In this post, I’m going to give you a quick overview of how to win with buyers in a low inventory market. This isn’t going to be fully inclusive (for that you can watch the video), but it will definitely help you start upping your game. We’re going to go through a few different scenarios that will teach you some tactics that have the potential to help you double your success with buyers.

How to handle the 5-minute driveway meeting

It’s only five minutes. You’re not going to be able to cover everything you’d like. So, first things first — you want to learn about them and build rapport. That’s the goal. Ask them questions like how long have you been looking for homes? Follow the conversation. Let it be easy and natural.

Another thing to do, while you’re busy making it all easy and natural, is to magnify the pain of the problem they’re facing. You don’t need to get histrionic, simply set the stage with a question like have you heard how crazy the market is or it’s so crazy right now that lots of homes are selling before they even hit the market. 

This is also a great time here to let them know that you have a secret list of hundreds of homes that are for sale that other realtors don’t have. Bring it up and ask them if they have a minute to tell you what kind of home they’re looking for and that you’ll see if one of your coming soon homes fits the bill. You can then use this promise of looking into this for them as a means of setting up a second phone call or meeting.

You can close in two ways.

• Option 1: Do you have 20 minutes or so to review the list and see if there’s anything we have that might be a fit. This is the “right away” option.
• Option 2: I’ll review my list and see what might work! I also have a few other homes in mind that I think you might like. When would be a good time to see those homes and review the coming soon homes I find. This is the “later” option.

Once you have a second meeting set up, we often leave a Homebuyers Handbook with the buyer to review before our next meeting. When you give it to them say something like there’s some great stuff in here on how to get your offer accepted in this crazy market. We’ll go over it more when I see you Tuesday.

But, no matter what way you close the “5-minute driveway meeting,” the goal is to build rapport, identify a problem (get their search criteria but DON’T show them houses (that’s for the second meeting)), and provide a solution.

How to handle objections?

“Can you just email me the listings?” or “Can you show me the off-market homes now?”

You say: Unfortunately, our MLS doesn’t allow us to “market” homes that are not listed yet but we can show them to our active clients. Do you have a few minutes for me to explain more about how becoming a client of ours works? Tell me, what are you looking for in a home? 

How to handle an initial 20-minute buyer consultation

This one’s longer, so you’re going to cover some more ground. 

One thing we always cover is our Buyer Battle Plan. This is where a lot of our success comes in. We explain to the buyer how competitive it is out there and how we’ve got them covered. We might ask them: Have you heard about how many offers homes are getting right now? And then we might say to them: Getting your offer accepted is the hardest part of buying a home right now, take a look at the photos and texts! Most homes get 20 offers meaning 19 agents lost. Our team got 29 offers accepted last month! Our success is due to our Buyer Battle Plan. We don’t want to wait until you find your dream home to have a plan, by then it will be too late! (I break it all down in the video.)

Another thing that is really important in this longer meeting — that’s important in every meeting — is empathy. Find out what fears or concerns your potential buyer might have about purchasing the right house. Hear them out. Often, at this point, we’ll share with them our buyer satisfaction guarantee. 

If you have some good online reviews, you can also simply let them do their own research. Ask them what they do when they’re looking to buy a product on Amazon. Chances are the first thing they do is look at reviews. So you can say to them look, I know we just met and I get that but you don’t have to just take my word for it, google us and you will find tons of great reviews from past clients. I also always offer to provide references.

A few more quick tips before I go

If you want to learn more about how to find some more off market homes, and how to build a secret list of your own, to check out my post where I cover how to find off market properties. 

You can also learn about the number one tool we use to pre-sell-prospects: Highnote. It’s a fantastic piece of tech that I believe every realtor should use.

If you want to learn even more

Watch the full video presentation that accompanies this post, follow my blog for a great, ever growing list of agent resources. I’m always happy to help.