Sales Tip When Your Property Is For Sale

When your property is for sale, every person who walks through your Leasing Office door is not a real Prospect. Though you know you should behave as if they are, it is sometimes a difficult task. I won’t say I always know a True Prospect when he enters, but … Generally what happens during the pre-contract stage, is every potential buyer – even before they come to tour your community – sends a Shopper or has someone call you to test the phone skills of whoever answers the telephone. For Leasing Team members, there is no additional stress in this. However, the telephone call could determine a potential job offer if the Shopper turns out to be the new Buyer and thus, Owner. Managers, on the other hand, generally do not answer these phone calls. I am a Manager, but I also answer the phone.

Have I told you lately that for me, answering the telephone is a learned skill? 

Last Friday I answered the phone and a gentleman began asking questions about accepting a short term lease proposal. At this time of the year, that is really all I want to accept! (But I did not say that.) I set up an appointment for him and his wife to come and tour one of the townhouses to see if that would meet their needs. Now, there wasn’t anything special about the conversation but I always have a nagging doubt these days if the person is “for real” or not.

Let me say this. There is nothing in the world more paranoia-producing than when your property is for sale. People will call all day long asking every market survey question you can imagine. They will ask you every Fair Housing question, including, “Do you take people of color there?” What????? People of color? The last time someone asked me that (three weeks ago), I said, “Sure, I will take blue people, green people, yellow people. What color are you referring to specifically?”

The couple arrived in the morning instead of our agreed upon afternoon appointment time, but that was fine with me. We sat and talked for a long while about their decision to move and downsize and all the other probing questions. Very well mannered, very nicely dressed, this retired couple was engaging and I began thinking I did not think they were game playing at all.

We toured the available townhouse and came back to Office to discuss the terms of a leasing contract. As they walked to the door to leave, the wife turned to her husband and told him to fill out all the paperwork and write a check because she was happy with everything and saw no reason to look anywhere else.

She was shaking her head, “Oh, this is going to be so nice! I am not interested in going anywhere else!” she said. Her husband held her elbow and he escorted her through the open door. He turned to say over his shoulder, “We want to move into our home before the holidays!”

I nodded and told him I would make it happen. It would be my pleasure. Sales tip: not every one is a Shopper and you cannot always know by talking to them over the phone.