having my character questioned...

So, I just went through a situation that I think shows very well some of the parts of this career and this industry that the average person does not think about too much. Being an agent in an ultra-competitive real estate industry while trying to earn listings while also negotiating your salary in commission percentage is a very difficult task, one that can often result in tensions with acquaintances and friends who are interviewing other agents for the same job. Most of what is below is an e-mail correspondance between a potential seller-client and me, and I hope that my last e-mail is especially informational to whoever is reading this as they think about the role of an agent and why to hire one agent over another...

So, what happened? Well, a couple of weeks ago, an acquaintance of mine from church invited me over his house to interview for the job of listing his home. I thought the meeting went pretty well; usually at these meetings, the sellers I speak with are pretty impressed by the comprehensive nature of my marketing plan and I put myself in the driver's seat to get the listing.

At this listing appointment, I found out that this acquaintance from church and his wife were also interviewing a local agent who had sold a property down the road just the month prior. My appointment with them was on a Wednesday; they were meeting with the other agent, who works as a team with her husband, the very next day on that Thursday. Now in competing situations, I make it a point to try to educate the consumer on what factors are most important in comparing one agent to another, and I definitely did so on this occasion. At the end of the meeting I told the sellers that I would follow up the next day with an e-mail, and then follow up again on the following Monday, but the sellers said they would be ready to make a decision as soon as they were finished with their meeting the next night.

So, Thursday came and went. Now, normally, if you don't hear pretty early that you have the job in a situation like this, you likely have already lost the job, or you are definitely not in a favorable situation. In light of this, I wrote another e-mail on late Friday afternoon. Here is pretty much the entirety of that e-mail with all specific details taken out:

Dear SELLER,

I know I said I would wait until Monday to contact you again but in my experience, if I don’t hear the day after the last scheduled agent interview, that’s usually “bad news” from where I sit. If I am wrong here, great; it will be my pleasure to work with and for you in the upcoming weeks and month! If not, I would like to clarify that I think this is not only “bad news” for me, but for my potential clients as well. If I didn’t think I was the best guy for the job, I wouldn’t be much of a Realtor. Correspondingly, if right now you are leaning toward (or have tentatively agreed to) use another Realtor, let me know what it would take for me to earn your business.

SELLER, this e-mail is not out of desperation, but out of a passion for the job that I hope you saw on Wednesday; I genuinely like what I do and I don’t like missing out on opportunities like this one! The other agent that you interviewed last night may have sold another home in that subdivision in just one weekend at $xK earlier last month, but that home had x bedrooms and was...in immaculate shape from the pictures... How will THE OTHER AGENT do with a home that requires a little more finesse when the only other competition is $xK less and has been on the market for x weeks?

I guess what I am saying is, if you are leaning toward the other agent, do so because you think THE OTHER AGENT has a more comprehensive marketing plan, while being careful about assuming that your home will sell quickly simply because where it is. Indeed, this might be the case, but it might not! In my opinion, with your desired timeline, counting too much on a quick sale without having a comprehensive marketing gameplan in place is a risk that I would strongly recommend against taking.

If nothing else, SELLERS, if you have decided to list with the other agent and that decision is final, please give me feedback on why I didn’t earn the right to your business. I am consistently working to improve my marketing plan and how I communicate the many benefits of it to my potential clients, and your feedback in exchange for the time and energy that I put into preparing the materials for our meeting on Wednesday would be greatly appreciated.

So, I look forward to hearing from you no matter what within the next 2-4 days or sooner and, in the meantime, have a great weekend.

Sincerely,
Greg

The reply I got two days later shocked me:

Greg,

When I was first trained in hiring, which is how I treat this situation, I learned some key points to look for. Later, I heard someone summarize these same points as the three C's -- competence, character, and chemistry.

As for competence, I have no reason to question you. Character, until I received this note to which I reply (more on that later), I hadn't had reason to question.
But chemistry wasn't there and you seem to put little value on chemistry.

This note of yours confirmed the decision not to select you, as it makes me wonder about your character. You seem to question the competence of another agent. Anyone who must build themselves up by tearing another down, or implying as much, leaves me uncertain about the character issue. And it does smack of desperation. There are also the implied questions of our ability to judge between two agents.

Greg, worry about your competency, not that of other agents, and work on the personal relationships, and realize not everyone who is selling a house perfectly matches you as a part of a team...

SELLER

In reply to this, I sent a brief e-mail apologizing to the seller for obviously offending him in some way, making it clear that I knew that I didn't get the job, and then asking him if he would be willing to call me, as e-mail seemed an impersonal way of responding to the issues he brought up. When I didn't hear anything in reply, I wrote the following e-mail last night, at around 2am when I had finished up everything that I needed to do in the office:

Hey, SELLER,

When I didn't hear from you after requesting a phone call, I planned to let everything just drop. However, as the days have passed, something doesn't feel right about not responding a little more thoughtfully to your e-mail to me. I honestly feel like you did the Biblical thing in your e-mail: you had "something against your brother" and you informed him of it. Now, knowing that you have "something against me", I feel it unwise and unBiblical not to go to you in return.

It is not my intention to go through your e-mail point-by-point, as I feel that doing so would be ill-advised and make this e-mail seem to be more of a "defense" as opposed to something more heartfelt and sincere. I really do apologize to both Hope and you for any way that you might have been offended by anything that was communicated to you by me. The e-mail I wrote that seemed to cause the most offense was written when I felt (apparently correctly) that I had nothing to lose from a business standpoint in making one last attempt to earn your business. As a second-year whom, although very accomplished considering my short time in the business, still must make the most of every opportunity that comes my way, letting any piece of potential business go without making sure that I truly tried everything I could to earn that business is unwise. Of course, in writing the e-mail, I didn't want to lose your respect, as I obviously have if you are now forced to question my character, and I regret that development. There are people who would have seen that e-mail as revealing a level of dedication and "fire" that they want in their Realtor; I apologize for not taking my audience more into consideration in this instance.

I also apologize for unintentionally implying that you are incompetent to make your own choice of Realtor; I think the next couple of paragraphs will really help you see the real estate industry as I see it. In this business, 10% of the agents do 80% of the business, and the other 90% of agents really aren't very good agents (or they are still young in the business and establishing themselves). I understand that, to you, me saying something like this is "tearing down" the other agents, and I really don't know how to respond to this impression that you got of me as someone who "must build themselves up by tearing another down". In all honesty, I don't think that comments like this are vindictive or self-serving at their core, as much as they are really describing the nature of this industry.

As I compete for business, I try to make it a point not to "bad talk" my competition (and I apologize if I really did fall short on this point), but I often will raise questions that must be asked in evaluating competency. Even so, I aim to leave the door open for another agent having a superior marketing plan and a superior ability to get the job done, and to indicate in some manner that these are good reasons to use one agent over another (in contrast to the issues of commission splits or promised sales prices which are often very poor reasons to use one agent over another; in my opinion, anyone that lets these latter issues be their "guide" often really doesn't understand how a real estate transaction really works and/or what the role of the agent is in a real estate transaction).

Let me put all of this another way: I live in a very competitive industry that is very confusing to the average consumer and I admit that I don't think that average consumer is very good at making proper decisions in who to use as an agent. And, SELLER, this belief of mine even applies to clients who have used me! I have clients whom have chosen me because they know me from poker games, or I happened to answer the phone when they called my office, or they got a letter from me in the mail, etc....I even have one client who chose to work with me because she read on my website that I have two cats. How are these good reasons to choose the person that is going to be a fundamental part of the buying or selling of the most valuable physical asset in your life? In truth, as I see it, these reasons aren't very good, especially when all it takes is a credit card and the ability to pass a test that one can take an unlimited number of times to be a Realtor. In all seriousness, while most of the Realtors in Maryland are very nice, well-intentioned people, most of them are also not very good at their jobs, which is why 60% of the agents in Maryland handled 4 transactions or less last year.

What this means for me is that, when I go out and interview for a job, I am usually competing against agents that don't do one-third as much for their clients as I do and, in my mind, this is why I feel free to say some of the things I do about how to truly evaluate agents. In this case, I competed against an agent-team that is clearly in the top 10% (I have looked up the Catons' statistics and the results that they have gotten in their career and they are quite an impressive team) and I am truly glad for you that you have the ability to be represented by such a good agent-team.

Maybe the paragraphs above do nothing but give evidence to the main complaint that you seem to have against me: when the rubber meets the road, I place far less value on chemistry than I do on competency (even my extensive client-appreciation program and relational marketing systems are all built around me establishing myself as a competent agent that can be counted on to get a job done). Perhaps ironically, I believe that the relationships I build with my clients are often very meaningful, to the point that my primary lending partner, who has been in the business for 6 years, has told his boss, "Greg becomes better friends with his clients than any agent I have ever worked with!" Of course, these relationships normally happen over the course of a transaction, after I have established myself in my clients' minds as an ethical, hardworking, and trustworthy professional. If I focused too much on showing you this professional part of myself in our meeting, and not enough time showing you that I also wanted to be your friend, I apologize for that, too. You can rest assured that words that you have shared with me in your last e-mail will certainly cause me to question the place of "chemistry" in my business model in the months to follow and I am grateful to you for this, even if I ultimately decide not to make many changes.

I guess that's really all that should/could be said at this time. As you can tell by the time, I have been very busy lately, the major reason that this e-mail has been delayed until now. I do hope that you feel able/willing to respond when you get a chance, but I will not hold it against you if you don't...

Thanks again, SELLER...

Sincerely,
Greg

If you got through all of that, I trust that you found it interesting to some degree. Thanks for reading, and I'll post again soon.

Peace,
Greg