If Jim Duncan sold real estate in the greater Seattle area, we would recruit him for Agent Match. He’s good.

Here’s one of his clients:

We overlooked this home because it only had a photo of the outside, but the home next door to it was for sale and I found a virtual tour through Trulia- it is beautiful. Depending on the shape this one is in, we could go in at $240-250 and have some cash left for renovations. The outside looks well-kept.

The realtor is doing his client a disservice by only having one photo, but the resultant lack of interest may work to our advantage.

And here is his response:

I like to show properties that have one or fewer photos - it usually means that the Seller will have had less traffic and will therefore be more willing to negotiate a lower offer.

If your Realtor has actually seen every property you clients might want, you can seriously leverage bad staging, no staging, bad photos and inept marketing to find gems in the rough. If you’re selling, take a look at your Realtor’s past and current listings and ask yourself “would I want to check out that house?”

I keep meaning to post an update to Estately Agent Match, but I’m going to put it off for another day.

People often ask us how we differentiate between great agents and the rest (and let me tell you, there are a lot of “the rest”). I usually say something about client recommendations and a certain feeling we get with respect to how they talk about clients and their work. Some talk about clients like they’re cattle to be herded and some talk about them like frat boys talk about the sorority girls from their last party. But some agents talk about clients as though they actually like them; they talk about the joys of finding the right house and bringing the knowledge from hundreds of prior experiences buying and selling to help their clients avoid common and not-so-common pitfalls. They often end up describing themselves more like coaches and less like sales people.

But Jeff Kempe actually puts better words to it than I can (emphasis mine):

“Selling isn’t about glib one liners, happy hour entertaining or pat answers to pre-conceived objections. It’s considerably less about form than substance. It’s about having the knowledge and developing the trust in order to fill the real needs of your customers, better than anyone else.” LOVE parental mode.”

…

Learn the difference between ACTING like you care about your customers and ACTUALLY caring. That one thing changes everything. Actually caring means thoroughly knowing customer needs and adapting to them, not expecting them to adapt to yours.

Michael Cook been hitting on this too (emphasis mine):

Great sales firms engender consumer loyalty because they are a consultant first and a salesperson second. While working for Procter & Gamble in sales, I learned early on that no one likes sales people, but everyone likes free, knowledgable consultants. When I learned to be both, I started setting sells records and my customers loved me.

Know a real estate agent who fits this description? Send us an email to agent_match (at) estately.com telling us why they were the best for you and we’ll consider recommending them to our clients. We already have a team of great agents working with clients, but we could always make it better.

Today we’re launching Estately Agent Match, a program to help Washington State home buyers and sellers find the best real estate agent for them. In a nutshell, you tell us what you need in an agent and we match you with 3 real estate agents who are a good match. Each agent will send you a personal introduction and you’ll be able to see reviews and ratings from their past clients. You interview your favorites and you’re ready to pair the power of Estately real estate search with expert advice from a great agent.

Why Agent Match? Ever since we launched the best Seattle-area real estate search site in December, we’ve had users emailing us asking how they can visit properties on the site and wondering if we could recommend any great agents. We had a great search, but at some point our users wanted to bridge over into the real world and get some professional advice. Since then, we’ve produced some happy beta testers and selectively recruited some of the best agents in Western Washington to partner with us. They come from big-name brokerages and small, intimate brokerages and have a variety of approaches to buying and selling properties, but they have some things in common: a commitment to their clients, businesses built on referrals from previous clients, and passionate clients who have nothing but good things to say about their agents.

Why do we match people with three agents? We’re confident that we matching each client with great agents, but personality is important in buying or selling a home. You should be really be able to trust your agent, so we want to be sure that you really get the right agent for you.

We’re excited to be the first site to really focus on helping people find the best agent for them. We’ve recruited a rock-star team of agents, many of whom do so much business from past clients and personal recommendations that we’re the first site they’ve worked with.