Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
Chris Linsell from TheClose.com starts this episode with a quick tech check-in
software mentioning companies that provide recommended services to real estate agents. Next, Chris and DJ discuss what it’s like working with buyers at the moment and what are the lines that agents should not be crossing in this relationship. Last, Chris explains what The Close Pro is and what agents benefit by subscribing there.
To see what Chris believes every agent should have in their checklist, check his article on this topic in The Close by clicking here.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by gogos bootcamp Are you a real estate agent looking for the very best media training program on the planet? Gogo Beth key is considered the top Instagram Realtor in the country and her step by step training program will take your social media game to the next level. Keeping it real listeners receive a special discount so please visit Gogo podcast.com That’s Gee oh gee Oh podcast.com for your special discount and now on with the show
right welcome to keeping it real the largest podcast paid by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your guide and host through the show and today is our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lin sell from the clothes. This is a partnership between keeping it real and the clothes.com Our favorite marketing and you know website and informational website for agents to learn how to further their business. But let’s tell you a little bit more about the clothes. The clothes.com is the kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals. They cover real estate marketing, lead generation technology and team building strategies. From the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level. Please visit the clothes.com That’s th e c l o s e.com And subscribe to their newsletter so you can get notified every time they publish an article with us as always is Chris Lynn sell he is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. Chris is the closes resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing lead gen transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan. Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions from modest rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing for the clothes you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his communities theatres production. Chris Welcome once again to keeping a row we’re excited to have
Chris Linsell 2:18
you DJ, it’s wonderful to be back. Nice to see you.
D.J. Paris 2:21
Nice to see you. I stumbled a bit at the end because as soon as I was reading about community theater, I thought I wanted to ask you if you are if any of the the the the troops that you might work with are back to doing in person or if you’re working on any any new plays or just curious about your acting.
Chris Linsell 2:43
Yeah, nothing nothing at the moment. I have at the moment I have a six year old and a three year old and abandoning my wife for four nights a week for rehearsal schedules with to absolutely adorable firecracker don’t listen to anybody children and right now I think would get me a tent in the front yard so I at the moment I don’t have anything on the docket but I did just sing the national anthem at my local minor league baseball game minor league baseball teams game so that was always that was a moment of performance.
D.J. Paris 3:25
Was that your first time performing the the national anthem
Chris Linsell 3:28
or I’ve actually done it once before? But this was definitely yeah, I mean I yeah, I’ve done it once before. This was definitely a thrill and definitely a bucket list item for me. So tons of fun good to be back with a microphone in my hand and singing a little bit. Baseballs back baby. I was having a good time.
D.J. Paris 3:50
Let me ask you because I have I’ve played in bands, I’m not a best time I’m, you know, a harmony vocal person. And that’s, that’s being generous, but but I’ve always admire singers and in vans that I’ve been in the past, I’ve never been able to really be the frontman and sing much other than the backup stuff. But I am curious for you as obviously an accomplished singer. How scary is it to get out there? Is it scary? Or is it? Are you able to mitigate that that stress? I’m just curious, because to me that would that would be very scary because it’s it’s such a precise song. So I’m curious on and then hitting the high note at the end. Also seems to be terrifying. But I’m curious, was it I know this wasn’t your first time but was it as scary as the first time or you did no big deal to you? Or,
Chris Linsell 4:43
you know, it’s certainly not a no big deal scenario because I mean, it’s a it’s a I mean, for anyone who is out listening outside of the United States, the national anthem at a baseball game is kind of an institution I mean that every Buddy, you know, everybody stands up for it is a big deal. Everyone’s quiet the whole stadium full of people quiet listening to one person and so that you know, that’s a, that’s a big deal and I give that the weight and measure that it deserves. Personally, I don’t really get nervous about that sort of thing I never really have, because I’ve got a relatively diverse performance background. And that’s a situation I’m used to I have learned how to channel those nervous that nervous energy into performance and and use that to better what I’m doing. And so doesn’t really bother me as far as nerves or, you know, is it a scary thing, but I will tell you this, I will say, there, if you are in front of people, and your heart rate is beating as if nothing is happening, then I I honestly feel bad for you, because you’re missing an opportunity to experience something, something, some new energy, some new, some new dimension of the experience itself. And so your heart should be beaten a little bit faster, you should have a little bit more awareness of what’s going on around you. So I definitely feel that I mean, I feel my energy and my adrenaline is up but doesn’t doesn’t scare me. You know, I get Honestly, if I get nervous, it’s usually in a one to one scenario, when I don’t know what to say. That’s where I feel the most nervous, frankly.
D.J. Paris 6:34
Well, congratulations. I think a lot of us a lot of us listening, probably just hearing the, the the experience you just had of going out there probably felt our heart beating, or because it falls into that public speaking. But even a more nuanced version of public speaking, of course, with a different skill set that most people are terrified of doing. singing in front of an audience is probably even more terrifying. I know it would be for me. But I was just a good reminder to do scary things that are high stretch. And if you have a copy of that performance, we will definitely put a link to it on on the notes of this of this episode so that our audience can can can see. See your performance at that baseball?
Chris Linsell 7:23
Oh, I’ll have to I’ll have to take a look on that. That I’m not sure but I’ll have to take a look good. Before I move on. Jerry Seinfeld has an old bit where he talks about what people are afraid of. And he said, There statistically more people are afraid of public speaking than they are of dying. Which means that if you’re at a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy
D.J. Paris 7:43
to go. That’s a good that’s a very good point. Boy, that’s great. Yeah. Well, moving on to real estate. I know you had a couple of things you wanted to discuss today First, if I remember correctly was about what we could talk about software I know the software topic and then also working with buyers like what are we doing with buyers? Yeah, let’s
Chris Linsell 8:06
let’s just do let’s just take a couple minutes to do a quick tech check in okay, maybe this maybe this could be part of our like a subsection of our of our episode together that the tech check in here. So I am you know, recently I’ve been doing some some research I’ve been writing some review content about some real estate platforms, some some software and services that are attempting to do something that is a little bit different. And that is they’re trying to become these all in one places. They’re trying to bundle different services that real estate agents and teams and brokers use into one platform one interface and provide you with essentially a solution for multiple needs. Instead of having you know kind of chopping up your your needs across different specialized tools. And I’ll give you an example. A while back I wrote a review for a product called property base. We were talking about this earlier. Yeah, property base. They are a CRM they offer a website they happen to own the lead generation company bold leads so they have a lead gen they have back office transaction management they have a lot of different things that are real estate agent who’s full time and busy often, you know leading their their market a lot of things that they need. But then the question becomes what is better for agents? Is it better to use one of these all in one platforms? That does everything pretty well? I mean, I’m not I’m not calling out property bass specifically here. I actually really liked their platform. But you know when you have these all in ones, all Often, you can’t, you can’t do everything on your dashboard at like the highest level possible, you have to sacrifice performance in certain areas in order to bring your overall medium performance up. And so this kind of begs the question, do I want six really specialized high performing tools that I have to use individually and figure out myself how to get them to work together? Or do I want a platform that gives me all six of those tools in one place? That’s a lot more convenient, but potentially not as high performing? And potentially, without the same sort of innovation that you would get if you were working tool, but individually? Yeah, what do you think about them?
D.J. Paris 10:51
Well, I’m the, I’m probably not the best person to ask simply because I’m in charge of all of our technology at our firm and selecting the technology and understanding. You know, I’m also the guy that runs our server and builds websites. And so for me, in my daily activities, which are different from a traditional realtor, I have many systems that I use. And yes, it’s complicated, it’s annoying. And I wish there was an all in one solution. But to your point, it is difficult to find an all in one solution that performs at the highest levels, across all categories. That being said, if I could find a solution that did, you know, 75% of what I needed, and it was an all in one solution. That would be very interesting to me, because what I worry about with individual software providers is this. I have found it and again, I’m speaking extreme generality here, there’s always, you know, I’m in no way an expert in the tech space. Other than that, I’ve just explored a lot of these options. What I worry about with these individual, you know, niche sort of companies is, are there enough subscribers to their service, where they’re going to continue to innovate, I’ve been seeing a lot of tech companies like property base, acquire other firms, we’re seeing that chime you are mentioning, you know, is done some of that as well. You know, there’s there’s other sort of all in one providers that we don’t need to list all of them but but I put a little bit more faith because I used to work at a tech company kind of similarly, in a different space. And I know that the more resources you have, the more cool innovation you can usually do. So long as your question, but I tend, I want to like the small guys, because they can do one thing exceptionally well. I worry about the small guys, I more, you know, sort of wanting to and so what when we decided for our agents, we chose an all in one platform that we would be providing. Yeah, that being said, we understand most of our agents probably don’t even use our platform we selected not because it isn’t good, just because they probably don’t use any platform quite honestly. Or they have another solution that they’ve found. But for an average agent who is focused on growing their real estate business isn’t necessarily a super tech savvy person, I would say an all in one solution is probably just the easiest way to go and will likely do most things. I’ll say one other idea. If you’re listening to this and thinking I’m not a tech person at all, I don’t, you know, I still work off of a Google sheet, you know, and just put all of my, my, you know, put them in a spreadsheet, put all my CRM information, and I, whatever works for you is fine, right? I don’t I don’t want to suggest I know top producers who work that way. They don’t have any automated systems, or impressive software solutions. They just work, you know, in whatever system that they’ve developed for themselves. That being said, the other thing that you can think about is, if you’re just somebody that you don’t really understand that stuff, there are virtual assistants that you can hire that will understand all of this, and help you manage and monitor it for maybe a lot less money than you might think. So I don’t have a really comprehensive answer other than don’t worry about it if it isn’t your strong suit, because an all in one solution would probably appeal to you. But also, even if that’s too much for you to sort of wrap your mind around on a daily basis. You can have somebody working, even if it’s just a couple hours a day on your CRM. So anyway, sorry long answer. Yeah. What do you what do you think? Well, I
Chris Linsell 14:40
totally agree with you. And I think just the last thing I’ll say about this is if an all in one solution sounds like something that you’d be excited about, if that sounds like simplifying your your real estate workflow, as I say, is something that’s going to benefit your business. There’s a couple of of providers to checkout. please chime is definitely one of them. Chime offers a great real estate, CRM website, lead gen platform. They have optional transaction management, team management, they even have broker management if you want to work on the enterprise level. Property base, as we mentioned, they have that kind of Trifecta with some some additional transaction management capability. Certainly, lone wolf technologies, which are, you know, a lot of people you may have heard that name but don’t know what they do. They are a tech company in the real estate space. And they’re kind of expanding via acquisition. They just purchased Lyon desk not too long ago. And frankly, I get some guff on Twitter for saying this but Zillow is becoming an all in one platform for a lot of AR Well, the Zillow CRM actually has made some kind of gamble. Am I gonna say this out loud? The Zillow CRM has actually made some marked improvement over the last six months that has made me sit up and take a look at it again. Obviously, you can do lead gen there. Zillow offers integration with loans with a whole host of things. So you know, if you are not religiously opposed to Zillow, like I know, some agents are, you know, that might be a platform that you might want to look into. Again, find me on Twitter and tell me I’m wrong. I’m happy to hear hear everyone’s opinion on that. But there are a lot of different all in ones. This seems to be a trend in real estate technology. And maybe, maybe it will this this will pass us by maybe this is a fad. But I don’t think so I think we’re we’re moving towards consolidation in a way that other non real estate tech companies have been doing for a long time. I mean, look at Google is not just a text based search engine, Google owns YouTube, Google owns massive ad platform, Google owns a ton of different things. Android as a Google product, like these are all, you know, companies attempts to bring more services under their umbrella. So it makes sense that real estate tech would follow that that trend.
D.J. Paris 17:18
Yeah, and I agree to, there’s so many different solutions, you know, that people are familiar with contextually is a really popular one. Follow up boss, top producer, there’s, there’s a lot and what I would encourage anyone to do if you’re in the market for some sort of software provider is two things obviously schedule, at least three demos, you know, from from three separate providers. But also, salespeople or salespeople. And demos are usually with a salesperson. And of course, they’re going to highlight you know, the thing, the features that that they know, get people to subscribe and make orders. However, I recommend visiting forums online that are populated with realtors, the most obvious largest one that comes to mind is labcoat agents has a Facebook group that has over 100,000 realtors in it, which is absolutely incredible. And they would love that question. And in fact, I’m sure that question gets asked almost every day on there, but you could join labcoat agents, a little plug for them, and, and start seeing what other agents in the field are using. And they’ll and what’s cool is, you know, Reddit, also, there’s a realtor group on Reddit, there’s, there’s lots of different places, you know, ask your colleagues, you know, people at networking events, but it really, my philosophy around all of it is, you know, just pick one at some point and and put your put yourself into it and realize that no software provider is really going to probably meet all of all of your needs. But boy, if you can get like 75% of your needs met with one provider. Think about how much time you’d save. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for that. That’s, that’s great. And maybe maybe in the future, we could even add a feature to the show where we highlight a tech provider, not not necessarily here with Chris, although we certainly could do it with Chris. But if that’s something that the listeners would like, you know, maybe we will, we’ll start featuring some of these tech companies. So now let’s talk about the thing that is probably most challenging to our listeners right now, which is working with buyers. Yeah, we’ve we’ve, we’ve been talking about this a lot on the podcast over the last, you know, six months or so with not just with Chris but with most of our guests. And it is just the topic of discussion with pretty much everyone whether they’re a top producer, or even the agents in our office who are new and starting out this is this is a tricky time. So Chris, let’s let’s get let’s get into
Chris Linsell 19:54
that. Yeah, yeah, so, just gonna throw out, throw out there a question, I guess. to just get started, when does your client’s requests become unreasonable? At what point? Does your client ask you to do more than what you’re obligated to do? Is there a line in the sand? What do you what do you think TJ? Is there? Is there a place where we have to say, like, I that this is just a bridge too far I this, I had recognized what you’re asking, but it just doesn’t make any sense. Is there a line somewhere in the sands,
D.J. Paris 20:35
I think the most obvious line in the sand is a pre approval letter. So so I just spoke to an agent this morning, who had is not at our firm was an agent, we’re looking to recruit who’s pretty much new. And she says, I’m really struggling because I keep taking out, I’ve taken out four buyers, but none of them, they end up not getting pre approved. And, and to me, that sounds like a training issue. You know, from whatever firm she’s currently at. So so that’s an obvious line in the sand that I think most of our listeners would say, Well, of course, you need that. But beyond that, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’m not sure. I’m not sure what the line is,
Chris Linsell 21:15
I think you I think you’re right in the same campus, as most people listening to this, watching this on social, there is no line in the sand that I know of other than, like you said, if somebody wants to see property that they’re not pre approved to purchase, that would be I think, a pretty clear line. If somebody wants to, you know, view property that is unavailable, like for instance, maybe there’s a maybe there’s a home that’s under contract that’s going to close in three days, and has said, you know, they’re very, very this, this wouldn’t be a fit for them. And that it doesn’t make any sense. I think that there’s some some rationale behind that. But beside beyond that buyer’s agents kind of find themselves in a tough position, because they often are working at the whims of their clients. And those whims don’t always seem to make a lot of sense. And I’ll give you an example. Right now we are in, obviously a very competitive market when it comes to being a buyer. If you’re a buyer’s agent, and you have a client who says, I’d like to see this house at 123 Main Street, and you call up the listing agent to 123 Main Street, say I’d like to schedule a showing for this and say, well, we’ve got 12 offers in already. And I can tell you, without revealing all the details, I can tell you that it is very, very likely that this property will an offer will be accepted significantly over asking price. And you return to your buyer client, you say, here’s here’s the information that I found out. And in your mind, you’re thinking as the buyer’s agent, you’re thinking, this makes no sense for us to see, this is not a house that we’re likely to be able to make a competitive offer on. This is an hour out of my time that I could be spending doing something else. This is going to set my client back because they’re going to come here, they’re going to say like, oh, this is a great house, let’s make an offer, even though you know that that offer is likely to be not only not accepted, but not even competitive. What do we say to these clients? What do we say as buyer’s agents? Do we say, No, I’m not going to show you this? Can we do that? This is a this is a challenge I think a lot of buyer’s agents are facing right now.
D.J. Paris 23:47
And especially with the accessibility to properties, where in the past the course the agent was, I mean, it’s not really even need to say this anymore, because it feels like so many years ago now. But now, you know, you’re not the gatekeeper to finding out what properties are on the market, right? Anyone can go to Zillow or Redfin or a million other websites to find out what’s available. And so I imagine we’re talking about a scenario where a client might even find something on their own, say, this looks pretty great. And maybe they don’t know it’s under contract, or they see it and say, Is there still a chance we could get it? And send that to you? I almost think and I know, this isn’t probably really a great answer. But I almost think it really that conversation needs to happen before any properties are shown in person. Whereas I think there’s an education session that could start at the beginning that says, you know, let me sort of explain the process. Let’s first give a state of the market here’s, here’s kind of what I’ve been seeing as an agent. Here’s maybe some expectations to consider when we see a property, the sort of speed the offer we need to keep in mind, we need to really be ready to make a decision as quick as possible, we need to know exactly what you guys, what’s the top level, you know, sort of bid that you are willing to put on any property so that I can kind of do my research. But also, here’s what happens if you’re, if it’s late at night, and you’re surfing Zillow, and you find something that you really, really like, there may be an, there may be a time where I tell you, I know you love that property. And I want to show you that property. But here’s why we might not want to go see it. I will show it to you if you absolutely want to. But I want to stress, you know, so I almost think all of those scenarios could. And again, maybe they’d be forgotten about right after that initial education meeting. And through two days later, the person saying I want to go see this thing that’s going to close in two days. But I think it’s gives you a better opportunity to not be blindsided and having to make that judgment call going. Why don’t want to let my client down. But this is really like Not a good use of their time. Okay, those are my thoughts, what are yours?
Chris Linsell 26:03
I totally agree with you, I totally agree with you. And I think it’s actually easier, it’s an easier call to make, when you are able to look at the situation objectively and say, this is or is not going to advance my clients best interests, because that that to me makes makes the call easier, it doesn’t necessarily make the answer one that is as palatable. But if you can save yourself, seeing this property or not seeing this property is going to be the better choice for my clients best interest than that, right there helps things unfortunately, we are in a world where it may be that seeing or not seeing that property will affect your best interest or your your bottom line in a way that you know positively or negatively, which becomes a real challenge for real estate agents, because you have these, you have scenarios where somebody’s like, Well, I really like to see this house, I know that I have no chance of getting this buy, I’m gonna accept all of that, yeah, I’m gonna take your Saturday, so that we can go look at things that I have no chance of buying. And you have, you know, as as realtors, we have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients. But we also have to make sure that we are using our time in a way that’s going to be ROI positive, you know, to, if you are a real estate agent, and you take somebody to see 100 different houses and they never write an offer, you are losing money every single showing, because you could be spending that time somewhere else. And you ultimately have to make a decision on whether or not this is a client that is going to, you know, return return the investment that you are making in them as well. And so, though you we you know, we can’t make these decisions based on those factors. Specifically, they are a part of the conversation and the kind of the thought process for a lot of real estate agents. And I’ll say, I’ll say this, one thing that I’ve been talking to real estate agents about a lot lately in this scenario is we have to think to ourselves, not just about this transaction, but about the referrals that this person is going to make. And about the if this is a buyer client, about, you know, depending on what the typical turnover rate in your market is a transaction that this person may or may not choose to do with you in five or seven or eight years. Because we if we are not servicing the clients to the best of our abilities, right now, the likelihood that they’re going to call us to work with them, again, is much, much lower. So I’m encouraging real estate agents right now to think about the long run to worry less about an hour or 90 minutes this Saturday. And think about making sure you’re doing everything you possibly can so that when the chips are down, you can say I’ve done everything I can to put you in a position to be successful. Because ultimately, that’s our first priority. Our first priority isn’t breakfast on Saturday. I love breakfast on Saturday, but if a client calls and this is the only time it can happen, this is the plan that we’re going to have to try and make.
D.J. Paris 29:24
I yeah, I 100% agree that those are those are great suggestions. And I feel the same way. I’m thinking though it is difficult to say no to a client and especially one that’s excited to see a property that you feel is really just forget about even a waste of your time. It’s just not going to happen for them for whatever reason, I think, you know, a way to break that to them is to first meet them where they are emotionally Which is to say, oh my gosh, I see how excited you are about this, I am excited as well. And nothing, I would want nothing more than to walk in and show you this property and hope that it’s your dream home, and then we can put it off. And here’s why I really am strongly encouraging us not to go see this property. And it’s not because I don’t want you to go see it, I want you to go see it. But what I don’t want to happen is you walk in and you fall in love with it. And then you absolutely you know, we don’t believe have a shot of getting it. That doesn’t feel good, because people fall in love with homes, often. Maybe not necessarily at first sight. But within even a first walk through, people walk out and they go, that’s the one. The other thing I wanted to mention, which is what you were mentioning at the very end, which is about thinking long term, I think this is really important. Because I know that the the times I’ve purchased homes, and I’ve talked to other people who have purchased homes, there’s always something in the home that once you move in, and you close, you move in, you realize, oh, I missed that. Whatever it is, there’s always something that you miss as the the inspector missed it, you know, the realtor missed it, the attorney, there’s always something maybe it’s a cosmetic issue, maybe it’s a defect, that whatever. And you always go, I wish my realtor would have seen that. And even though we know as realtors, we can’t find everything. But I think you want to minimize the amount of those experiences for the buyer after a sale so or after they purchase the property rather. So I think you really, really want to be careful. And you don’t want to just show homes that you think are not in their best interest. And I think you have to be willing to very politely but in their affirming way. Tell them why.
Chris Linsell 31:51
Yeah, that’s a really, that’s a really important piece of advice. And, you know, I would I think, you know, I tried to put myself in the shoes of a client who is you know, I’m really excited about a house I just found on Zillow call my realtor and I say, I really want to see this, I think this is gonna be the perfect house. For me. This is this is the place I’ve been dreaming of. If somebody if my agent then turns around and says it is a great place, I can see why you’re excited about this. Here are the here are the red flags that I see. And these are the reasons why this house, though it looks great on paper and on the screen might be one you might want to reconsider how you’re feeling about this. And here’s why. If I get that message from my realtor, I’m disappointed for 20 minutes. But I’m not I don’t regret my decision, you know, 20 weeks or 20 years later. And that’s really as agents that’s our that’s our real responsibility. It’s not to protect the feelings of somebody for the next 30 minutes, though we don’t want to be rude, you know, but the protecting the feelings of our clients is not our mandate, protecting the financial well being of our clients is so you know, don’t be afraid to speak your mind to use your experience and to say like, listen this, this isn’t the right place for these reasons, and it’s a heck of a lot easier to have that conversation. If the first thing you do when you create a buyer client relationship with somebody is to sit down with them and say, What are your musts? What are your must nots? What are the things that make or break your next property purchase? That’s great, just from a property search perspective. But when it comes time to have these conversations, already had that check in Convo early in your relationship, you can pull up your notes from that and say, Listen, this is what you told me. Here’s the here’s the things in this property that that go counter to what you told me, We need to have a conversation about this before we move forward, that makes that conversation a heck of a lot easier.
D.J. Paris 34:06
And just to tag on to that if you aren’t using a buyer intake process, a customer intake process where you’re capturing those answers to those questions of musts likes to have, you know, and various things. If you’re not, if you’re just and again, everybody does it differently. And I’m not here to criticize anybody’s process. But if you are finding yourself in scenarios where your buyers expectations over time, are not in alignment with your expectations about what how they should be thinking about buying. That’s probably a process issue for you. And and an easily solvable one, you can start finding, you know, there’s gosh, you guys I’m sure at the close. You might even have buyer sort of intake form questionnaires that you may recommend or certainly they’re easily findable online, but if you’re not used Seeing some sort of process where as Chris said, you, you know, you can capture that information upfront. And then when emotions kind of take over down the road, somebody gets really excited about something. And you have to share some news that you think might, you know, disappoint them. You can say the red flags. Are these based on some of the things also that you mentioned that you wanted or didn’t want?
Chris Linsell 35:21
Yeah, totally. I am just looking right now. Just so I can say it on.
D.J. Paris 35:32
Put you on the spot with it. Yeah.
Chris Linsell 35:35
No, it’s okay. We definitely figured you did this. Yeah, we have. Exactly. We have an article and I’ll send it directly to DJ so he can link it in the in the show notes. Here I will, we have an article all about the the must do’s for buyer agents, especially when it comes to intake. And it’s four must have real estate buyer agent checklists. It’s their mortgage pre approval, it’s successful house hunting, it’s open house attendance, its contract to close, it’s everything that you’re going to need about this. So I will send that to DJ so he can include this here. You know, the bottom line here, guys, is that as buyer’s agents, our responsibility is not to just push a contract forward through the process, it’s not to just get a number from our clients, put it on a piece of paper hand that to the sellers agent. It’s not to be a mouthpiece, our our, the bottom line here is that as buyer’s agents if we’re not actively advocating for our buyers best interest, and sometimes that means advocating back to them to say, Listen, this isn’t what you want, this isn’t going to serve your needs in the long run, then you’re not doing your job. And the fact of the matter is, when we’re in such a competitive climate, as we are right now, buyers are desperate, they want to see anything because they have written 12 offers and none of them have been accepted. And they’re like, Oh, well, I’m gonna have to resign my lease on my apartment, pretty soon, I’m just going to start looking at stuff that doesn’t fit my needs, because I need a roof over my head. And it’s your job as a buyer’s agent to say, you are better to go month to month on your apartment for the next two months, if you have to, then to buy a house that you’re going to regret in six months from now.
D.J. Paris 37:23
I’m always, I always love when I’m in a scenario talking to a salesperson, you know, or somebody who is is only really going to directly benefit if I purchase their product or service. I cannot tell you how much I love it when somebody says I can sell this to you, but you’re going to end up hating me down the road because this really isn’t going to meet your needs. I am so impressed with people that are willing to forego a quicker sale for a long term relationship. And I have to assume most most homebuyers feel the same way. So sometimes you’re going to have to explain why it’s not in their best interest. But I think if you tag it with, you know, what, here’s what I don’t want to happen in, here’s what you probably don’t want to happen. And I want to make sure you know and if they say I understand all of that I want to go see it, well, then you have a decision to make whether you’re willing to do that or not. And maybe in that scenario, maybe it makes sense, obviously, you know, everyone can determine that for themselves. But But yeah, I think the more education you can do ahead of time and running over every possible scenario, that’s, that’s relevant to their situation to say, Okay, here’s what might happen, you fall in love with the home, we put an offer in and then 10 More off, you know, explaining just what might go wrong, and what might go right. So that the expectations are there, I think is is the key to making sure your time is not is not overused by the client.
Chris Linsell 39:04
Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. It’s, it’s a balancing act.
D.J. Paris 39:08
It is and we would love to hear your thoughts about this as well because I’m not a practicing agent. I mean, we have I have eight almost 800 of them here in my office which sounds like I probably know a lot but the truth is, is that most of agents our agents aren’t talking that much about it. So I would love to hear your thoughts and Chris I’m sure what as well so please send us send us your thoughts about this and you know if you have a really specific take or something that works well for you, you know we might even feature it here on the podcast so you can always you know send us a contact us through our website or through Facebook or through Chris directly at the close itself and and Chris we should real quickly as we’re wrapping up. Let’s talk about the clothes pro dot sorry, the clothes Pro which is your subscription model for the clothes, which is a free website with unbelievable free content, but there’s also a Premium service, do you mind sharing just a little bit about that
Chris Linsell 40:02
100%, here’s 30 seconds on the close Pro, the close Pro is the premium option from the close that offers anyone who wants it a chance to get more and more in depth content. Similar to what you find on the clothes.com, go to the clothes.com 99% of what we’ve got there is totally free. We want you to use it, come download all the templates of the strategy guides, best practices, we publish there almost seven days a week. Now come check out what we got. If you want to take it to the next level and get access to courses to to Insider strategy guides from top producers across the country. We have the close Pro, it’s 35 bucks a month or $299 a year, as a part of this, you get multiple boot camps, you get video training courses, you get over 50 downloadable resources. And we’re adding to that every single week. And you get access to small group coaching. And so if you’ve got specific questions that you want answered, that you’re not finding the answers to on the closed.com. I’d be surprised by that, because we have a lot of stuff on there. But if there’s stuff that you want specific, personalized answers to come join the close Pro, we’ve got a ton of different resources. And not just you know, not just templates but but long form strategy guys, I just finished a strategy guide all about real estate farming, for the close Pro, that’s literally 60 pages long. So if you want to go deep into farming, I mean, I talk about postcard cadence, I talk about selecting the right neighborhood based on turnover and absorption rates. I talk about getting into the nitty gritty operations, like down 3456 decimal points, if you want to get that specific about your exploration of real estate marketing, strategy and insight. Come join the close Pro, I got all sorts of cool stuff there. Wow, well, we love
D.J. Paris 42:09
the clothes and the clothes pro everyone should check it out, get hooked on their content, subscribe to their premium service, if that fits your needs. And they’re about the only, you know, sort of platform out there that we have found that specifically really focuses all of their attention on helping you grow your business. From a journalistic perspective, it’s really very, very cool. We’re so honored to have Chris on the show every month. Chris, thank you once again. And Chris, we should mention we’ll be speaking at the National Association of Realtors and then you also have other speaking engagements. But he Chris will be in San Diego this November for NAR I will be there, Chris will be there as well. But Chris, do you mind? Want to plug some of your other appearances?
Chris Linsell 42:56
Yeah, you know, if you’re going to be on the East Coast, in December, come on over to triple play in Atlantic City. You know, if you’re in Atlantic City, New Yorker, excuse me, if you’re in Pennsylvania, New York, or New Jersey, this is a big event. Really excited to be presenting there, I’m actually going to be presenting a couple of different times there. One of them is going to be for CPE credit. So if you need continuing education, come get it with me. I’d love to. I’d love to help you out there. And a few other things that are going to be coming to the calendar that I can’t talk about just yet. But yeah, West Coast, come join us at NAR east coast. Come join me at at triple play triple plays and December NARS and November in between now and then go out and enjoy some summer weather because it’s beautiful out there.
D.J. Paris 43:44
All right, well, we will see everyone on our next episode, Chris, thanks. Again, thank you to our audience for continuing to listen and support our show. And please just tell a friend think of one other agent that could benefit from hearing this great conversation about software and also what to do with with buyers demands right now and send them a link to our episode, which you can find right on our website, keeping it real pod.com Or just have them pull up a podcast app search for keeping it real and hit the subscribe button. Chris, thank you so much. Again, I think I’ve thanked you for five times already at the end here but I’m so appreciative that you come on and we will see everyone on the next episode.
Chris Linsell 44:23
Thanks, TJ. See you soon
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