ONE LESSON

I had been helping a real estate website start-up when the representative I was working with asked if I wanted to help the owner of the startup buy a property for his kids, who were going to be attending a college in the city. The owner emailed me (I never bothered to set up a call) what he was looking for and told me to set up 5-6 places for them to view the following weekend. Knowing the owner was extremely successful, I wanted to go above and beyond for him to show how great of an agent I was. After setting up the showings, I sent him a long, incredibly detailed email with everything he would ever need to know about the properties and the area. Eagerly awaiting his response, I kept checking my email until finally I heard back from him. His response was just two letters…”OK.”

LESSON LEARNED: Get to know the type of person you are working with so you can sell them.

If I had taken the time to understand my client’s personality, I would have quickly realized he was not someone who had the time to read over a thousand-word email. He was someone who needed only the necessary information and nothing else. If I had known this, I wouldn’t have wasted 2 hours writing an email he was never going to read. Instead, I would have kept things simple and just told him the few details he needed to make a quick decision, i.e., price, appreciation potential, etc.