Here are the highlights from our Super Six session with Ray White’s #1 Agent in NSW, Gavin Rubinstein.
Coach: Gavin Rubinstein
Key Points
- Have belief in the value you are bringing to your prospective vendor.
- Be the ‘specialist’ who understands the vendor’s situation before diagnosis (1st meeting: questions, 2nd meeting: proposals)
Quote
“Motivation is the key ingredient to creating a sale – most agents don’t ask that.”
tweetVideo Notes/Transcript
Now, more than ever as an agent, you need to be conveying your value-added proposition. What value are you bringing to the table? I know myself and my team bring a load of value to the table. I know we bring more value than all of our competitors.
So when I am talking to a prospective vendor, I don’t have to sell it to them. I have belief in it.
It’s not to say I get the business all the time. I lose loads. I lose a lot of business. The silver lining in that is actually knowing every property when it comes on, even when it’s through another agent, I’ve known about it. That makes me feel good. Whereas, two or three years ago, all these properties were coming up, I didn’t even know about it, whereas now, I’m on the shopping race.
Ultimately, the people who get it and understand it will go with you. I think you just need to work in a process whereby, if the vendor’s happy and knows you’ve got belief in a price that they want to achieve, then you deserve a decent fee.
But you really need to understand, and it’s fact, there is a difference between an agent and a practitioner.
A practitioner knows exactly what he’s talking about, he can command that big of a commission because he can get a better price, because he can run the process better, because he can deal with the buyers in a way the others can’t.
His price at the end of it is often substantially higher, and you need to have that belief system around yourself when you’re presenting so the vendors feel it as well. Then you’ve got to prove yourself right over and over again.
There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance as well. A fine, fine line, and I think there are definitely spaces throughout my career, and even today, people will misunderstand confidence for arrogance, but they don’t know the process that I’ve been through for the last 10 years and the experience and the network that I’ve built, which, as a vendor, is going to benefit them.
I use that ‘Step One’ to build a rapport. I kind of whet the appetite. It’s kind of like a specialist will always understand the situation before they diagnose, right? They’ll take a few tests, they need to understand what they’re dealing with. I think if you want to be paid like a specialist, you’ve got to act like one.
‘Step One’ is ‘to diagnose’. I want to meet the people, if I don’t already know them, I want to have a look at the property. I want to understand what marketing plan we’re putting together.
The process is always the same, it never changes, but I just want to cater to the right approach, right?
Then at that point, that’s when I sit down and I ask questions, and I don’t talk, because that’s all about me finding out the information that I need to diagnose in the right angle, right?
I sit-down and I always start that process. I take control from the outset.
As soon as I open the door. “Why don’t you give me the quick tour, then we’ll sit down, have a quick chat and I’ll get out of your hair?”
So, straight away, like there’s none of that awkwardness at the beginning when you go to an appraisal. There’s an agenda, and they say like, “Let’s go.”
Then we walk through the home, we sit down, and I always start that by saying, “Listen, I could sit here and tell you how fab I am for the next 25 minutes, or you can tell me how I can help you and we can navigate through that.”
Then it starts, and I ask questions. “Why are you selling? What are you selling for?” Motivation is the key ingredient to creating a sale – most agents don’t ask that. That perplexes me, I don’t understand that.
Response time is everything. I addressed, in that meeting with you, why it’s important for me to have a second contact on it, because whilst I’m working for you, it’s still important that the buyer gets a response efficiently on everything.
We can’t lose sight of the fact, this is a service based industry. So, priority is to the vendor, they’re paying your fee, your loyalty is always to the vendor. These buyers become sellers as well, and when you actually buck the trend and get them what they need efficiently, they notice that.
We’re in a digital world. We’re moving even more so in that direction. Social media, those aspects are all taking over, and I believe are a huge piece of the future of this business, not all of it but a huge piece of it.
People don’t have patience. People are losing patience. That’s very important.
I ask all of my questions in the first meeting and talk less. It’s the second meeting when I start to really propose what I do to maximise the result.
After I have the first meeting, either before that or after, depending on the situation, they’re sent a proposal kit, which outlines information on me and outlines properties I’ve sold in the area. So they kind of know everything and we’ve built a good report in that first meeting before that second meeting takes place.
When that second meeting happens, I take just one plastic folder. In there, it has marketing, one page. In there, it has timeline, two page and then the third document, which is an agency. I sit down and I say, “Listen, let’s get into it exactly like I did then.” That’s the second meeting.
