and is cold when dealing with agents. When you encounter
such sellers, just play along. The one thing that you never
want to do is create tension by pushing your objectives on
them. Even if you don’t agree with something they say,
many times you just have to bite your tongue and resist
putting in your two cents on the subject. In order to win
over a seller like this, it will take a bit more patience and
perseverance than usual. You have to prove to them that
you won’t give up on them (like most agents probably have
done already), even though their attitude may be hard to
deal with. There will be good occasions for you to slip in
your tie-downs and get some minor closes.
Be Patient and Follow Up
Even if the phone conversation goes bad, set a time in
your FSBO Journal to call them back and stick to it.With
tough sellers, the follow-up calls will be further apart at
first, say five to eight days, which you then can narrow
down to around three to five days apart as the sellers be-
come more comfortable with you.
You’ll see that many of these sellers will turn around.
You may be shocked when you are able to list some tough
FSBOs, on whom you were about to give up. Why is that?
That’s because you have virtually no competition. All of
the other agents have moved on because they are intimi-
dated by tough sellers. But when that seller realizes that
they need an agent, who will come to mind? You!
Here is a sample dialogue from a tough seller:
The Real Estate Agent’s Guide to FSBOs