interest in your possible solutions by asking “what if” questions. Being inquisitive also demonstrates to your clients that you are genuinely interested and invested in their situation.

On the other side of this coin is knowing how to listen empathetically. Empathy involves actually putting yourself or your mind in their shoes so you can genuinely understand their concerns, needs, and opinions. That understanding and empathy is then reflected in your conversation with that client. Your clients want to know that you care about their situation, and that they’re not just another sale for you to make. People are much more willing to put their trust in you when they can sense that you are actually making an effort to feel what they feel in order to understand their situation.

Showing your interest through questions, and then thoughtfully listening goes a long way towards gaining trust. Showing empathy and acknowledging the feelings and emotions involved in your clients situation helps build a relationship founded on genuine care and trust.

3. Watch for Nonverbal Clues:

Don’t be afraid to show your curiosity and ask your clients a lot of questions. Some of these questions may even be difficult and uncomfortable. You want to discover and learn as much as you can about your client. Don’t make the mistake of jumping straight into the role of the know-it-all. Every different client has unique needs, so you want to learn as much as you can about their specific situation before trying to propose a solution. You want to uncover their primary motive for buying or selling, and flush

Most communication happens nonverbally, so knowing how to interpret your client’s body language can be incredibly helpful. Here are a few things to pay special attention to: Eye contact: Be careful with the level of eye contact you use with clients when first meeting.

Too much and too little eye contact can send the wrong impression. You want to try and maintain eye contact around 70 percent of the time. That is the amount that most people are comfortable with. Pay attention to your client’s level of eye

Top Agent Magazine

7 Top Agent Magazine

contact to determine how comfortable they are.

When someone avoids eye contact that could mean they are not engaged in the conversation.

A good way to quickly build a feeling of rapport when first meeting clients is to make eye contact when you first meet them and then start nodding yes to what they’re saying. If the client reciprocates the eye contact and nodding, you’ve established a connection.

4. Prove your honesty and credibility:

Choose the right handshake for each client: One handshake does not fit all people, and that first handshake can be crucial to making a good first impression. The way to do a good handshake for each client is to try and mirror the other person’s handshake in strength, keep your shoulders aligned as you are preferably standing when you shake hands. While you shake your client’s hand make sure you make eye contact and give them a sincere smile.

Showing a little weakness can actually be to your advantage in this situation, and will actually make others more inclined view you as honest. You don’t want to come across as too good to be true. When revealing this weakness, however, the key to coming out on top is turning what sounds like a weakness into a strength. For example, your service may be more expensive, but that’s because you offer more personalized and extra services than your competitors.

Honesty and integrity are the two traits that 98 percent of buyers and sellers report are qualities they consider “very important”. The thing is you can say you have these traits all you want on your website, bio, etc., but trust has to be earned, and the only way to do this is to prove your credibility.

Here are a few tips for how to sound more credible:

When you talk to your clients avoid using filler words such as “um” and “uh”, which can decrease your credibility. You also want to watch the tone of your voice. People tend to translate a deeper tone as sounding more credible.

You want to develop a relationship to last a lifetime when interacting with your clients. There are many things you can do to accomplish this, and using these tips can take you from getting just a few referrals and repeat customers to gaining a loyal client following. Taking the little extra time to make sure you are projecting the right attitude and making sure that you are doing things to gain your client’s trust can make a world of difference for your business.

8

Top Agent Magazine

Top Agent Magazine

SCOTT DAVIDSON Top Agent Magazine

9

SCOTT DAVIDSON

Top Agent Scott Davidson – Lead of the Davidson Realty Team at Keller Williams Realty in Atlanta – is one of the most dynamic and professional real estate advisors currently working in the Peach State. Scott is justifiably proud of the team of equally-dedicated and professional agents he has assembled, knowing that each and every one of their many grateful clients are given the very best service and advocacy available.

10 Copyright Top Agent Magazine

Scott, a former professional drummer, began his journey in real estate as an appraiser back in 2000, before eventually obtaining his real estate license in 2013. For a brief period of time, he did both jobs, until his real estate career reached a point where he had to commit to it fully to selling homes. “In 2014, my first full year selling real estate, I was able to help 36 families close on their new homes,” he recalls. “In 2015, my second full year, I Top Agent Magazine

was able to help 60 families, while still doing a dozen appraisals on the side. I soon realized that my dollar per hour value was, quite honestly, better spent doing real estate than real estate appraisals.” Those years of doing appraisals, however, have only burnished Scott’s reputation as a deeply knowledgeable Top Agent Magazine

Realtor. “It helped me tremendously in terms of being able to price homes accurately,” he says, “which is why I think I had a leg up and was able to get such a strong start in the business. If you’re able to price a home correctly, they sell fast and then the word gets out and people want to use you.”

11 Copyright Top Agent Magazine

The seven-member Davidson Realty Team sells primarily in Southeast Atlanta, and can boast that their business is based 65% upon repeat and referral clients, a sure sign that they are providing remarkable customer service. “I think it comes down to the fact that we have very good systems in place to communicate with our clients regarding the transaction process,” says Scott, when asked why his team inspires such loyalty. “They typically always know what coming next, and we’re really Copyright Top Agent Magazine Copyright 12

good at making sure they feel comfortable during the entire experience. I also think that because I was an appraiser for so many years, our sellers feel like they know they’re getting the most money they can, and our buyers feel like they’re not overpaying.”

Scott points to the team concept he has embraced as playing a large role in his continuing success. “There is nothing wrong with being a solo agent,” he says. “To me, though, Top Agent Magazine

it’s the difference between a bed and breakfast and a nice restaurant, where you have a waiter, a chef, and a bartender. Bed and Breakfasts are fine and they do well, but I prefer to have an expert in every department, where each person is skilled at a high level so we can give the best overall service to our clients.”

Top Agent Magazine

When asked what he enjoys most about what he does for a living, Scott grows thoughtful for a moment before replying. “I think it would be the feeling of satisfaction I get when I help ease the burden for my clients,” he says. “Buying or selling a home can be a really difficult thing.”

Copyright Top Agent Magazine 13

When he’s not working, Scott enjoys spending time with his wife Amy, his son Walker and his daughter Piper. He is also an avid runner, who recently completed the Boston Marathon, and is planning to do so again next year. “I started running because of my son,” he says. “He was in a running club at school and asked me to run a 6k with him. I did, and

it has kind of become an obsession.” He also continues to play the drums at his church.

Scott’s plans for the future are fairly simple: to continue growing his business, while sacrificing none of the amazing client service that has become synonymous with his name.

For more information about Scott Davidson, please call 678 - 858 - 6420 or email Scott@DavidsonRealtyTeam.com

Copyright Top Agent Magazine 14

Top Agent Magazine

Developing Your Pricing Philosophy

By Dirk Zeller

Ask a dozen agents to explain their home pricing philosophy, and you’ll

hear a dozen different approaches. And if the talk reveals frank responses, you’ll also learn that the most common pricing strategy is no strategy at all.

Here’s my advice: Break out of the ranks by establishing and following a specific strategy for arriving at the ideal selling price for each home.

Adopt the philosophy that, in real estate sales, price is king. Price trumps all other factors—including marketing approaches, home condition, market competitiveness, and sales approach. I believe that, in the end, marketing and condition of the property are controlled by the price.

The alternative, advocated by many agents, most sellers, and even some sales trainers, is to emphasize marketing over pricing. Rather than working to set the ideal price, they believe success will come from optimizing the home’s condition and presentation and then marketing it with skill and savvy.

I take the opposite belief, based on years of experience working with sellers who wanted unrealistic prices for their homes and who experienced firsttime sales failures as a result.

Over my sales career, I resurrected and re-listed more than 600 expired listings—nearly 75 a year. Among all those transactions, I never met an owner with an expired listing who thought that an unreasonable price had anything to do with the home’s failure to sell. They all blamed the previous Top Agent Magazine Copyright Top Agent Magazine

15

agent and that person’s approach to marketing. Each sought some magic marketing strategy to change the reality of the law of supply and demand.

There is a magic strategy: Price the home correctly.

Price is the only factor that can overcome sales obstacles, compensate for a home’s deficiencies, and motivate a purchaser even if the condition of the property and your marketing approach is less than perfect.

Getting the listing at any cost Does this scenario sound familiar? An agent (usually a newer agent) is short on business or maybe even desperate for the chance to stake a sign in someone’s yard. The agent wants a listing at any price – even if the chance 16

Top Agent Magazine

to seal a deal erodes the likelihood of selling the property. To gain a seller’s nod of approval, the agent makes a flatteringly high pricing recommendation, throwing out a number the client wants to hear and then hoping something good will result from the bad situation.

I can think of few examples, if any, where this philosophy works. Hope isn’t a successful pricing strategy. Worse, the please-the-client mindset is a hard one to abandon. Agents who achieve listings with unrealistic prices find it hard to later counsel their clients honestly.

If you take and price a good listing competitively, it will sell. You can’t keep a good price a secret!

The pitfalls of a “please the buyer” approach are many and significant. By overpricing, you can practically count on a reduction in your productivity, profitability, and salability, and here’s why: It’s impossible to keep your productivity high when your time is spent in conversations with an unsuccessful seller who lacks motivation to take corrective action. The seller’s negativity, concerns, and phone calls will only increase with each week or month the house remains on the market.

Top Agent Magazine

17

As time goes on, you’ll devote more and more time unsuccessfully trying to create a sale not only for your seller but also for yourself. This will pull you away from activities that are more likely to deliver income. The ensuing frustration will de-motivate you and stunt your ability to secure better appointments that create other income opportunities.

An unsold, overpriced listing negatively impacts your profitability because it costs you time and money to service while it delivers no revenue to your business. And the situation only gets worse the longer the listing languishes on the market. You’ll end up deducting the expenses of this in-limbo listing from the proceeds generated by any revenue-producing deals you manage to close in the meantime, reducing your net profit and business success.

Unsold homes that linger on the market seriously diminish your salability, which is the term that describes your sales success track. Your salability is based on such key statistics as your average ratio of listing price compared to sale price and the average number of days your listings are on the market.

Obviously, these statistics, which prospects rely on when choosing one agent over another, can be crushed by a “get the listings at any cost” philosophy. They’re also harmed by the “start high and reduce later” tactic.

If you take and price a good listing competitively, it will sell. You can’t keep a good price a secret!

Dirk Zeller is an Agent, an Investor, and the President and CEO of Real Estate Champions. Copyright©, Dirk Zeller. All rights reserved.

18

Top Agent Magazine

mailto:mag@topagentmagazine.com http://www.topagentmagazine.com

Top Agent Magazine

19

Laughs!

20

Top Agent Magazine

Try vs Do

By Barry Eisen

“Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda (1977) The day is done. It seems you’ve done a million things. Everything went well. You had loads of energy and you’re stoked. Clients listened to you and acknowledged the clarity and wisdom of your suggestions. Your kids paid attention. Even the dog obeyed. Great feelings!

Dawns a new day... You wake up groggy, you become a magnet for clients’ frustrations, you feel invisible, the dog spits up on the thick white rug, an associate points out a huge stain on your shirt, a selling appointment cancels and it’s not even 10:00 AM. Know what you are? Normal. Look around and you will find a lot of normal. Stuff happens to us all. To some, who seem to attract more stuff than the rest (something to be said about selffulfilling prophecies) the distractions feel overwhelming and continuous.

Some try their best to turn the tide. Trying doesn’t work. Doing does.

Effort is appreciated, but accomplishment creates the lifestyle and is a lot more satisfying.

Top Agent Magazine

21

We use the word often and teach our kids to try hard. Think of what the concept of “trying” implies. We are telling ourselves to make the effort.

But how often do we confuse effort and activity with accomplishment? Is it not our egos protecting ourselves from the perceived agony of failure by saying...you don’t have to do what it takes, just appreciate the effort.

It’s kinda like the controversy raging on today about all kids getting trophies for participating in a competition, even if they came in last place. Maybe rewards for the little ones keep them engaged, but the reality of life for most adults is about accomplishing, not efforting.

Some try their best to turn the tide. One of the surest ways to become a victim is to try.

Trying doesn’t When we commit to trying something and fall short work. Doing oftoadosuccess, we can always claim “ I tried.” Even in failure does. we can claim victory as we achieved what we committed to... I tried! Be careful of the words you use as they become converted into action. As in sports, good effort is appreciated, but the ones who want it more generally prevail. They call it Scoreboard.

The “doer” is the person who takes the bigger risk of making the extra effort. Without the risk to continue and create a victory, you create “normal.” It’s safe but unsatisfying. And worse yet, this settling for the lazy way out develops into whining, excuse making, low energy, irritability and much more. Do what’s right, not what’s easy. The best of your intentions won’t create a better relationship, clean up the planet or make you more money.

22

Top Agent Magazine

7 DO’s to make a difference:

1 2

Leave every part of your day with a positive accomplishment (even a small one).

In every endeavor, act AS IF you were already successful and capable. Show yourself what you CAN DO.

3

Do what’s right, not what’s easy.

Read or listen to positive books or recordings at least 30 minutes each day-spend as much time with personal development as you do growing your business. Look for and apply the lessons that feel right.

4

Write out your to-do list every night before you go to sleep, whether you feel like it or not and prioritize it. Let it guide you to better decisions during your day.

5

Create a Value Added mindset that allows you to under promise and over deliver. That unexpected extra personal touch, that personalized attention, that piece of humanity, the extra door you knock, the thank you, please, your welcome can put you over the top. It is usually the little things that make a difference.

6

Develop strong enough “whys” and the “hows” answer themselves.

Dig deeper than just an amount of money. Money doesn’t motivate.

Figure out what moves you and your focus will become laser-like.

7

Follow through and do it not because you “have to,” but because you “get to.” Play, have fun, lighten up and shine.

Barry Eisen teaches personal development seminars and coaches Southern California top producing REALTORS®. “Your business will never grow more than you do” is the theme; self hypnosis and behavior modification are the tools for playing a bigger game. barryeisen.com, barryeisen@LA.twcbc.com Copyright©, 2016 Barry Eisen. All rights reserved.

818-769-4300

Top Agent Magazine

23

mailto:mag@topagentmagazine.com

24

Top Agent Magazine