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When he started, this top-ranked agent was given two pieces of simple advice that he’s stuck to ever since, and now he is ranked as one of the country’s top-performing agents.
When BresicWhitney’s Andrew Liddle started in real estate in 2010, he attended a talk by a renowned local auctioneer.
“He turned up in his nice Mercedes, and he was well dressed and spoke well,” Mr Liddle, ranked 80th in the REB Top 100 Agents for 2018, told REB on the Secrets of the Top 100 Agents podcast.
“I thought that guy looks like he knows what he’s doing, so I called him afterwards. ‘You don’t know me. I’ve only been in real estate two weeks, but I’m desperate to do well. What can I do?’”
They met for coffee.
“He gave me two bits of advice: Be a nice person and look after buyers, and the rest will sort of take care of itself.”
Mr Liddle said that those bits of advice sound “very obvious”, but he still sticks to them today.
“The first, to be a nice person, sounds very obvious, but be someone that people want to deal with. Relate to people — old, young, in-between — to try and get on people’s level. Be someone that people want to deal with, because it is a really big decision and an emotional decision for a lot of people.”
He said that the second advice is equally as intuitive.
“We speak about looking after buyers on a daily basis, and I know a lot of agents probably don’t understand what it means exactly,” Mr Liddle said.
“I think today’s buyers are tomorrow’s sellers, and it’s challenging sometimes to focus on that because we all want now. We all want the gratification now, and I still feel that sometimes, that frustration of I helped someone, now where’s the reward or the financial gain from it.”
Mr Liddle said that, in his early days, he focused hard on buyers, and still does so today.
“I had a situation recently where a buyer asked me to represent them on behalf of a negotiation for purchasing through another agent,” the agent said.
“And it was very much a case of you’ve helped us on the buying side of things, so the business for our sale is uncontested.”
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