Jonar Nader speaks with Gregg Toyama of Harcourts about how we can charge more for our services. Jonar also touches on his concept of ‘WoW’ which stands for Worth or Wealth.
There are two videos below. The second one is of a higher quality for those with high-speed internet connection. The first video is 11 Mb. The second is 20 Mb. Video length is 4 minutes and 50 seconds. Further below is a transcript of the video.
Here is the transcript:
Host: Jonar, part of your key message as a consultant is you spoke about strategies to get customers to pay more and be happy to do that. How do you think that can relate to our real estate industry?
Jonar Nader: You know, in the training programs that people hold for real estate agents, there’s the question of, ‘What do I do if my customer asks me, can you please give me a discount on the commission you’re going to charge for the sale?’ And in that training program, they say, this is what you tell the customer. Sorry, if I give you a discount on the commission for the sale, it proves to you that I buckle under pressure and if I’m likely to give away a commission to you, then I’m likely to give away value from your house.
Now, that is the standard training but I don’t think that that’s the best thing you can say. The best thing you can say is to demonstrate to someone where the value is so that it’s not a question of, ‘Will you take two percent or three percent or two and a half percent?’ It’s not the question. The question is not how much I pay you. It’s how much value you’re going to give me. And if you can demonstrate value, people will stretch. That’s called elasticity.
So for example, take running shoes and we all know some very famous brand of running shoes. You see a kid with them. He hardly works at $7 an hour yet he’s wearing $300 worth of rubber. And you say to the kid, ‘You’re a bit silly, young man. $300, there’s one down the road for $30.’ He says, ‘No, I don’t want it.’ In fact, you can buy two for $30 down at the – no, I don’t want it. Why is that? Because the kid is happy to pay more. We can stretch his elasticity to $300.
I recall recently there was this huge case about the underwear with this company that makes underwear in Australia and they had to – I think, sack 1800 people or so because I had to go to China for manufacturing and the CEO of this underwear company said, ‘Look. I’m sorry you have to go to China for manufacturing but the Aussies won’t pay 50 cents extra per piece of underwear.’ I thought, well, that’s a bit strange because Calvin Klein has been charging $30 more per piece of underwear. So, there is elasticity. People will pay 50 cents more and $30 more and ask a lady with a Prada handbag, $4000 more than is reasonable.
So now you’re saying to me that my most precious asset which is usually my home, you are so fixated on the price and you’re not concerned about the value, the speed, how long is your house on the market not selling. So here we are haggling over a few percentage points. Yet if your house is 60, 90 days on the market not selling, what damage is that to you versus the half of the percent you might get from me?
And so, I want people to want to pay more with pleasure not because I’m going to make them feel good but because I’m going to show them that I do charge more and we should boldly say at Harcourts, ‘We do charge more.’ How else do you think we can afford you, the level of attention that you deserve, the level of the speed that you require? We have back-up people. We have databases. We have internets. We have experts. We have the academy. These things have to be paid for.
So, taking money from a customer isn’t a sense of, you know, you’re ripping me off. It’s a sense of please, take all it takes so long as there is value and I bring that down to W-O-W. Wow. W-O-W is wow. And that stands for worth or wealth. So, to charge the customer more and have the customer pay more with pleasure, easy if there is worth or wealth. So don’t argue about the percentage. Let me show you the worth or wealth. And, in the process, I’ll treat you like my brother and I’ll tell you the secrets of the industry and I’ll tell you what to watch out for because there are a lot of people out there trying to trap you. And I’m not here to trap you.
So, once someone trusts you and says, ‘Wow, I’m glad you told me this. I didn’t realize this.’ There are so many things people don’t realize. Because it’s not our field, is it? I don’t know anything about real estate or plumbing or this or that, the customer would say. So they’re trusting you but there’s suspicion because they think you are just in it to make a buck. It’s a career. It’s a profession. It requires a huge amount of skill and training. But if we don’t show them that, then they’ll only see a guy in a suit. How do they know how many years of training is behind this suit? And so, we need to make that evident not just by saying it. See, saying doesn’t mean anything. I can say, please like me. Do you like me now? I’m going to tell you a joke and it will be funny. Is that for me to say or for you to decide?
We’re often are so concerned about stating things. I love stealing from the walls of companies, their mission and vision statements and I mix them up and at workshops, I say, ‘Here, here’s a mission or vision statement. Whose is this?’ They think – alright. Is this a hamburger joint or a law firm? They can’t work it out. They’re all the same. And so, we should just stop saying things. We will look after you. We are small. We are big. We care. Words. If you have to utter it in words, it doesn’t exist.
Here’s the rule in life. Anything I want you to think about me can’t come from my lips. If I want you to think I’m a cool, hip guy, I can’t walk up to you and say, ‘Hey, Gregg, we haven’t met before but I got to tell you this. I’m a cool, hip guy.’ I mean, it just doesn’t work. If I want you to think I’m honest, I can’t say it. So therefore, a lot of real estate agents out there are just telling you things because it sounds good. Well, we don’t want to tell anybody anything. We want them to feel it, to know it, to recognize it, to see it. And therefore, once they’ve determined through the proof that we give them and proof is not words. It’s through the education, through showing them our graphs, showing them the last 20 sales I’ve made in the area, showing them the last 20 open houses I have made, showing them my database. Then they go, ‘This guy is not talk. He’s evident.’
And that’s where I think we can evaporate from the question of percentages more or less. People will say, ‘Yes, of course, I paid more. I would be happy to pay more again.’ And that’s what my clients often say to me. They say, ‘At first, we thought you were expensive but now we actually think we’re getting good bargain.’ I go, ‘Great. Well, next time, I’ll charge you more.’
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