Stop making promises!

Just this morning a friend called a service provider and was told by his office that he’d call back in “10 minutes”. 30 minutes later, he was on the phone to let her know that he’d call back “in an hour”. 2 ¼ hours later, she’s still waiting for his call.

Two broken promises within the first 3 hours of the day. How keen do you think she is to give him her business now?

Wouldn’t it have been easier for his office to say that he would “call her back”, or “call her today”.

Then when he’d called 30 minutes later to let her know he couldn’t help her immediately she would have been pleasantly surprised rather than thinking “is this your definition of 10 minutes?”

What’s more, he doubled the mistake by making yet another promise (which was soon to be broken).

My advice:

• Don’t allow others to make promises on your behalf.
• Don’t make promises where you don’t have to.
• When you do make a promise – KEEP IT (write it down, tattoo it on your arm, put a reminder in your phone, figure out a way to make sure you keep your promises, or let the person know that you can’t (prior to the promise elapsing)
• Learn what a promise is. A promise is a claim that you’ll do something. Don’t feel like you need to say “I promise” for it to be a promise, all you need to say is “I will”.

And finally – just remember the old adage that promises are like babies… easy to make, hard to deliver.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Currently Kirsty heads up www.reallysold.com the premium online copywriting site for real estate agents and is a co-director of Elephant Property www.elephantproperty.com.au Launceston, Tasmania's only boutique real estate agency purely for investment property owners. Kirsty's other ventures are outlined at her website www.kirstydunphey.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter.

What I would look for when choosing a real estate agent

I’ve worked in real estate since I was 15 years old. One of the main reasons I wanted to open my own agency at the age of 21 was that I was aware that not all real estate agents are equal. Some are dreams, some are nightmares and many are in the middle. I get asked all the time – “how do I find a dream agent to sell my home?”, so this is what I’d look for in trying to find my dream agent.

An agent who can SHOW me why they’re saying they can sell my home for a certain price. The way they would need to show me would be by showing me what comparable properties had sold within the past 3 – 6 months (I’d want to see addresses, photos and sale prices).  Even better if they have personally or at least their company have been responsible for some of these sales.

I don’t want an agent who:

• Finds out and then tells me the price I want to hear
• Finds out the other agent quoted prices and then quotes a selling price higher to get the business
• Plucks a price out of their head
• Bases their price on properties that are not comparable to mine

I want to look at your website, your property presentations on real estate portals (like realestate.com.au), your brochures, your sign boards, your newspaper advertisements and see:

• Consistency of branding
• Quality
• Readability
• Descriptive eye catching wording

I want options and I want to know why you recommend that marketing option for my property, not a one size fits all approach.

Their presentation is question based and they take time to find out about me and what I’m looking for. They know their stuff, but they find out what areas I’m most concerned about before launching into a recorded message-like presentation.

The nightmare agent talks at me

Their presentation is said at me and they speak more than 80% of the time.

I can test this out by asking them to drop their commission (if they don’t negotiate hard for their money, what are they going to do when it comes to negotiating for mine?). I can also test their negotiation skills if I’ve ever bought from them before – did they get top dollar out of me then?

The other agent offered you 20% off? Well we can offer you 25%... The other agent said they’d do that? Well I can do better.

I can test this out by showing up 10 minutes before one of their scheduled open homes and watching them arrive, set up and conduct the open. I can test it by taking note of any promises they make (they’ll call me Monday, they’ll find that information out by Wednesday) and see if they live up to it.

The nightmare agent talks at me

The nightmare agent screams in at the last minute for an open home, doesn’t tell me their name and doesn’t follow up.

And they’re more than happy to let me know about their fans by showing me testimonials (lots of glowing ones) and by allowing me to contact people they’ve sold houses for in the past month.

(to complain)

Long after the sale.

As soon as they get paid.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Currently Kirsty heads up www.reallysold.com the premium online copywriting site for real estate agents and is a co-director of Elephant Property www.elephantproperty.com.au Launceston, Tasmania's only boutique real estate agency purely for investment property owners. Kirsty's other ventures are outlined at her website www.kirstydunphey.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter.

Ready To Give Up?

Winston Churchill’s often misquoted as giving an entire speech where all he said was “never give up” three times, in fact he said the following and a little more:  "Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.” En Vogue and about a squillion others all know that it “‘aint over til the fat lady sings”! And even Rick Astley said he was “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down”… (yes, that was indeed a lame way to get an 80’s superstar into the blog!)

But you know what…with all of these stellar reference points, I’m still surprised at how much people do give up.

The PR firm who recent didn’t reply to my email asking them about their services.

The real estate agent who told me that a property I had asked him to value was worth: “what it cost me, plus whatever profit I would be happy with”.

And my saddest quitter for the week showed themselves to me when I recently ran a contest to have a logo designed on www.99designs.com where we received over 180 entries. A few days into the contest I asked for a re-tweak on one of my favourite submissions. I didn’t hear anything back for a few days only to find out via a message later on that they’d “given up” when they’d seen the quality of the other entries.  Funny thing – they were my favourite entry at the time they “gave up” and still ended up being my second favourite over all. If they’d not given up and been able to do the re-tweak, who knows what could have happened!

Now… I don’t believe you should never give up, have a read of Seth Godin’s book the Dip and you’ll see what I mean here… but in these cases please try:

1.           Not to give up new business when it’s staring you right in the eye asking to deposit money into your account.

2.           Not to give up when your “giving-up” reply will only serve to infuriate your client.

3.           Not to give up when you’re just about to cross the finish line!

Today how bout we all let the only giving up you do be to “give it up” to someone in your life who rarely gives up!

I’ll start by giving it up to:

Lara Solomon, author of the hot on the shelves new business book Brand New Day who shares in diary format all the ups and downs of launching her Mocks business (think: Bridget Jones meets Richard Branson). Lara could have given up so many times, but she kept on plugging away and her story’s darn inspirational. 

Rudy Ruettiger, whose story of never giving up on his dream to play football with Notre Dame was so inspirationally told in the 1993 movie Rudy.

Chistopher Reeve, the real superman to so many of us especially through his worth raising funds for spinal chord research in his last years with us.

Tim Ferriss, whose book – the Four Hour Work Week was turned down by 14 publishers (perhaps because the initial title was Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit!). Tim didn’t give up though and now his book has been translated into 31 langugages and was simultaneously the #1 book in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Kirsty Dunphey is the youngest ever Australian Telstra Young Business Woman of the Year, author of two books (her latest release is Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can) and a passionate entrepreneur who started at age 15 and opened her own real estate agency at 21. Currently Kirsty heads up www.reallysold.com the premium online copywriting site for real estate agents and is a co-director of Elephant Property www.elephantproperty.com.au Launceston, Tasmania's only boutique real estate agency purely for investment property owners. Kirsty's other ventures are outlined at her website www.kirstydunphey.com where you can also sign up for her newsletter.