Chris Watkin: Tom, too many agents are worried sick about increasing their fees due to a lack of property sales and the tenant fee ban coming up. How do they get over that fear? Talk to me.
Tom Panos: I think if you're an estate agent, you've got to go in to a listing presentation with the view that another estate agent is going to charge you zero. And then I know that sounds weird and I know it probably doesn't happen, but you need to go in with the premise that potentially someone's prepared to charge zero and that your job is to be so good that they basically give you a standing ovation and they say, they're not going to get up and say fantastic, right.
Chris Watkin: Get the pointing out ...
Tom Panos: Correct, that's not going to happen. I don't think people in the UK do that, but I think they've got to ...
Chris Watkin: Do they do it in Oz?
Tom Panos: No they don't do that there either. I actually don't think they do it anywhere, but I think it's a metaphor that I'm using to explain that you've got to be so good that if you have decided that your fee's going to be two and a half percent, not one and a half percent or one percent, and that the client that you're presenting to actually feels like you're 5% better.
Tom Panos: So hypothetically speaking, let's assume that you're 5% better, but you're 1% dearer, that client's still 4% better off. So what you want to start doing is start demonstrating to a client, you have a process. You have a strategy that is actually going to potentially give them 4% better off being value.
Tom Panos: So number one I would say is pick you if you're an estate agent, pick you before they pick you. Because if you don't pick you, they're not going to pick you.
Chris Watkin: I think like love yourself. You can't look, you can't expect someone to love you if you'd don't love yourself.
Tom Panos: If you haven't been prospecting and you haven't had people in your pipeline with lots of opportunities and you go to a valuation and the client says, I want to go with you Chris, but I'm only going to pay you 1% and you're sitting there and you look at your Outlook calendar and you say, wow, I've got no listings. I've got nothing coming in and I've got someone that wants to give me their business at 1%. You know what? You're desperate. Desperate people take that business.
Tom Panos: However, if you've been the hardworking estate agent that has been doing two hours of prospecting a day and you have got a pipeline of opportunities, and what happens is the client says to you, I want you to do it at 1%, you're not desperate and you know what you say? I'm not for you.
Tom Panos: Well I think if you've seen it and that comes like you know, you're a harsh critic and you've got strong views on things. I can tell you that I think if a vendor sees it, they're going to look at the bottom figure and they're going to say, hey, I don't want the cheapest. I want the best.
Chris Watkin: Because it's interesting, I was online the other day and someone actually said, I was talking about over valuing and someone said, could you, รง
Tom Panos: Yeah.
Chris Watkin: That's what it's about, isn't it?
Tom Panos: Yeah,
Chris Watkin: I think they're all lazy, not all of it but most of them.
Tom Panos: Well, I think the person that said that to you is actually focused on the wrong person. You can't control. Look, you can't control what the other estate agent does with a vendor they're going to overprice. You can't control that. You can't control the other estate agent that's going to go in at half your fee. You can't control whether your next door neighbor decides to have sex in their backyard naked every night. That's their business. You can't control that.
Tom Panos: What you can control is what you do in your house. What you can control is how you deliver a presentation to that client and show the client, hey listen, that's their net figure. That's my net figure. Here's my process.
Tom Panos: And at the end of the day, you get a hundred vendors in a room and you say to them, what do you prefer? Paying 1% and getting a lower net in your pocket or paying 2% and getting more in your pocket. All hundred will say, I want the most money in my pocket.
Tom Panos: So what I'm going to do is to show how you can have trust in a relationship in a short period of time that you win a client over in the process, because I'm telling you straight, it's the process and not the promise of a prize that's going to get you top dollar. And that's what I'm going to cover.
Chris Watkin: Thank you, Tom.