FSBO Guide - Authorify

Part III: Closing the Seller on Hiring You

How to Get Every Seller to Like You — So They List with You I’ve seen a lot of real estate agents get listings, even those who don’t do the best job. Maybe I should say they do a low-quality job. The reason they got that listing was that the seller liked them . You don’t have to do a low-quality job selling houses in order to use that same strategy. Instead, you can do a great-quality job selling houses and still use this strategy to get even more listings. That is, you can figure out how to get every seller to like you and build rapport with people. It’s so important to build rapport. One of the things I recommend doing if you want to learn how to build a better rapport with people is to get the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s an excellent book, and it will show you all the ins and outs of how to build better relationships. Take me, for example. I’ve obtained a lot of listings by showing people how I can do a better job of marketing their house. However, I’ve also gotten a lot of listings just because I was good at developing a rapport with that seller. Here is my biggest advantage in this area: I’m a good listener. Maybe I’m not the best listener, but I am halfway decent at it. I will sit there and listen to someone. They’ll tell me their story for an hour or sometimes two hours (I try not to let it go that long). I remember a recent example involving a former architect. I sat there and he told me stories. I was genuinely interested in what he had to say because I love houses. I didn’t “back slap” him. I wasn’t fake. I asked him questions about how he designs houses. We talked for probably an hour-and-a-half. I’m not sure if that was what got me the listing, but I think it was a big part of it. So do this: listen to people. Let them talk! It makes a huge difference because everybody wants someone to listen to them. So let them feel important.