One of the simplest concepts I discuss with my clients is one I have found to hold the truest over the years, a little flippantly I call it the ‘Yes, Yes, No’ rule and I always urge potential sellers to consider their home and their approach to marketing with it in mind.
It’s common sense really and has an affinity with basic sales principles, it has a great impact on how effective your marketing will be and will make a difference to your success in selling.
Everyone knows property is about compromise. There is no such thing as the perfect home, perfection if ever approached comes from the life we lead somewhere not the property itself.
As a seller think of this. Every prospective home buyer approaches the process with a set of desires, the things they want in their first or next home. Often these are labelled as the things they need, in reality they are a wish list. A good agent gets to the root of what buyers need over what they want.
As a seller you understand that people compromise when they make a decision to purchase. That’s good for you because your home won’t be perfect in every single sense so buyers will forgive you for something that isn’t quite as they hoped.
The Yes, Yes, No rule comes properly into play with buyers viewing your home. This assumes that your agent has done some degree of qualification and matching to introduce a buyer to a home that suits their requirements and the negotiator isn’t just tacking on a viewing for the sake of boosting numbers.
The Yes, Yes, No rule relates to the number of issues people will forgive you for and please understand issues will be different for everyone. There are a finite number of issues people will look past on their way to buying a home and again I stress that this assumes people are viewing somewhere that is a sensible match, somewhere they feel is genuinely a possible option for them to buy. If a prospective purchaser is adamant about finding a quiet retreat in the countryside and an estate agent sends them to a home that is under a railway viaduct overlooking a motorway with an industrial steelworks as a neighbour, well all bets are off obviously.
The Yes, Yes, No rule relates to the number of things that can be wrong before a prospective purchaser usually walks away. Look at your home with an open mind and ask yourself how many negatives you would encounter as a buyer. The conversation will end up being something like this, ‘well that isn’t ideal but Yes we’re interested’ and ‘ok so that also isn’t quite what we hoped for but Yes we’re interested’, then comes, ‘but that is also an issue so No it’s not right for us!’
If there is one thing not ideal be it price or something else the chances are a buyer will still say ‘Yes I’m interested’ and you have a chance to conclude a negotiation, a second issue or possible negative can most often still be overcome by a good estate agent but if there are three issues for people to contend with then the third is probably the ‘No’ and you have most likely lost the chance of a sale.
Buyers will forgive twice generally, the third issue is farewell! So how does your home rate on the Yes, Yes, No scale?
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