Make your meetings with real estate agents more productive

Learn to ask the right questions to make your meetings more productive

Make your meetings with real estate agents more productive
Part II -- What is the best time to set up an appointment with a real estate agent? I get them to agree to meet with me, but at that point I am hesitant to suggest a time for the fear that they can't make that date and then I am back to square one.
--Bruce from Wisconsin

 
I felt that it was important to expand upon this question as last week we discussed setting up the meeting but we really have not talked about what to say so that the meeting is more productive. We also mentioned meeting with rookies, which we will cover next week.
 
So, assuming that we have started with a proclamation that we will only take 15 minutes of their time, how do we make the minutes more productive? In order to do this, we need to get the Realtor talking instead of us talking and that means asking questions.  The person asking the questions is actually controlling the conversation, not the talker.
 
And we are not talking about short-answer questions such as, "Do you have a loan officer that you use?" We are talking about open-ended questions such as: What is the greatest challenge you face today and how are you attempting to overcome it? What do you think makes you more successful than other real estate agents?
 
Questions such as these will get them talking -- and if they run over the time limit, it is not because you are keeping them with a concerted sales pitch.  What you have to do is use the information they are delivering as an opportunity to suggest partnering with them in some way. For example, if they say that they hold a lot of open houses, you can ask if they typically have a loan officer present during the event. Next week we will talk more specifically about meeting with a newer agent.. 
--Dave Hershman
 
Dave Hershman has been the leading author and a top speaker for the industry for decades with six books authored and hundreds of articles published. His website is www.originationpro.com. If you have a reaction to this commentary or another question you would like answered in this column? Email Dave directly at [email protected].