Why You Should Give Your Clients Homework as a Realtor

I want to talk about homework, not for you, for your clients. Hey, my name is Chance Brown, the broker owner of CB&A Realtors, and I make video content because I am passionate about helping Realtors build great businesses. I think that it is important that you give whether it's a buyer or a seller, homework to do before your initial consultation with them. You might do more later down in the process, but I think it's super important that before you meet with them in person, they have been given a task to complete. Now, there's some psychology to this, and there's some stuff that's just going to make it easier for you to do your job in this. Also, let's take a look at it from each side of the table. Before I sit down for a buyer consultation with a prospective buyer client, I always send them a form that we created called the three lists. And it's super simple. It is three columns on a piece of paper and one of them are things that they just absolutely have to have in their new home. Have to have it. Will not buy a house unless it has these things. Number two is nice to haves. Wouldn't particularly be a deal killer if it didn't have this, but it would be cool if it had this. And then the third list is these are the deal killers. If I walk into a house and it has this, I am not buying it. Period. End of story. We send that and we ask them to fill it out before we show up for the buyer consult.

On the seller side, we do a similar exercise. You can add or take away from this. We always want to have a spare key made cuz I'm making the assumption in their head that they're going to give it to me at the end of our listing appointment so that I can put it in a lock box. We want an HOA statement or a mortgage statement so we can do the numbers with them. Those are kind of simple ones, but we also have a form that we have them fill out where they kind of tell us their home's story. What do they like most about it? where do they spend the majority of their time? What have they upgraded or renovated or whatever that looks like in their home? Because that helps us tell the marketing story. But as we're sitting with them, it also gives us talking points in our listing consultation where we're talking about, hey, tell me about this this upgrade you did or this renovation you did. What was the thought process there?

So, we just have a deeper level of conversation about the home because also if this seller is going to end up as a buyer, it gives us some insight into that as well. Here's why homework is so important. Number one, it's going to make your job easier. When you show up, if you have a here's the things I like, here's the things I don't like. Here's the things that are hell no. Cool. It's going to make the conversation with that person a whole lot more simple. When you show up over here on the seller side and you've got what they love about their home, what they don't love about their home, what they've renovated, all that. It's going to make your life easier again talking to them, but also writing your marketing copy when it comes time to sell that home to someone else because the person who's already lived in there has told its story. The other thing it's going to do is it's going to give you a really good idea of who the heck you're working with. On the buyer side, if I roll up to that buyer consultation and that form has not been filled out, I know who I'm working with.