Incorporate a Strategy Into Your Offer Review Plan

Naming an offer review time can, and should, be both organized and strategic.

What do you think of a 7 pm deadline on offer review?

That is no good and smells of an agent who isn’t positioning their seller for real success.

I recently was involved with an agent who had a review time of 7 pm.

Seriously, I had to double check that the time was correct because it was so late in the evening for this.

It also made me question whether the listing agent had another full time job and wasn’t available to do the job as a broker until 7 pm.

Either way, it was completely unnecessary and she did her client a disservice.

Let me explain

Part of why sellers hire you is to manage the process.

Part of managing the process is to make the day of reviewing offers as simple and stress free as possible.

This takes time and expertise and includes managing the timing of all this to not make your seller be fatigued.

The process I was recently involved in went on till 11 pm and both the lender representing my buyer and me were bemoaning the fact that this didn’t need to be this way, or go this late.

We all needed to be in bed.

Instead, we were keeping the hope alive for 4 other buyers late into the night.  No one is as sharp or has any reserve to make the best decisions at 10 pm in a high stress, high stakes, environment.

What would have been better?

How about a review time of noon or 2 pm?

You then have the chance to collect the offers, make an offer spreadsheet, call brokers about changes, talk with lenders, etc. in the afternoon. During business hours.

Then, when your buyers then come to the office at 5 pm after work, or even 6 pm, there is an easy process for them. They simply decide on a buyer based on your calls, work and spreadsheet done earlier in the day.

And all can be complete by 7 pm at the latest.

What else?

I often ask sellers to take the afternoon off and come in around 3 or 4 pm to be able to have it all done by 5 pm. They can then go have a celebratory dinner together and everyone gets home, and stops working, at a reasonable hour.

If you are interested in learning more about how to manage this process, I will be teaching a PopLAB course at the Learning Lab for one hour on how to manage this both effectively and strategically.

PopLAB classes are one hour in length but also carry one hour of clock hour credit and after you have accumulated the 3 one hour classes, you get the 3 clock hour certificate at the end of the 3rd class.

Review the Learning Lab course catalog now.

Hope you can join us and up your own professional real estate game.