Our move to the mountaintop has been much slower than we expected. It's been two years since we purchased our land and the design process has taking a few twists and turns, but we finally have a final set of drawings and ideas for how we want to optimize the use of our land.
Finding the right builder is a key part of that process.
Recently we had reason to re-evaluate our builder selection. The local loan officer had provided us a list of local builders her clients had liked.
After some online research we called 8 of them.
Of the 8:
- 2 answered the phone because they actually had office staff, the rest went to voicemail.
- Another of the 8 did call back a couple of days later, but has since not responded to our follow up contacts.
- The two that answered both asked for copies of our plans to provide a quote.
- Of the two, one called back with follow up questions, the other hasn't even acknowledged that they received the plans.
From a consumer viewpoint, one of our key criteria for our builder is someone that can communicate well. We're 7 hours drive away from our new home site, so frequent visits on our part isn't going to be possible.
So based on our initial round of calls, most of the builders failed a basic block and tackle criteria: communication.
There may be legit reasons those builders didn't return our calls: family emergencies, they're hiking Mount Everest, they've got more business than they want so taking time to call us back isn't a priority...
On the other hand, taking 60 seconds to call back and say: "Thanks for the interest, but I'm booked out for the next two years so unless you want to wait, I can't help you" closes the loop.
As real estate agents and bloggers, we have plenty of our own block and tackle fundamentals to address:
- Blogging original relevant content frequently enough to matter
- Identifying our service areas
- Making it easy to know how to contact us
- Making our posts easy to read (visually appealing and vocabulary wise...save the 14 syllable words for your doctorate thesis)
- Avoiding the use of excessive real estate jargon when writing consumer facing posts
And of course if your blogging works, the fundamentals that follow:
- Responding promptly
- Demonstrating that your expertise actually matches up with your blog posts
- That how you WRITE that you do business is actually HOW you do business
Not every clients is right for us, but the courtesy of a conversation can also help put the consumer on the right path to finding the right agent for their needs.
Block and tackle stuff can make or break your reputation.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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