Episode 1: How to become a consumer-centric real estate agent.

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Episode Transcript:

Lance Pendleton: You're at a cocktail party. You meet somebody for the very first time, and you're sitting there thinking, please don't ask me what I do for a living. Please don't ask me what I do for a living. Why? Because you're worried about what they're going to think of you when you tell them you're a real estate agent. Sound familiar? Well, this week on consumed, it's all about the client experience. We're mapping the journey for a client centric agent. This is consumed, the podcast for real estate agents who are tired of hearing the same old industry stuff and want to experience something completely different. So today we're going to be talking about mapping the customer journey. And I just want to start with a couple of things. First of all, Lucy, how are you doing?

Lucy Edwards: Great. Very excited about a very important topic actually that can include so much. We can cover a lot, that's for sure. Lance thank you.

Lance Pendleton: I am definitely looking forward to discussing this with you because in case you're not aware of this yet, this is what my entire career is built on is basically becoming more customer centric and consumer centric in particular. But when we get started in this process, I'm going to put something out there for everybody as a question, just to get us thinking about this a little bit differently. So if you're an agent and you're listening to this currently, here's what I want you to ask yourself in your years in real estate. How many agent panels have you attended in your time in real estate?

Lucy Edwards: That's a great question to all the agents because I am sure the answer will be thousands.

Lance Pendleton: Okay, right. So here's the next question. Ready? How many consumer panels have you attended?

Lucy Edwards: I would say zero. If I were an agent, I would say zero because I haven't heard of any panels like that.

Lance Pendleton: And that's the biggest thing, because what I want to focus on today is what is that consumer minded and consumer based journey like in real estate, and what should agents be focusing on in order to best understand? How do I change the perception and landscape of how I engage with people? And it starts for me. Like this. Don't you find it weird, Lucy, that nobody in the real estate industry, between the brokerages and Nar and everybody else. Nobody wants you actually listening to consumers. They love telling you all the things that you should be doing and how to do them and what to do. You've got all these coaches out there telling everybody, you know, and it always surprises me that at the end of the day, our jobs as agents is to work with consumers, yet nobody wants us actually engaging to understand what their needs are. So I always found that strange. Do you find that strange?

Lucy Edwards: I totally agree with you. And it is important. We always talk about agents. All agents have to be. You have to be professional. You have to find your niche. It's all about the agent. You have to be a rental agent or a luxury agent or buyer's agent and on and on and on. But no one is really. You are right. No one is really talking about you should be an agent for your client. Doesn't matter if it's luxury or everyday listing or if it's a rental. You have to listen to your client and you have to adjust and adapt to what they need. That's how I would say that.

Lance Pendleton: That's what I love about work, doing this with you, because you just said something that reminded me of where the first problem I think starts. So the first problem is the word client. You see, if they're a client, guess what? You've already won with them. Most of the agents that I know, and you can tell me if you disagree, most of the agents I know are really good. Once they get face to face with somebody, they're really exceptional about it. And look, this whole podcast is based on putting things out there to understand differentiation for the top 10% of agents in the country, because we all know that 10% of the licensed agents do 90% of the volume in real estate. So right now, if you think about that, for me, Lucy, like, my biggest concern is we always talk about clients in the business. We always talk about clients in the industry. But if we're talking about clients, those are people you've already established relationship with, one with and had a connection with. I'm talking about the general public consumer out there. Do you notice is there a difference for you between those two?

Lucy Edwards: Yes, I totally agree with you. And and actually, when you introduce yourself, when you market yourself as an agent, you market yourself to someone who you had never met before. You don't even know where they are and what they are about. So that I think that is so important is to promote yourself as a as a real estate professional. I don't always like to use the word agent agent because, you know, agents are different, but you you advertise yourself as real estate professional for a future client. And I totally agree with you. The existing client, they already yours. You might have, you know, some tweaks to do for the next listing that they give you. Or if they want to refer you, you have to think about that as well. But they already here sitting across the table from you, the new and the brand new potential client to win them. That is definitely lens. I agree with you. That is a completely different story and direction. All right.

Lance Pendleton: So when we talk about a consumer or a customer's journey. Right. We're talking about a consumer. And so hence the name of the podcast being consumed, because I always want to talk about what actually is the focus for a consumer rather than just the agent centric mindset, because there's a billion people out there already talking about what's best for agents, right? I always say the coaching industry, to be clear, in real estate, is the same as the healthcare industry. And what do I mean? You know, the healthcare industry is focused exclusively on symptom treatment. That's all it is. They don't focus on the cause because there's no money on the cause. They just focus on the symptoms and they treat symptoms. And coaching in the real estate world is the exact same thing. It's no different. All they do is just give you shiny little things for you to be doing right. The symptoms to treat. The fear that comes up in an agent based off of, you know, I'm not doing enough. I'm not enough, I'm not good enough. I'm not going to get more business. So it's like, here's the perfect script, here's the perfect email template. Here's the perfect. It's all symptom treatment. Well, what's the cause. What's the root behind that. Well, it starts for me with like the consumer problem. So let's talk about that a little bit, if you don't mind, Lucy, because I'd love to understand to see what you think of this. What do you, Lucy, think the average consumer out there thinks of a real estate agent?

Lucy Edwards: Well, if I take I'm not going to take myself as an example because I'm also a consumer, uh, because I, you know, I swim in real estate every day, so I probably have different objectives. But if I were to take someone I know who is going through the through the experience of selling the house or buying the house, and I get a lot of phone calls from my friends, they are confused. They don't trust a lot of agents, they just don't trust the industry, which I think is it is a very important part of building the relationship and and being trusted. I don't like, you know, trusted agent. It's it's too cliche, but but you have to be trusted. And a lot of consumers, They just simply, uh, they just don't they just don't see that connection. And and they want to trust me. They they trust me now. Here I go. Trust me, trust me. They want to build the relationship. They want to understand what the agent is going to do for them. But it doesn't always come through. And agents are different. And you are saying that 10% of agents are making, uh, producing 90% of listings, 100% agree with you. And that will change even more going forward. I can see that happening already.

Lance Pendleton: Yeah. It's, uh, there's things that happen in this business that I swear I'm. Someday I'm going to I'm probably going to write a book because I just I find it all fascinating. But, you know, this idea that the things that we explain to agents and tell agents the things that they should be communicating to the outside world in terms of the consumer centric mindset, you know, if I went to the middle of nowhere and I walked out on the street and I grabbed a random person and said, what do you think of a real estate agent? Well, what are they going to say to me? Well, my real estate agent is a trusted advisor who helps me with the largest transactions. Said no one ever. That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life. No one says that. Okay, so this idea that we're trusted advisors, we're trusted advisors, that is industry nonsense that we've been fed for. I don't even know how many years under this idea and auspice that I'm going to tell you right now, if I walked into a store to buy something and the first thing the person I was talking to said was, well, I. You can trust me. I'm like, I'm out of here. Thank you. I'm gone. Right. Because by default. Right. And remember my background's in behavioral psychology. So like if I have to tell somebody that I'm a trusted individual, it's because the perception exists for a reason, right? So the first thing that I always say when we start talking about the the customer minded journey is if you look at what customers already believe, my first thought is, why are we running away from that? We spend an inordinate amount of time trying to convince people write about why it is that what we're doing matters, or why they should trust us, or how you can trust us.

Lance Pendleton: And the irony of that is we go down that path without ever actually understanding from them. Why don't they trust us? So if you begin to understand where the lack of trust or the concern comes from, then you can begin to address those things appropriately and effectively. But I've never actually seen anyone sit down and say, well, what is it that you don't trust, per se, about an agent? And when you go through that plan and process, the best way to develop? And I think the first path to developing a good listing presentation, a good conversation with somebody in and around how you support them in their business, is to really understand and acknowledge that the perception out in the world is a reality. So how do we get better at accepting that reality? And I would love to know from from your opinion, Lucy, like, what do you see out there in the world from agents that you think helps counter that process?

Lucy Edwards: Well, I would say that first of all, it is very important. Just like I said, you have to invest in your brand. I believe that brand is important and you build it. You build it from ground up. Whatever you do, you know someone does postcards or social media or whatever else you decide to do, but you have to invest in yourself and you have to explain in a very simple language that you deserve an opportunity to meet that person and to introduce yourself as a trusted advisor if you wish, or as someone that at least give me a chance, give me that opportunity to sit down with you. And I think the most important thing here is accountability and communication. You have to listen. You have to ask open ended questions. You have to give an opportunity to your client to talk about themselves, even if it will take them a whole hour to talk about their nasty divorce and why they are selling the property right now. But you should really invest that energy. And I think that would that would really help. And then they will start opening up to you. But the communication is I think it's the foundation, integrity and the communication.

Lance Pendleton: That's a super interesting point to me because when I think about what you just said and I don't know if you noticed this or not, you went back to the client because you just started talking about when you're talking to the client and listening more to what the client wants. Did you notice that?

Lucy Edwards: Yeah, I guess I did.

Lance Pendleton: Again, because we've been taught for so long under this auspice. And if we're talking about the consumer's journey in something and how we better connect to the consumer, right? It's so in our DNA. And that's why it's to me, it's an invaluable process to talk about this, because you can see how quickly for all of us, we just get pulled right back into the speak, we get pulled back into the system, we get pulled back into the talk. And look, to me, real estate is an exceptionally wonderful business, and what makes it wonderful is that I think it brings out the best of people in their in their DNA. You know, the agents that I have the pleasure of working with, both privately and then in some of the larger firms out there, I'm always amazed by how, at their core, how many of them truly love helping people. They love connecting to people. They love building and fostering relationships with people. It's what is that dopamine driver? You know, that thing that makes them feel happy and connected into what they love doing, right? I've never met an agent that gets up in the morning and they're like, Google Docs, I'm excited to go do spreadsheets today. Let me do contract forms like nobody says that, right? So how do we begin to change that? Well, culturally, and this is the interesting part to me, is when I look at what you just pointed out, yes, we need to be better ingrained into that process with them to to let them speak. But can we start that much, much earlier? My favorite thing to do, Lucy, is to go to a cocktail party, go to an event, go someplace. And in that small talk that we're making with people is to ask them, let me ask you a question. What do you think about real estate agents?

Lucy Edwards: You know, you know, Lance, I haven't done that before, but I think I'm going to start doing it. I have three days of conferences and I well, I can't really I can ask I can ask realtors, what do they think about other realtors and how do they perceive. So that would be interesting to hear. What do they talk about when you ask them, what do you think about a real estate agent?

Lance Pendleton: I'm going to challenge all of our all of our listeners to try this, but not with other agents, because guess what? I can tell you, if somebody that's worked with thousands and thousands of agents over the years, um, agents aren't super high on other agents to begin with. So that's a whole separate entity. But what I will say is this, Lucy, try it. And I'd be super curious to see how you experience it. But try it not around with other agents. Try it when you're out to dinner with your amazing husband. Try it when you go to an event that's non-agent related to, just ask somebody. In general, what do you think of real estate agents and listen to what they say? Because the things that I've learned over the years, and I've dedicated the past several years of my life to talking to consumers to learn and understand what their wants and needs are, because that's how I learn to help my clients. That's how I learned to help the agents that I work with. But when you talk to them to understand what they want and what they need or what they think, it's amazing to hear how either misunderstood the business is or the or the agent role is, and also how misaligned what they think of an agent or what they want and need is.

Lance Pendleton: From what we hear from the industry consistently, the number of people. And I'll give just a simple example, the number of people that I talk to, that at some point during the question of tell me what you think about agents and what they do that will say to me, oh, the emails that I get or the oh, there's so many emails that I get that I get on their mailing list. And I walked into one open house where we did an open house tour weekend, and I get like 12 emails in perpetuity. And it's like, if that's the perception that somebody has, then why? From the industry perspective, what are we saying? Oh, you got to you got to do your touches, get all your touches out there. Make sure you're doing all your touches. And, you know, send your emails. And it has to have value. If you have value. And they go through this process of make sure you reach everybody, you have to have your outreach and do your do your email blasts and get your newsletter. Because everybody has my open house, my just sold my new listing, the hot new color to Paint your front door and spring. My newsletter my newsletter. It's like most consumers are like what? Like enough with it already.

Lucy Edwards: But you know what? I would like to mention something. I just just came to my mind. My niece and and her husband and their two kids, they had a lovely home in new Jersey in Livingston. It's it's pretty. It's it's it's it's like on the border of mid and high end neighborhoods. And they wanted to buy something in Chatham, which is much more fancier. And they found this amazing home. And the agent who was selling them that home said, why don't I list your property in Livingston? So they walked in, they got rid of all the tchotchkes, all the pictures, all the pillows. My niece's husband was so upset. They touch my things. They redid everything. I hate those pillows. And why? Why do we have to live like that? And for two hours, I couldn't come back home and I had to sit in a car. They just got you 20% over the asking price in one week. Say thank you. Give them a hug, buy them flowers, do whatever it takes. I mean, they got you over the asking price and they got you a good price on your new place in Chatham. And and all you could think about is the pillows and that they removed your personal items that, that just like, oh my God, I went off and I just couldn't even stop. So he probably felt bad that he even told me that. But that is the reality, you know? I mean, you have to be appreciative as a, as a as a seller, as a buyer versus being angry that they put you through the inconvenience by sitting in a car for two hours. Well, let's.

Lance Pendleton: Talk about that for one second, because I want to give people some tangible, actual things that they can do as starting points. But what you just said was a key for me, because what you didn't say was that that agent sat down and had a conversation with them about what was going to happen. They just went in and did stuff right.

Lucy Edwards: That is true too. They did not give them heads up, right? And the anticipation and was was not really established properly. Right. They just said, trust me, that's exactly what they said. They said, trust me, I'm going to get you a really good price for your property. I will sell it quickly, but you got to trust me and let me do what I feel is right. Right.

Lance Pendleton: And so what's super interesting was the after product, right? Would he refer or recommend them?

Lucy Edwards: He probably won't, but my niece will. It doesn't.

Lance Pendleton: Matter. The point is, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how good of a job they did, the experience wasn't where it needed to be. Why? Because they didn't focus on the consumer first. They focused on the outcome, not the consumer need in the very beginning of that. Right. So that's what I'm talking about. So the very first thing that I think is super important for agents to begin to start changing in how we work with people out in the world is to start with the consumer mindset of understanding from the very beginning, long before somebody wants to buy and sell their house, what's the need? What's important to you? What do you value? What's most helpful? The most common thing that I hear people say when I ask consumers about what they want from an agent, the most common word used is partnership. It's partnership. It's not them saying, oh, well, I want someone that's going to get me top dollar for that's automatically implied. And it's it's amazing to me when I work in and amongst the world of real estate agents. How many of them. And again, I'm a licensed agent technically myself still too. It's like how many of us, I should say, are not focused any longer on the people that we're supposed to be developing these relationships with for the health and growth of our business. So in that path of what people can do to begin with one go to parties, go talk to people in the world and ask them what they think of an agent, and then listen and learn. Ask them, well, do you think marketing and the emails that get sent are important or not important? Ask them if someone if you were thinking of putting your house on the market, what would be the most important thing you'd want from an agent or be looking for in an agent? Ask those questions.

Lucy Edwards: And I agree with you, Lance. I totally do, and I think setting the expectations is also very important. You have to explain. I can give you another example from my from my life when my daughter was selling her house and I didn't want her to move anywhere and she just moved to San Francisco. So it just kills me. And she was seven minute walking distance from me. Um, to close, my son in law probably thought it was too close, um, because she would stop by on her bicycle every evening Anyway. So when when that happened and they wanted to put the house on the market, in my opinion it was the worst time ever. And the agent explained why it's important to do that now because five houses similar to theirs, it's new construction are coming up in another 3 to 4 months. So she said down. They were not ready. They were not really ready. They wanted to move like in December or maybe even in January. But they moved on September 1st. But the agent took the time, explained why it has to be done now to get the best top dollar for their house. What has to happen? Explained about the open houses they didn't want the open house. Open houses in this neighborhood are very popular and we'll talk about that later. But my point is setting the expectation. If you don't do it now, you might lose the opportunity. And they they listen to her and they got cash offer asking price in four hours. Thank you. Matterport and I'll talk about that later as well.

Lance Pendleton: Well, to me that's a wonderful example of somebody that sat down, did their due diligence, listened to what they needed. But it is very, very important. I look at it as something very important to to begin to listen in a different way, because again, even in the story that you just told me, it was all based on, once I get face to face with somebody, right? When someone has an idea that they're thinking of buying and selling. The challenge for the top 10% of agents in this country is to begin to create differentiation as the landscape changes, as as the commission structures change, as everything in real estate is starting to shift a little bit more as we move down the path. The best agents in the country, in my humble opinion, are going to be the ones that understand how to have the most natural and effective relationship with consumers in general, long before the person thinks of buying and selling, which really is built on nurturing relationships with people that you have already within your orbit. That may not be the client related focus. So I'm hoping that as we continue to progress and move through these different chapters in real estate, that great agents will begin to change how they think about what it is that they do. We need to listen less to the experts inside the industry, and listen more to the general consumers that are out there to learn from them and best understand what are your wants? What are your needs? How can I help you? Everybody in this world wants one of four major things. They want to be loved, appreciated, heard, or understood. And if you can find a way to develop that with people, that to me is how you begin to win. And again, in a way that isn't about buying and selling, it's in a way about doing what we love and getting back to what we love.

Lucy Edwards: And I would like to go back to what I actually started with, is investing in yourself is explaining to your future consumers that you haven't met yet. Well, in Amy's situation. My daughter's situation? Of course, I recommended the agent, so she didn't have a choice. But, but, but the agent turned out to be amazing, so everything worked out just absolutely beautiful. However, investing in yourself and explaining to your future consumers what you are about and what and how you work with people and how you listen and how you explain the market conditions and and so to make to make them again, the word trust is a very strong word, but at least to trust you when I come in and they say your house doesn't worth $2 million, it's 1,000,007. We can try 1,000,008. But that is important that you explain that in advance. So when they give you the opportunity, they already listen to what you get to say. And I think it's a win win situation for the future consumer and for the agent. But advertising it properly, marketing yourself properly is important.