Knowledge is power: why feedback after viewings is still all-important
Showing homes to potential occupants is an agent's bread and butter. And as an agent, you’ve got to recognise buying signals and pick up whatever information you can. Yet there's one other important thing a lot of agents seem to have forgotten - getting feedback on viewings. And nowadays, experts think feedback is more important than ever.
Showing homes to potential occupants is estate and letting agents’ bread and butter. And it’s not just the physical act of walking potential buyers or tenants around. As an agent, you’ve got to recognise buying signals and pick up whatever crumbs of information you can along the way. After all, identifying an interested party, understanding what’s important to them, and then gently steering their interest towards something more concrete is how you earn a crust.
However, intelligence gathering shouldn’t stop with the viewing itself. You’ve also got to let the property marinade in a viewer’s mind overnight and ask for feedback once they’ve had 24 hours to reflect. Every insight, and every morsel of information, informs your sales strategy moving forward. That’s why feedback after viewings remains the best thing since sliced bread. Indeed, some experts think it’s more important than it’s ever been.
Reading the tea leaves
Despite the importance of fielding formal feedback, some agents neglect this part of their job and approach it half-heartedly. That’s because, well, it just seems too much like hard work sometimes - especially if potential buyers and tenants are hard to track down and tricky to read.
Although comments such as “when can we move in?” make someone’s interest in a property obvious, shrewd viewers don’t want to weaken their negotiating position by coming across as too keen. Therefore, they might use more guarded language like “we’re thinking about it” which, sadly, might also be construed as a polite brushoff.
A good agent, of course, will follow up and ask more probing questions to reveal a party’s real intentions. One good approach is to ask “how does this home compare to others you’ve seen?” as it gets straight to the point in a polite way that shouldn’t make the subject feel too uncomfortable. If the response is, “we’ve seen bigger” then it could mean that the home is overpriced. But if they reply, “it’s on our shortlist” then it’s obviously game on.
Either way, however, agents need to recognise which comments point to a possible sale and which responses indicate that they’re flogging a dead horse. But there’s no room for getting disheartened. You won’t always get positive feedback after viewings but that’s no reason not to ask the question in the first place.
The benefits of feedback after viewings
Fortunately, potential buyers and tenants are usually open to having a chat about properties they’ve seen. After all, revealing their likes and dislikes helps you to find them the right home in the end. Feedback after viewings is also important to confirm a home’s strengths and weaknesses. It might even point to a specific problem that can be addressed, like that garish wallpaper in the hallway.
Consequently, feedback is still the oil that makes the property machine run smoothly. It tells you whether a home is priced correctly, whether it has cosmetic problems, and it can even reveal whether the flow of a property needs improving. Knocking down an internal wall and creating an open plan feel can do wonders for a home’s marketability. Just ask Kirstie Allsopp.
Arguably the most important thing, however, is that sellers not only need but expect feedback after viewings. Selling a home can cause them a huge amount of anxiety, especially if they’ve already found somewhere to move to and want a quick sale. There’s only one thing worse than negative feedback from a vendor’s perspective: no feedback at all.
Providing prompt feedback is also a sign of good customer service. Poor service, underlined by a failure to provide regular feedback, is one of the main reasons why customers change agents. And who wants that?
Why feedback after viewings is important for you, too
Finally, gathering feedback is great because it helps agents do what they do best: talking to customers, persuading them, reassuring them, and ultimately sealing deals. You know the score: if a viewer is worried about one particular aspect of a home then gently remind them that there’s no such thing as a perfect pad. House hunting is about finding compromises that the customer can live with.
However, never forget that your ability to match the right buyer with the right sort of property increases dramatically if you know their mind. And only getting feedback after viewings can provide this insight. So never forget to contact them the day after a viewing when the home’s still fresh in their mind but they’ve also had time to mull things over. Even negative feedback is valuable if it helps you to find them something more suitable in the future.
It’s good to talk
Although technology has changed the face of the property sector in recent times, and so much is now done online, talking to people and getting to know them is still a massive part of what estate and letting agents do. That’s why the most successful agents are those that work hand in hand with vendors and landlords whilst maintaining an open dialogue with potential buyers and tenants.
Chasing comprehensive feedback after viewings is therefore just as important as it’s ever been - perhaps more so now that property searches (as well as some admin tasks) are done digitally and there are fewer opportunities to chat.
Meanwhile, collecting regular feedback obviously increases your chances of selling or letting properties - especially those that prove trickier to shift. Yes, it’s possible to sell any home without doing your research; but why not use all the tools available? It’s all guesswork unless you ask the right questions and then collate the answers efficiently.
Finally, pursuing feedback after viewings helps you to stay in touch with market trends. The sector is always changing; fashions are changing; viewers’ needs and aspirations are evolving. Therefore, fielding feedback provides valuable insight into modern home-hunters’ key priorities and deal-breakers. Communication, even in this modern world, is still king.