Real Estate and Self-Deception – Buyers
I love buyers. Without them, there would be no real estate transactions but more than that, most of my buyers have been awesome, grateful people. Many have turned into repeat clients and done several transactions with me. I’ve helped their friends and family and even some of their children. I love those people but no one wants to hear me talk about the great ones.
You want to hear horror stories. I don’t have any awful folks because I work by referral primarily and that helps but I have one account about a buyer I fired.
I had a problem. The client I was working with was doing some stuff that made my life difficult. Without going into too much detail, she had a house to sell and wanted to buy another but was doing a few shady things around the deal. It had me worried so I called my attorney and my coach to ask for advice.
My attorney got back to me first and I spilled out the details and we talked about it. After discussing it we decided that I could have her sign a disclosure, have a heart-to-heart, and go ahead and work together. After all, it was a couple of deals and I needed the money.
My coach called me next and I told him I had it worked out after talking to my attorney but he said “No, I carved out the time and I’d like to hear the story” so I spent about 20 minutes telling him the detail.
After I was done he was quiet for while and finally asked “Have you ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail?”. Well, that was unexpected. I said yes and was curious about where this was going.
He then said ” well, you’ll understand when I say ‘run away, run away!‘.
We laughed and after that, I decided to tell the client we were not a good fit for each other. The stress was just too high and I found that I was more relaxed after I fired her and got 5 new clients throughout the next couple of weeks.
I guess the moral to the story is “If you have a client (or employee, for that matter) that you think you should fire and don’t, you’re embezzling from your own company”.
Thanks for listening,
Jerry