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NoHype Client Autopsy Template
Real estate is a people-driven industry. Agents are people, sellers are people, buyers are people, investors are people… so, every transaction must be an objective exchange between rational people, right?
WRONG!
People are what make the real estate industry so interesting! Frank could be inclined to use Christine as an agent because they both went to the same university, while Margaret Anne might sign Jay up to sell her home because his laugh reminds her of her favourite nephew.
Christine and Jay are both professional, licenced real estate agents in a market with a LOT of other equally qualified agents… but that wasn’t why they were chosen to do business with.
You’ll never know exactly why a prospect chooses you, because prospects are people looking for a professional real estate agent (also people!) to help facilitate a very personal transaction.
That doesn’t mean you need to be a comedian or a psychologist to get noticed, though… it just means that you need to have a plan.
Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been in business for a couple of months, or you’ve been in business for 50 years, it doesn’t matter! Regardless of how long you’ve been in the bizz, I would want you – and HIGHLY recommend you – to go through this sheet here:
The Client Autopsy! A bit macabre, but you’ll see why it works so well!
This template is the very same one we use here at NoHype; it helps us to better understand exactly who the people are that we want to do business with.
“But… don’t you want to do business with everybody?”
In a perfect world, yes. But unfortunately, some people are crazy! This is the real world, and we need to make a living, so let’s try to maximize time working with our ideal clients, and minimize time spent with our, um, less-than-ideal clients.
Not only will this process help you identify whom you’d prefer to work with, but it will give you a much better understanding of how to create targeted ads on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Let’s get started!
Keep in mind that you never have to fill out all three boxes. I just provide them in case you want to explore multiple examples of each client type.
I’ve started by just filling out the first box, and I’m going to open this up by putting in my absolute FAVOURITE type of client:
Relocation! I’m referring to individuals and families that are part of an organization that requires them to relocate every 3 to 4 years. Think military, government, security, police – typically a tight-knit organization with lots of internal networking.
Moving every 3 to 4 years! That’s a lot of buying and selling going on, and I know that when I do an exceptional job for a client coming into the area, I can expect some referrals, and then an opportunity to help them sell when it’s time for them to move on to their next posting.
From my own experience, people that fall under this category move FAST, and that’s because they get very little time to scout out available properties before they must get back to work. I’d say, on average, they’ve got about 5 days to purchase a home during their House-Hunting Trip (HHT).
And the referrals! We’ll talk about them later.
Let’s fill out another box:
Listings! I absolutely love working with listings.
For one thing, I was closing about 90% of these contracts – I had my system down pat: I knew how to get in, how to get out, do my presentation, make them fall in love with me, and just get the results!
I was good at them! Honestly, they only took about 2 hours of my time!
Since we’re talking about time, I’ve gone back into the first box and added the fact that it took about 12 hours of my time for the Relocation category. I know you’re thinking that that’s A LOT more time – and it is! – but remember that building an excellent rapport and relationship with the Relocation crew was a constant source of business for me. After all, I learned from my own experience that I’d get a minimum of 3 referrals per Relocation family that I worked with!
Even though you don’t HAVE to fill out all three of these boxes, I’m going to go ahead and fill out this last one.
First Time Buyers and Empty Nesters. I love working with these people. I hope this doesn’t seem cheesy, but it makes me happy to work with this category of people.
Typically, these are wonderful people to work with. I mean, the smiles and the stories that you get from the empty nesters, and then the excitement and the sense of accomplishment from first-timers – it gives me jitters just talking about it!
It really excited me, and I loved helping them! It wasn’t necessarily for the money or for saving time; first timers typically take the most amount of time – I’ll let you imagine what it’s like when Mom and Dad come in and they’re suddenly the experts on everything!
It’s important to love what you do, though, and working with these three groups brought me a lot of joy during my time as a real estate agent.
Let’s look at the other side of the coin now…
Now, I really don’t want to be offensive, but it’s very important to be honest with yourself here. You need to figure out who you do NOT want to do business with!
For me, personally, the lower income bracket was something I tried to avoid. That might not sound like a nice thing to say, but consider this: the average price for a home I sold was around $275k. But in this particular income margin, I averaged price-tags of about $150k.
Maybe it’s their first home (which overlaps with one of my favourite groups, but not every first-time homebuyer is very nice!), maybe it’s a move-up home, but I personally found this type of client to be extremely demanding. I remember SO much of my time being demanded, SO many things being asked for that just didn’t seem to make any sense!
I remember feeling angry, but as a public figure (every real estate agent should consider themself to be a public figure, by the way!) I couldn’t show how I felt. Ugh, it made me all sad, I would complain to my wife all the time… it wasn’t fun! The lower an item’s price, the more demanding your customers will be! Cars, homes, it’s the same thing!
It’s because – ah, I’m just gonna leave it there!
I could spend a long time trying to make excuses, and explain myself, but you know what?
I did not like selling cheaper homes! That’s it! Movin’ on!
Smokers!
Again, I don’t mean to be insulting, but I did NOT like working with smokers. Back in the day on house-hunting trips, a client had to get out of the car every 3-4 homes for a smoke, pitch the butt outside… it doesn’t matter how careful they were, they always smelled like smoke!
Then my CAR smelled like smoke… then I smelled like smoke!
Personally, I think I smell quite nice – it’s important to be presentable for clients, after all! – but the fragrant flower that is Steve Martel wilted with the smell of smoke around.
Not only did smoking make the entire process unpleasant for me personally – it made it awkward, professionally. Selling a home that’s been smoked in is HARD, and it’s not fun explaining to smokers why no one wants to buy their home… the whole process stinks!
Fact: homes that smell like smoke can sell for up to $100k LESS than what it could otherwise sell for! Whoever said smoking is an expensive habit wasn’t kidding!
I’m not going to apologize for it anymore – I just didn’t like working with smokers.
Just because I’m on a roll, here’s one last example in this category: KNOW IT ALLS.
I don’t think I need to elaborate very much with this one. When I stepped into a house and these people think they know it all, ugh, I just couldn’t do it. They were so arrogant – it felt like a battle!
I just wanted to say “I wish you the best. You know what you’re doing. Maybe think about getting your own real estate licence since you’re so good. I’m outta here!”
Guys, it is SO important to be honest with yourself when filling out these boxes!
I wish I could tell you that I love to work with anyone and everyone, that I’m the most patient person in the world and that I will do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make every client happy…
But that would be a huge lie. I’m a human being too, remember! I’ve only got so many hours in a day, and I want to spend as few of those hours as possible doing business with people I would rather avoid. I think that’s a reality in this industry, and the sooner you accept it, the better off you’ll be.
Let’s talk about something a bit more positive now:
That’s more like it!
This section might sound very similar to the FAVOURITE CLIENTS section we already filled in, but let’s tackle this section fresh and see what happens.
Maybe your most profitable group is from the higher income bracket because you know that they NEVER negotiate on commission because they’re from a high-income class.
A lot of people say: “I was a $1-million dollar home.” You’d think I’d be all OVER that, but you know what? NO! I didn’t want to touch that!
Something I like to do is write out my ideal price range. These are all just examples I’m providing, but remember I said that a home value of $275k is my average – and YES, I see the spelling mistake! It’s a herd word to spell, okay!
I wanted average-priced homes! My goal back when I was an agent was to aim either $50k above or below that $275k price tag. Anything more than $50k lower than my average, and I’d start to wade into the lower income group that was very demanding; anything above $50k, and I’d have to deal with a longer selling process, more time explaining why that’s the case. $275k became my sweet spot, and I was so good at it! I could sell ‘em quick!
A huge portion of my business came from this group, and that’s why I’ve included that price range.
OF COURSE my Relocation crew is back! They’re a bunch of superstars! The moment I had a military person inquire about buying a home, I knew that within the next 4 years I could expect at least 5 transactions as a result: buying the home, 3 referrals, and selling the home.
I don’t feel like filling out the third block. Next category!
Ask yourself “what group will have the highest purchase frequency in MY business, in MY community?” Within a 3 year period, who purchased the most? Try to narrow it down to one type of client.
It could be investors! I personally wouldn’t write this on mine because… well, because I didn’t really, really like working with them – which is ironic, because I once controlled more than a billion dollars of real estate: 2,108 units!
I WAS an investor!
But I didn’t like dealing with investors because they tended to fall into the know-it-all category.
(For the record, I am DEFINITELY not one of those! No way.)
But for you, maybe it is investors! Or it could be an organization that continuously refers people to you! Maybe they’re not the purchaser, but their people move in and out all the time, and need the services of a top-notch real estate agent.
My superstars: the Relocation crew strikes back!
Remember, though, that this is just me walking you through a template! My examples might be completely different from yours! Maybe, in your experience, millennials always seem to refer A LOT of people to you when you do good business with them!
Make this Client Autopsy your own, and use it to hone in on EXACTLY who you’d rather be doing business with… and who you’re rather not do business with. This is very important to do, because on the next step when you create your CLIENT AVATAR, this material will dictate how you’re going to place your marketing.
We only want to attract the people that make you happy, the people that purchase the most, and the people that give you the most money.
Simple as that!
NoHype Ideal High Profit Prospect Sheet
(or just call it the Client Avatar Form! It sounds cooler.)
Now that we’ve filled out our Client Autopsy sheet, we know EXACTLY what types of clients we want to work with… and we also know exactly what types of clients we DON’T want to work with.
Knowing who we want to do business with is just the first step, though!
Let’s focus on your perfect ideal high-profit prospects or clients. Using the template below, we’re going to learn how to hit it out of the park every time!
The NoHype Ideal High Profit Prospect Sheet is a template we use here at NoHype to better understand our ideal clients, and we encourage our clients to use it too!
Keep in mind that you will probably need 3-4 copies of this template. If you recall from my Client Autopsy video, I had 3 groups that I wanted to do business with: Military Personnel that I absolutely loved, I loved my Sellers, and I loved my First-time Home Buyers.
Instead of taking hours to fill out 4-5 of these sheets, though, I’m going to pick a single group and walk you through it.
I think you get it already, but I absolutely LOVED working with military individuals, so I’m going to go ahead of pick them as an example for my template.
I want you to keep in mind, though, that the purpose of filling out this Ideal Prospect Sheet isn’t to analyze the military lifestyle or anything like that – guys, this is just a useful tool for a real estate agent that wants to do business with members of the armed forces.
So! Let’s get started.
This first slide is a great way to illustrate this, but we don’t have to proceed through these four boxes in any order! Goals and Values will often overlap with each other, just like Challenges and Pain points will overlap. I just tried to enter Patriotism as a Goal… but then realized that was more of a Value! So I put it there instead.
Let your mind wander. The more you understand about your ideal prospects the better, so don’t hold back!
Let’s move on:
Okay, now we’ve got some goals written down. Typically, military personnel aim to finish their careers after 20-25 years of service, so I’ve included that. For a lot of people, that means early retirement! That might mean establishing a permanent home one day after all the crazy years of frequent relocation, so I like to keep these things in mind.
Something I noticed as well is that the military community tends to be family oriented, which I loved – I mean, I have four children myself! I’m not suggesting that you have children for this reason, but it’s good to be able to connect with your clients on an emotional level!
Before going on, let me just say that this is all from my own personal experience – I’m not guaranteeing that everyone who interacts with military personnel in a real estate context will have the same experience as me!
But I hope you do have the same experience as me, because servicemen and servicewomen are amazing individuals, and I feel lucky to have worked with them!
Let’s start addressing some of the challenges and pain points that military personnel might experience in a real estate context.
Moving every 3-4 years is a huge part of the military lifestyle, and it’s a great challenge. I could spend a long time exploring this point, but remember that we’re just brainstorming here. We don’t want to get bogged down by too many details – none of this needs to be perfect! We’re just getting to know the type of client we want to do lots of business with.
In Pain Points, I’ve written HHT (house-hunting trips) as their first and foremost pain point. Typically a military individual will get about a week to scope out a new community before being relocated there. That leaves about 5 EXTREMELY stressful days for someone to make an absolutely huge decision about where they are going to live for the next 3-4 years!
What if you, as their real estate agent, could make those 5 days as stress-free as possible? You can guarantee that their gratitude would come in the form of a lot of referrals!
Remember that we’re just brainstorming here! There’s no wrong way to go about this, so long as we’re learning more about our ideal group.
I’m just going to add in keywords (you don’t even have to use real sentences!) that they tend to be a close group of individuals that love and respect each other. I also decided to add as a separate point that they tend to stand up for each other – that’s just kind of the military vibe that I, myself, experienced during my time as a real estate agent working with military personnel.
We’re not just throwing as much paint onto the wall as we can, here! The reason you do this to really understand how to craft your message when it comes to speaking to whoever your Ideal High Profit Prospect is, how to compose your emails, creating programs – remember, we want you to stand OUT!, and being able to connect with your ideal prospects on an emotional level is a huge step to doing good business with them.
Trust me: the more you know about your ideal prospect, the better.
We’re almost done with this first section. I’m just going to add a few more to the Challenges & Pain Points section:
Children changing schools is a HUGE pain point, but it’s also a reality in the military lifestyle. What if you could eliminate it as a pain point by providing some excellent content on the benefit of changing schools? What if you had a thorough understanding of the schools in the area, and which ones might be an ideal fit for their child? I think you’d have some happy clients.
I won’t presume to understand the full extent of what deployment might mean, especially for a servicemember with a family, but I’m going to include it under Pain Points because it’s a reality that a lot of military personnel face.
Back to a more money-oriented Challenge, I’ve written down “losing money in a bad market.” When you’re relocating every 3-4 years, you increasing the odds of selling in a less-than-ideal market because you can’t really dictate when you buy or sell. It’s a stressful reality, and if you can alleviate some of that stress by providing some solid speculation on what the market will look like in 3-4 years, then you’ll be in your client’s good books.
The last one I’ll write down under challenges is “never having the same friends” because moving so frequently makes it difficult to establish long and consistent relationships.
This is marketing, guys! I’m not pretending to fully understand the military lifestyle, but I am trying to put myself into their shoes (or boots!) to get an idea of what they’re feeling, because that helps me relate to them, it helps me identify with them, locate them, and craft excellent emails and messages for them!
I could keep going and going here, guys, but I just want you to see what I’m aiming for, and that’s a better understanding of who I WANT to do business with as a real estate agent.
Section 3, here we come!
This is going to help us find our ideal prospects on Facebook. Sources of Information is going to help us identify where our clients get their information from – what books do they read? What magazines, blogs, etc. Who are their gurus?
This section will vary from group to group, obviously. For example, if it was “Entrepreneurs,” I would feel overwhelmed by the hundreds, maybe even thousands of gurus out there that they might subscribe to!
But to be honest… we’re going to leave this blank.
Why??
Because we’re not going to be using this to target any of our buyers and sellers on Facebook. If this was a different industry, I would say absolutely, let’s do it! But for the real estate industry, I’m just going to leave this alone.
We are absolutely going to tackle this 4th section, though!
Let’s talk about “Objections to the sale.” This part doesn’t necessarily have to do with our targeting, but it’ll definitely help you when you’re jumping on the phone with them, or reaching out via email, to be able to convert them into a signed HHT (house hunting trip) client!
So, why might your prospect object to the sale through you?
Maybe they already have a realtor. So, they fell in our funnel (which is good!) but they already have an agent with whom they’ve worked before. It happens!
What else?
In the video I’m having some troubles with the template! It’s not letting me write out all my points, so I’ll just list them off here:
It could be that they already have a referral, the classic “I’m just looking, thanks!”, the common “I’m not sure if you’re approved on the relocation list”, ah, we could go on, and on, and on! But by filling this out, you’re getting a good feel for what your prospects could potentially say NO to, and being prepared for those kinds of responses will help when you’re corresponding.
Let’s check out Role in the Purchase Process. This will vary greatly depending on what kind of group you’re targeting, but something I always like to include here is Spouse! Teamwork!
If you’re doing a HHT with an individual, and the spouse isn’t along for the experience… it’s not gonna work. It’s just NOT going to work! Maybe 1 out of 100 times, it’ll work, but the rest of the time they haven’t seen the whole process, they haven’t seen all the other houses, they don’t see the story behind why THIS is the perfect house!
Not having the spouse onboard, in my experience, usually backfires, so YOU need to make sure that the decision-maker is acting alongside the spouse.
Let me just slip out of the Military Personnel prospect for a moment and pretend I’m filling out my First-time Home Buyer sheet. As much as they – whether it’s newly-weds, a young couple, etc. – might say that THEY are the decision makers… Mom and Dad always have their input!
Ugh, I know that parents mean well, but it could be so annoying! Imagine after narrowing 40 houses down to the top 3, suddenly Mom and Pop come in and they don’t believe this is the right price! They want to pitch in their own expertise! “There must be something else out there!” They’re suddenly recommending new construction, and so on…
Whew! I still love the First-time Home Buyers, but man! Mom and Pop can be a challenge, sometimes! If I was filling out the form for some first-time buyers, though, then I would be sure to include Mom & Pop in this section, especially if they’re co-signing or something like that.
Now the last part of this here is identifying and breaking down “who are they?”
This part is pretty straightforward, so I’m just going to fill in all the sections I think are relevant to my chosen High Profit Prospect group:
I feel like I’ve said this too many times, but keep in mind that what I’ve filled in is reflective of MY own experience in working with military families and individuals. I left a number of the spaces blank, and I’ll tell you why:
Location: Military people are changing location all the time! There’s no way I can pin them down (as a group)!
Quote: I like having an inspiring quote handy, something that both my prospects and I can relate to. Again, if this group was Entrepreneurs, I think I’d have about a million quotes to write down, but I’m not very well-read in military philosophy! If I was getting back into the real estate life and preparing to deal with military families, I might look up some quotes by Generals James Mattis, Stan McChrystal, or David Petraeus.
Job Title: I’ve left this blank because there are so many different military ranks that I have dealt with, from private to brigadier general.
Level of Education: Education in the military can go in so many different ways! More often than not, the military will provide further education, so it’s hard for me to pin down exactly what the education level is above high school, since it varies so much.
Other: Guys, this can be anything! Remember that there is no single correct way to fill this out! The more specific we are, the more laser focused on our ideal clients we can be, the better cost we’re going to incur in getting leads, and the better prepared we’ll be in doing business with these high-profit prospects!
Voila! Our finished product:
I really hope that this helped! Feel free to print as many of these as you’d like, so that you can zero in not just on WHO you want to do business with, but how to connect with them in a way that will make you stand out!