Full Fee Agent is written for real estate agents but it’s a book that applies to anyone is sales. It covers a lot of ideas we tread over but includes something I’ve undervalued over time. That is relationships matter a lot. Our outcomes are some mix of what and who we know. The bridge for each of my career changes was a person, not a subject, degree, or work-sample. Salespersons have known this a long time and Voss’ book emphasizes that.
Here is a summary: build empathy with people by seeing things from their point of view and understanding its importance. Done well, this builds trust and supercharges someone’s willingness to partner. Trust is inversely related to CAC. Finally, with trust, the deal terms (Full Fee) become worthwhile.
The biggest ideas is legibility.
- Home owners see dollar sign 🏷️
- Agents see actions ☎️
But these aren’t actually that important.
The illegible connective tissue is empathy and trust.
Agents who misunderstand spend time and money 🤑 on people who aren’t actually going to be clients 🤮. Don’t confuse the counts of dollars, calls, and miles driven for meaning within empathy and trust.
Full Fee Agent is written from the point of view of an agent, here are four tactical steps:
🙉 Listen, listen, listen, not location is the key part of real estate. Use tools like mirroring and labeling (‘that sounds stressful, that must have been agonizing,…’). In all caps Voss writes: “Your primary job as a real estate agent is to cultivate relationships”.
🐘 Get the elephant out early. Build trust by pointing out flaws. Not only does this build trust, but it brings up deal stressors. 😬 Bracing is one way to do this: “I have some bad news”. Often what people hear is not as bad as what people think.
👣 Cross the street to see things from their point of view. Rather than you-you-you, think about what the clients want. “The first step toward your goal of having your influence stick is to learn what’s really going on inside their heads. Not the pro/ con, profit/ loss calculations but the emotions that so often override logical reasoning.”
🎯 Calibrated questions. Rather than salesy talk, get customers to lead the way. ‘What would success look like to you’. “Never forget,” Voss writes, “people will die over their autonomy.”
Full Fee Agent isn’t a great book. Never Split the Difference, Uncommon Service, The Sandler Rules, and Start with No are all better. But sometimes mimicry (if you’re an agent, or in sales of the real estate variety) makes a difference. If so, the book will help.
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