You’ll find many agents claim that they work hard for their clients. But do they? After all, as an agent you’re usually not building a home, your not responsible for a lot of the spokes that go into the purchase of a home. And yet you claim you work hard for your clients? But how? More importantly do your buyers or sellers recognize that your working hard?

One thing you know as an agent is that you spend a lot of time on the phone. It’s in these moments that you really earn your money, respect from your clients, rave reviews and even referrals.

For example you’re asked a question that needs to involve another person. This individual could be the person handling the mortgage, an inspector, and appraiser, a contractor an attorney or any number of individuals that can be instrumental in putting a deal together or keeping a deal together.

How you handle these third party interactions is critical to your overall success.

Here’s the game plan.

When asked about something, often times it’s easier to say “you need to call …”.

Instead say this. “We need to call ..”.

Then depending on the situation and in most cases, you should be the one that takes responsibility to make the call, even if you know for a fact that the client would make the call. The only time I can think of where you would want to have the client  make the call is if you think the information they are seeking is going to get too detailed that you might mess up the relay of that information. In those cases, perhaps a three way conference call should be initiated. That way you stay in the loop and you know what was communicated to your client. If you make the call and it becomes apparent that the information needs to be relayed directly to the client, then you need to communicate that to the person you are talking to and try and schedule an appointment for them to call your client. This will hold them accountable. Don’t just ask them to call and leave it up to them. They can be lousy at follow up, they could have a meeting that will take them out of the office for the next several hours and you’re client is expecting an answer. Scheduling a call is paramount.

When you make the call.

So you’ve decided that you will make the call on behalf of the client. You could say something like this… “Mary, let me give them a call and I’ll call you back when I get an answer.” For those calls that you are making on behalf of the client, you’ve probably said something very similar to this hundreds of times.

What I have seen over my years with salespeople is the art of keeping that commitment timely.

 You need to let them know you’ll call them right back. At the very least tell them if you don’t hear from me in the next 10 minutes then you were not able to get a hold of that person. You don’t want them sitting around for an hour waiting for your call. Better yet, you should call them back and tell them you had to leave a message.

 Alan Weiss, millionaire consultant has a standing 1 hour return call. For a little more on this topic read his article “What Actually Constitutes Superior Customer Service“