This allows you to experience the transaction from a client’s perspective. However it’s actually not quite the same as you know things about the industry that are a complete mystery to your typical client, and they have many misconceptions about this business that you obviously don’t have.

I recall an experience that in retrospect has many parallels to what your sellers experience when they hire you. Some years ago when my businesses were just getting rolling, I had an opening for an executive assistant, and rather than conduct the whole process myself, I retained the services of an employment agency. Now I don’t know anything about that industry, nor did I personally know anyone who had used an agency in my area recently, so I started by phoning a few and deciding which one to hire. I wasn’t entirely sure what questions to ask, so I made a list. Do they specialize in a particular segment of the market? What’s the process? What’s their fee? How long will it take? Since I didn’t want to spend a lot of time interviewing employment agencies (that would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it!) I was doing a lot of my evaluating over the phone…not just in the answers to my questions, but by evaluating all of the details from how the phone was answered by their receptionist (If she’s not top notch what would that say about their ability?) to the energy and perceived competence of the representatives that I spoke with.

After narrowing my choice to two firms, I made an appointment with each of them to come to my office. It wasn’t long before one contender dropped the ball. The agency’s rep decided to cut a corner…since I am not located in the downtown core where most of his clients are, it meant that he would have to drive half an hour to meet with me. He instead tried to accomplish our meeting over the phone, then said that he would follow up on a designated day. He did follow up, but it was a few days later than he said he would. When a client is deciding between two or three choices, the quality of your follow-up can make it or break it for you. In his case, it was a deal breaker. I should add here that the fee these firms charge for this service is several thousand dollars…very comparable to a real estate commission. The second firm’s rep was a lady who came to my office, did a stand-up presentation and answered all of my questions in a time efficient manner. She was professional and represented her firm well, so I decided to hire her firm. I was then contacted by a gentleman from her firm named James. In the company website he was listed as an accounting firm specialist, so I immediately began to wonder whether my file was being handled by the right guy. Being the shy and timid guy that I am, I asked him why he was handling my file when he’s supposed to be an accounting expert, to which he answered he handled other clients as well. I bring this up because I want you to look at what you may have in your marketing and whether it helps you or hurts you. If I ran an accounting firm, the fact that James is an accounting expert would be a real perceived benefit to me. Otherwise it’s an objection in my mind. So take an objective look at your website, your listing presentation and other materials. Look for what is out of date, what you should drop and what is missing. Examples of things to look for…a mention of awards achieved with the latest date being 2007, or statements like “Rookie of the Year 2003”. Really…who cares?

Back to my story. It wasn’t long before James sent me two applications he had picked from responses he’d received from an ad he had run. Right away I realized that just like many of your sellers, I had misunderstood his business. I thought that employment agencies had a pool of people looking for employment registered with them waiting to be matched with the right position. Kind of like how your sellers think you have a pool of buyers ready to buy, huh? Well if he had to run an ad to find the prospects that clearly wasn’t the case was it? The thought “so what am I paying for” crossed my mind. I determined that if they could do the pre-screening and bring me a great candidate the time savings would be worth it. The two applications however were both under-qualified. They were very slim on experience…and I knew what I was looking for and these applicants weren’t it, so I declined to even meet with them. I also began to question James’ listening ability.

About a week later, he sent me two more applicants’ resumes. These two certainly had deep experience, so I agreed to meet with and interview them. The first lady arrived, and though she had been an executive assistant to several CEO’s and seemed extremely competent, she had a severe smiling disability. From what I could see she was only capable of one expression…prison guard. I would be working closely with whomever I hired, and I couldn’t see having this lady in my space every day being at all enjoyable. Two things to note here…I love my work both in land developing and coaching so I’m not interested in creating situations that take the enjoyment out of my day. This means not allowing anybody in my space that I don’t enjoy being around…staff, outside professionals/vendors or clients. Second point to note here is that personality matters. You can be a highly capable agent, but rapport and the client being comfortable with you are key factors.

The next interview went quite well, and I decided to have this applicant in for a week to see how it worked out. I’m a believer in the hire slowly and fire quickly theory, so I knew that a week would allow me to get a good perspective on the candidate. After the third day it was clear to me that though this lady’s intentions were good, she was not a match for the position, so we completed

the week and agreed not to continue beyond that. This put me right back to where I began…no assistant and two busy and growing businesses with tons of admin work. The holidays followed, and there was a period of almost three weeks where I did not hear from James. It is at this point that my dissatisfaction with his service grew. I began to wonder whether he had given up on the file, thinking that I may be too hard to please or whether he simply wasn’t that good at his job. I then decided that perhaps I should just run an ad myself and conduct all of the screening and interviews. This is something to pay attention to…a lack of communication leads to dissatisfaction and thoughts of pulling the listing and “going fsbo”, which is where I was in my thinking. I wrote the ad to submit to the paper, and was going to call it in the next day. If anyone had asked me at that point whether I’d recommend the employment agency I engaged, I’d tell them to save their time and just run their own ad.

The same morning that I wrote the ad I had a call with my coach…yes of course I have a coach…in fact I have had coaches in various areas of my life for the past twenty years. Anyway, I was talking to my coach about my commitment to hiring only top tier talent and how I envisioned that to be. She told me to write down the characteristics of what I was looking for in an ideal assistant. That evening, I went through a visualization process of what working with the phenomenal assistant that I intended to find would be like. The next day I would run my ad.

The next afternoon, I got an excited call from James saying that he had just met with two great candidates. I decided to meet with both of them with minimal delay, and he was right…they were indeed both real strong applicants. I had one of them back for a second interview, and hired her that week. She turned out to be phenomenal in her organizational skills, attention to detail and a real treat to work with. Now after that experience, if anyone asked me whether I’d recommend the employment agency I used, I’d say yes wholeheartedly. It’s possible that James just got lucky…it’s also possible that he always found great candidates and this one just took a bit longer than normal. Frankly, it doesn’t matter, because I’m no different than the vast majority of your sellers with very simple wants…they want results and to be communicated with in the process. If you deliver the result that they hired you for, most of them will think that you’re wonderful and not hesitate to refer you to others. On the other hand, if you don’t accomplish the result of getting their home sold, you could do open houses and run full page ads for their home each and every weekend, it doesn’t matter…they pretty much think you’re a bum and blame you for the fact that their home didn’t sell.

It’s important that your sellers understand this up front and know what to expect during their listing. The more you prepare them, the better off you’ll be. I used to say to my sellers right after getting the listing, “It doesn’t matter what I do…I don’t actually expect you to be satisfied with my service until I get your home sold, because that’s what you’ve hired me to do, isn’t it? So if you’re frustrated at some point during this process, just know that that’s normal, and it will all change once we sell your home.” This had the effect of not having them be dissatisfied at all, because if they did get frustrated, they’d remember what I’d said back on Day One, and if they forgot we’d remind them.