I hear it. I see it. I’m guilty of it.

We are letting busy get in the way of doing the important work for our clients.

The strong Seller’s market across the country is making us all feel and act very busy. We are frantic, rushed, tired, anxious, and we are making expensive mistakes. We are failing to build successful strategies to get our clients into homes or get their homes sold.

The societal pressure to accept busyness is significant. But great agents resist this fatal attraction and stay present, calm, and conscious of their responsibility to do valuable work for their clients.

Imagine if you were buying or selling a home in this market. Would you want an agent who doesn’t have the time or capacity to gather all of the vital information you need to make the best decisions? Would you be happy with an agent who only had a few moments to spend preparing your offer and no strategy to get it accepted other than “offer the highest price”?

Would you list with an agent who arrived at the presentation late, disheveled, and too frenetic to connect with you at a human level?

How would you feel about an agent who sent you an email full of spelling errors, grammatical errors and was virtually impossible to understand or, worse, intended for someone else?

I am hearing and seeing all of this behavior frequently, and I know it will keep you from doing deals. And worse, it could land you in some real trouble with the powers that be.

Many things drive this culture of busy right now, but the primary one is agents working with buyers who aren’t getting their offers accepted.

It’s hard, and I get it.
If there are eight offers on a property, seven buyers are disappointed, and seven agents have done a ton of work and are back at square 1 with their clients. If there are 40 offers, it’s 39 who have been unsuccessful. That’s a lot of wasted person-hours.

Good listing agents are building strategies to get their seller clients the highest price. Part of this strategy is typically to attract as many offers as possible to drive the top offers higher. You are being used as a pawn in someone else’s strategy.

If you want to get deals done in this market, you need to be highly strategic. Strategy is what is winning listing presentations right now, and strategy is getting buyers into winning situations. Strategy isn’t a way of doing things; it’s a mindset – a way of thinking. To do this well, you can’t be frenetically busy.
Look around at the most successful agents. Are they frantic? Sure, they have lots on their plate, but they aren’t running around in circles with offers that don’t go through and making mistakes at every turn.

Please slow down, be present, say no to work that will not result in a sale, and be your best self for the clients who trust you to help them navigate this challenging market.