How to make your fee a non-issue

Why should an owner hire you?

I ran a session with a coaching client's team this week and asked them a simple question: what are your points of difference?

They had good answers:

• We work as a team
• We're the experts in this area
• We match buyers across our databases
• We have the knowledge and experience to spot potential problems early

Every one of those is true. Every one of those is worth something. And every one of those, stated exactly like that in a listing presentation, is worth almost nothing to an owner.

Here's why: Those are features.

And more importantly, an owner has no way of verifying any of those statements. The agent who came through yesterday afternoon said the same four things. So did the one before that.

If everything we say sounds identical, we've made ourselves a commodity. And when a service looks like a commodity, price becomes the only remaining decision-making tool an owner has.

This guide is about closing the gap between the value you genuinely bring and the value an owner can actually see.

Here are 5 steps you can take to make your commission fee a non-issue...

1. Examine your points of difference

Try this test on anything you plan to say at your next appraisal. Ask yourself: could the next agent through the door say the exact same sentence?

"We work as a team." Yes, they could say that.
"We're local experts." They could definitely say that.
"We have a great database." Everyone says that.

Now ask a harder question: so what? What does that actually mean for this owner, in this house, at this price point, right now?

A feature describes your business. A benefit describes what happens to their sale price, their timeframe, or their stress levels because of it.

2. Translate each one into a number or a story

Here's how those four features become things an owner can weigh up.

"We work as a team."

Translated: what percentage of your listings have attracted offers from buyers introduced by other salespeople in your office? What percentage were actually sold by a colleague rather than by you?

If the answer is 30%, that's a genuinely powerful thing to say out loud. "Three out of every ten homes I list are sold to a buyer that one of my colleagues brought in. If you list with an agent working on their own, you're relying on one person's contacts instead of a whole team's."

If you don't know the number, that's your homework. Go and count it.

"We're experts in this area."

Translated: how many homes have you personally sold in this suburb in the last 12 months? What is your average days on market compared to the area average? What is your average sale price against the initial appraisal range?

"I've sold 14 homes within a 2km radius of here in the past two years. My average time on the market is 22 days. The suburb average is 41."

That's an expert. The other version is just a claim.

"We match buyers across our databases."

Translated: how many buyers can you proactively introduce this specific property to on day one? Not how big your database is. How many real, active, price-qualified buyers looking in this bracket.

"Between me and my colleagues, we've personally met around 320 buyers at open homes for 3 bedroom homes in the past six months. 17 of them have made offers on other properties and are actively still looking. Those 17 people will get a personal phone call from me the day we go live, before your home hits Trade Me."

Owners understand that. It's specific, it's provable, and no one else is saying it.

"We have the knowledge and experience to spot problems."

Be careful with this one. Owners don't want an agent who is going to go looking for problems before the buyers are even interested. It's critical you demonstrate the benefit of this proactive approach.

Translated: tell them about a specific time your experience saved a deal that was about to fall over. For example, the building report that came back with a moisture reading, what you did in the 48 hours that followed, and the fact that the sale settled at the original price when most deals in that situation collapse.

Notice the pattern. Every translation is either a number you can quote or an event you can describe. Nothing else will pass the test with a sceptical owner.

Action step: take your top three points of difference and write the translation next to each one. If you can't produce a number or a story for a point of difference, it isn't one yet. It's an intention.

Next up, we're going to turn them into case studies for your listing toolkit and local area marketing.