Matt Lahood, CEO of The Agency, reveals his best Scripts & Dialogues and techniques for Vendor and Buyer Management.
Matt explains:
How to get buyers to experience FOMO
The tendency for agents to fall into the trap of becoming the “Second Vendor”
How to have the difficult conversion about price alignment with humour using The 'Haircut Analogy'
The full training with Matt Lahood and many of the top 1% of agents, is only in the Real Estate Gym
Tom Panos:
Matty Lahood is a very close friend and colleague of both the real estate gym and myself and arguably one of the greatest thought leaders in actually I'd say in the world in terms of understanding the psychology and behaviour of real estate agents. When he was at McGrath's for a few decades he was the super coach that would look after all the teams. Um, and what I like about maddie is he's got a good understanding of real life. Real estate, you know, there's not a hell of a lot of. You know, maddie.
Tom Panos:
I said to a guy this morning I saw him on the bay run and he said to me about a trainer that told him to do things which to to me sounded unreasonable. And I'm a trainer and the trainer hasn't listed or ever sold a house himself. And I just said to the guy I said listen. I said have an open mind. But if you're ever unsure about something, you ask the person that's giving you advice have you done it? Do you do it? And if the answer is no, tell them to go get stuffed and to leave you alone, mate.
Matt Lahood:
That's so true.
Tom Panos:
But, Matty, you were a very successful agent in the eastern suburbs before you took executive roles in Soles Leadership and your role now with the agency.
Matt Lahood:
Owners hate that when you say look, you know what's happening at the moment, tom is. People are popping into the Joneses down the road and the Joneses agents using your house to help them close their purchases. Yeah yeah, they hate hearing that. So what we've got to do is we've got to steal back the buyers.
Tom Panos:
I'm going to give you credit on a deal I was involved putting together last Saturday with a buyer we negotiated. It was out in the MacArthur area. It was out in the MacArthur area. It was 50 grand short. It was 45 minutes post-auction negotiation and all I did, matty is went over, picked up my board. I said guys, it's exhausted, I know what you're going to say. I said it's exhausted. I said it's not going to happen. I said I've given it enough time. I said but anyway, I said it's been a pleasure meeting you. I might see you at other auctions and I want to thank you so much because the 45 minutes that we all put here today hasn't gone to waste. The good news is our vendors are now at a really exciting figure and this property will get sold on Monday and that would not have happened without you, right, matty? They bought the property.
Matt Lahood:
Yeah, you say it more articulate than I do. I used to say, well I did. To say the same thing was look, thanks so much. We're really thank you for bidding what you've done. It's a shame I can't sell it to you because you've done all the bullicking work to help me get it down, to sell it to someone else and you should be getting the spoils of that outcome. But anyway, I'll let you know what it sells for. Actually I've got someone coming through in half an hour, matty, that even sounds.
Tom Panos:
In some of the areas that I work in, that even sounds. You were a lot more polite. No, that would. That would have gone down. Now, matty, I want to ask you more. So we're talking about you're talking about like, frequency of contact being super critical. You're talking about the content of the content, matty. Charles Tarby used to say if you don't sell the best of your business, you're going to lose their house. You might be selling your own right, or some of those lines. You actually had a quote. The agent doesn't control the price. Be careful of becoming the second owner.
Matt Lahood:
Yes, yeah, that's what I say to my agents all the time. You know you become ineffective, tom, as a negotiator when you take a position. Your job is not to take a position, it's not to be the owner, it's not to be the buyer. Your job is to extract maximum out of the buyer and get the owner to accept what the maximum offer is you can produce in a given period of time. It's not to stand on this side with a vendor and say, oh, it's worth that price, it's worth that price. Or come over to the buyer and say you should take that price. The buyer's saying, here it is, and agree with them. So it's easy.
Matt Lahood:
Sometimes agents back themselves into a corner. I've had it a number of times in my one-on-ones. An agent will call me up and here's my favorite line. They ring me and they go Matty, I can't sell this property. I've done everything. What else do you think I should do? Because it's worth what I listed it at. I'll say, right, okay, that's becoming the second vendor. It's worth what I listed it at? Well, okay. So here's my favourite line to them Okay.
Matt Lahood:
So what do you got it on at, tom, it's on at two million. You've got no buyers. No, no, everyone's dropped off. There's no buyers. Okay, what if we relisted it today at a million? Oh what, there'd be buyers everywhere, or they'll be climbing all over it. They'd be lining up from either side of the street.
Matt Lahood:
Nice to say this to the owners, right? So, okay, there are buyers, but they're just not at two million. Is that what you just told me? Oh, yeah, but we're not going to give it away. You know that one about not going to give it. No, give it away. Don't confuse giving away and selling it for market value. There's two different things here Giving it away and selling it for market value. Don't confuse those two things, tom. So that would be how I would say to my owner, you know and the other thing is the other favourite one we use no-transcript.
Matt Lahood:
So I'd say, mr and mrs smith, look, with all due respect, dropping it from 780 to 769 is like you know, when you go to the hairdresser and they just give you a trim, you go home. Your partner doesn't even know you've had a haircut. I said dropping it so the market can notice it. We need to get the shears out and cut it. Go bald, nearly right. People go wow, you've had a haircut, that's wow, you've had a price reduction, right. Because they're not going to notice it. We need to get the noticing out there.
Tom Panos:
I love that. I absolutely love it, because what you're trying to do is attract another layer of buyers. Correct and Matty. There's another great one-liner that you have and I think you use it at a listing presentation which is relevant to what we're talking about, and that is, mr and Mrs Vendor, that's given you a test ride of the real estate gym. In the real estate gym, we've got all the information you need to succeed, whether it's prospecting, listing presentations, scripts, dialogues, how to actually have the best templates and have a process driven business. You can join the real estate gym. The doors are open now and it is less than one coffee a day as an investment.
