Managing Home Buyers With a Small Team

While many real estate agents focus their attention on getting listings, Sarita Dua loves buyers, and they make up the lion’s share of her business. Of the 143 transactions her team closed in 2013, totaling $48 million in their Portland West (Ore.) market center, 97 were buyer-side transactions. For Dua, agents don’t need a large team to make buyers a profitable part of their business. Here are some strategies that work.

Build a Reputation

In an area that’s turned into a hot seller’s market where it’s not unusual to get multiple offers on a house within days of its market premiere, Dua and her small team of four – two showing agents, a transaction coordinator and a listing coordinator – have become known as the team that will “get the house for you.” Managing such a substantial base of buyers is all about mindset, she says.

“As that shift [to a seller’s market] happened, some agents would get a lead and be disappointed because it was a buyer and not a seller. Buyers can be more work because you’re showing more houses. Our strategy is a little different.
We love buyers in a seller’s market. You can control the buyer,” she says.

By “control,” Dua means that agents can keep showing buyers properties, varying the criteria and presenting more options, until they find something buyers love, while listing agents have to deal with any of the challenges a listing has. But she can be creative in solving buyer challenges, even with a small team. Her transaction coordinator handles the paperwork while her showing agents are “real inventory specialists,” looking at more than 200 houses each month, she says.

Dua attracts many buyers because she’s a skilled negotiator with a reputation for getting the deal done. She’s encountered a number of buyers who were about to give up, having lost a number of properties in the bidding process. But she’s so confident in her representation that she sends a mailer to renters saying, “Are you tired of losing? We have what it takes to win in this market.” She says she’s been in many situations where the property has had as many as 23 offers and she was the one who landed the contract. The key, she says, is being prepared and being able to zero in on what the seller wants, whether it’s a quick closing or the assurance that the buyer is pre-screened and able to follow through on the transaction.

Create a Buyer System

Dua’s showing agents handle most of the upfront work unless it’s a referral that needs her presence on the first introduction. Her assistants handle lead conversion, consulting and showing, starting with an office consultant. If it’s a purchased lead, it’s assigned immediately to a showing agent roundrobin style, unless Dua feels one agent has a particular strength that will help
the transaction along.

“I’m a big NBA fan. You’re not going to put your rookie in for 48 minutes,” she says. “When I do have a strong showing agent, they’re going to get more because it’s an opportunity. They’re working at their highest level,including sign calls and referrals.”

The agents use the KW associate Claudia Restrepo’s LPMAMA script, which is an acronym for:
Location What home is the buyer interested in?
Price What price range are they shopping in?
Motivation How motivated are they to buy a home?
Approved Have they been approved for a loan?
Mortgage What is the mortgage amount they have been approved for?
Agent Do they have an agent?

From there, they work on scheduling an in-office meeting. Once the buyer comes to the office for a meeting, the agents explain the different roles of everyone on the team. In order to work with her team, the buyer must be prequalified and sign a buyer’s agreement. Buyers like working with her team because they want to know that someone is working hard on finding them a property and will act quickly when an opportunity arises, she says. Once the paperwork is completed, agents begin showing homes based on the information they gathered in the consultation. Dua gets involved when the buyers are ready to write an offer.

“When they come in the office, we’re interviewing them as well. We want them to choose us, but if they want a $500,000 house for $200,000 and they want us at their beck and call, we’re probably not the right fit for them,” Dua says.

Turning Happy Buyers into a Lead Generation Machine

A solid 85 percent of Dua’s business is from repeat clients or referrals: “People who like me, who trust me and have worked with me in the past,” she says. Her team is trained to cultivate listing and referral opportunities from buyers and they have a sophisticated system of staying in touch with referral sources as well as current, existing and past clients.

The team hosts several events every year and Dua says they each bring about three to five referrals. In 2013, they hosted a summer barbeque, December holiday party, family bowling party and a pumpkin pie giveaway at Thanksgiving.

Dua also has what she calls her “top 24.” These are her top 24 clients or referral sources who she calls monthly and tries to meet face-to-face as often as she can. She uses the DISC to identify their dominant behavior. For example, high Is want more interaction and experiences, while high Ds just want to cut to the chase. She also ranks clients based on the volume of business and likelihood of referrals, whom she calls once each quarter or once a year.

In addition, Dua does a series of informal videos that she sends by email. They are unscripted updates of market data, what she’s seeing and what she believes is happening in the market, based on her professional expertise. At first she fussed about the script and her appearance, but the more informal she became, the better they worked, she discovered.

“I finally got over what I look like and how I sound and what my hair looks like,” she says.

Social media is also an important marketing and keep-in-touch tool for Dua’s team. She mixes sales and personal information on her Facebook page, including a range of information from market data to information about her children. Recently, for example, she posted about her own relocation, lamenting that real estate professionals should move every few years just to know what clients go through.

Dua’s system has been developed over time and works well for her. Her natural ability to negotiate and put people at ease also helps her team be successful. While she’s in the market for another showing assistant, she’s also happy with the team she has, she says.