|
FEATURE
ARTICLE
Raise your Standards
Ideal vs Toxic
clients
How To Get Your
Toxic Clients
To Willingly
Shape Up Or Ship Out!
 By
Coach Patti Kaprelian - Business & Personal Success Coach
Toxic clients, you know the ones – you cringe
when they call, they are an escrow from hell, you lose sleep thinking
about their transaction, you hate having to deal with their backlash,
they have their hand in your pocket and you have to fight them on
everything.
Toxic clients
are a reality that every Realtor is faced with. In defense to the toxic
client, most are not born to be that way. Any normal human being is
likely to become toxic when it concerns their family home and when lots
of money is at stake. Needless to say that doesn’t mean you have to
take what they dish out. Some Realtors deal with this problem by
qualifying and educating people in how they work. But the reality is
that most Realtors don’t (for some strange reason) and put up with these
clients and let the headaches mount transaction after transaction
leading to less production, profit and eventual burnout.
Your ability to
effectively increase the quality of these clients dramatically impacts
the success of your business and your personal quality of life. As
Realtor, you have the unique power to choose who you work with and in no
way do you have to tolerate working with toxic people. Let's look at
how you can achieve this.
Toxic
Clients Cost You A Fortune
In the
beginning, when you first
got into the business, you likely took on almost every client that was
breathing and eventually filled up all the hours in your days - and then
some! You ran around chasing people that you didn’t even know if they
were qualified or not because you were too afraid to ask for fear of
hearing “no”. You chased clients who were not loyal, or honest, nor
respectful, or coachable, or communicative, nor decisive. Some were
clearly Insane……Need I say more. In some cases you worked your tail off
and didn’t even see the closing. Sound familiar?
This all seemed
like a great strategy then but you ended up with a data base full of
“crazies”, then wondered why you hated prospecting or calling your past
clients. Forget in the beginning of your career, some of you
are doing that now and wondering what’s wrong. Am I communicating?
Not only do
toxic clients take up space that could be dedicated to more profitable
and rewarding clients, they add tremendous stress to your life. This
stress decreases your overall production by depleting your effectiveness
with your more valuable ideal clients, with your staff and, most
importantly, with your family and friends.
For example, if
you have a client (or clients) giving you headaches thru the
transaction, it takes extra time to handle the headaches and that takes
you away from the time you have to customer service your ideal clients
and prospect for more ideal clients to serve. On top of that, you'll
likely go home exhausted with little time, energy or patience left for
your family. As you can see these toxic clients create more impact than
you may initially think - definitely much more than is worth putting up
with.
NOTE: A certain
level of resistance is normal. Remember…. selling is helping people to
make a decision. It’s hard enough to choose which refrigerator to buy
let alone dealing with extreme dollars and stress of selling or owning a
home. If there weren’t any questions or resistance about the amount
of your fees, money, disclosures or inspections, there would be no need
for you!
It is your responsibility to clearly
communicate your expectations (your standards) to your clients so they
can know how to work with you. Otherwise, they are completely in the
dark assuming that everything is fine. Remember, you teach people how
to be with you. If they take advantage of you, you set that up. The
higher your standards the better off you are. Most Realtors don’t have
any standards or they are too low.
Ideally you would set the
expectations clearly when you initially take a client on - now, that’s a
future article.
The Most Professional Solution
"Raise your standards" is the most
professional and respectful option because you take responsibility for
your role in the Realtor-client relationship. You are acknowledging
that it is your responsibility to communicate to the client how they can
be a better client for you – they won’t know how to otherwise.
The best part of this process is that
the client makes the decision in the end. If they don’t feel that they
can or want to meet your expectations, they choose to fire themselves!
You’ll save yourself the stress and waste of firing clients that could
have become desirable "A" quality clients with some guidance from you.
Three
Choices For The Toxic Client
You can see that "Raising your
standards" is simple - just make your difficult clients aware of the
expectations that they are not meeting and let them decide how they'd
like to handle it. I call this a “shape up or ship out” conversation.
1.
Shape Up:
Rise to meet your expectations and become a desirable "A" client of
yours.
2.
Ship Out:
Not meet your expectations and find another Realtor.
Seven-
Steps To Eliminate Your Toxic Clients Today
Think of the difference it would make
in your business if you “raised your standards” and worked with only
Ideal Clients. Here's how:
1.
Look at your current undesirable listings, buyer and
seller leads.
2.
Write how they create stress for you and the expectations they
are not meeting.
3.
List what they’d have to do to meet your expectations.
4.
Call them and book a meeting in person or by phone.
5.
In your meeting tell them how they are not meeting your
expectations.
6.
Give them the 2 options to choose from; “Shape up or ship out.”
7.
Let them decide!
You too have a choice. Either you
choose to let your toxic clients control the quality of your business or
you choose to take control and make your work much more enjoyable.
I truly hope you choose to follow
through and choose to work with Ideal Clients vs. Toxic clients and
create a more enjoyable and profitable business.
Coach Patti specializes in breaking
through limits and has the ability to get to the heart of the matter
quickly while offering a wealth of dynamic and innovative techniques to
help people achieve their goals.
A
Professional Success Coach, trained through Coach University and the
Coach Training Institute. She is a Certified Toleration Specialist with
Coach University. She has held her California Real Estate License since
1987 where she was a Top Producing Realtor. For more then 10 years, she
has been focusing on Coaching and supporting Realtors to be successful
by creating strategies to attract what they want. She has coached
hundreds of agents Internationally. In her practice, Patti works closely
with Realtors, people in sales, and people that want to make a
difference or change in their life.
Patti
is a member of the Professional Coach and Mentor Association and
International Coach Federation. She has created coaching programs and
workshops for the Floyd Wickman's Organization. She has been a member of
the Brian Tracy's coaching team, and has been a Team Building Consultant
with Disney Studios. She specializes in breaking through self-made
limits! |
