I’m going to give you a quick overview of how to win with buyers in a low inventory market. We’re going to go through a few different scenarios that will teach you some tactics that have the potential to help you double your success with buyers.
How to handle the 5-minute driveway meeting
It’s only five minutes. You’re not going to be able to cover everything you’d like in this meeting. You want to learn as much about them and build rapport. That’s the goal here. Ask them questions like "how long have you been looking for homes?" Follow the conversation. Let it be easy and natural.
While you’re busy making it all easy and natural, you want to magnify the pain of the problem they’re facing. You don’t need to get into detail, just simply set the stage with a question like "have you heard how crazy the market is" or" it’s so crazy right now that lots of homes are selling before they even hit the market".
Now is great time to let them know that you have a "secret" list of hundreds of homes that are for sale that other realtors don’t have. Bring it up and ask them "do yo have a minute to tell me what kind of home you're looking for" and here you’ll see if one of the coming soon homes fits their bill. You can then use this promise of looking into this for them as a means of setting up a second phone call or meeting.
You can close in two ways.
- Option 1: Do you have 20 minutes or so to review the list and see if there’s anything we have that might be a fit. This is the “right away” option.
- Option 2: I’ll review my list and see what might work! I also have a few other homes in mind that I think you might like. When would be a good time to see those homes and review the coming soon homes I find. This is the “later on ” option.
No matter which way you close the “5-minute driveway meeting,” the goal is to build rapport, identify a problem (get their search criteria but DON’T show them houses yet (that’s for the second meeting)), and provide a solution.
How to handle objections?
“Can you just email me the listings?” or “Can you show me the off-market homes now?”
You say: Unfortunately, our MLS doesn’t allow us to “market” these homes that are not listed yet but we can show them to our active clients. Do you have a few minutes for me to explain more about how becoming a client of ours works?
How to handle an initial 20-minute buyer consultation
This one’s longer, and you’re going to cover some more ground.
We explain to the buyer how competitive it is out there and how we’ve got them covered. We might ask them: Have you heard about how many offers homes are getting right now? And then we might say to them: Getting your offer accepted is the hardest part of buying a home right now, take a look at the photos and texts! Most homes get 20 offers meaning 19 agents lost. Our team got 29 offers accepted last month! Our success is due to our strategy. We don’t want to wait until you find your dream home to have a plan, by then it will be too late!
Another thing that is really important in this longer meeting — that’s important in almost every meeting — is empathy. Find out what fears or concerns your potential buyer might have about purchasing the right house. Hear them out. Often, at this point, we’ll share with them our buyer satisfaction guarantee.
If you have some good online reviews, you can also simply let them do their own research. Ask them what they do when they’re looking to buy a product on Amazon. Chances are the first thing they do is look at reviews. So you can say to them look, I know we just met and I get that but you don’t have to just take my word for it, google us and you will find tons of great reviews from past clients.
