We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
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We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
How Clear Expectations Turn Stressful Sales Into Confident Decisions with Danny Grant
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We map out how to lead vendors with clarity, align expectations before launch, and manage pricing with facts so campaigns maintain momentum and deliver outcomes. Calm leadership, written reports, and early feedback turn stress into confident decisions.
• setting an expectations meeting with a clear agenda
• agreeing on a communication plan, owners help design
• treating price as a conversation guided by evidence
• acting on early feedback to protect momentum
• using written reports for alignment and compliance
• avoiding digital-only delivery of bad news
• framing adjustments as improving the price
• leading with one decisive accept-the-offer moment
• adding small service touches to build trust
“Mobile: 0404 821 155, Email: Danny@grantspace.com.au
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Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name's Lee Woodward, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Salesperson course. Today I have a very special guest who's just entered. That's not true. He's been in the coaching world for many, many years, but he's gone out to do his own coaching business now. And that's Mr. Danny Grant from Grant Space. Danny, welcome aboard. Hi, Lee. Good to be here. Now, Danny, you've been on the airwaves many times. Just to set the record straight, you've been recording and training for over 15 years. You were one of the original owners of Real Estate Academy and a trainer, writer, and author at our time there. We're all at Academy together. And now you've gone out to do grant space. What are you doing?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I moved into the to the training. Well, I think it's been 25 years in the real estate industry, property management and sales, and yes, doing training as well. And there was a little bit of a uh prop tech thing that we did there as well with RealTech. So yeah, running my own training and coaching and speaking business. So I was uh already head of head of training with McGrath. So um now I'm just going national and available to to all brands.
SPEAKER_00:And for those that don't know the voice behind the name here, Danny, you were the author of Auctioncraft, which was a very famous CD, double CD, on the vendor management process, nothing to do with auctioneering. And it brings us perfectly in line with our topic today. And our topic today is around price and client fulfillment. Now, all that comes into vendor management. What we would like to discuss today with you, Danny, is your views on the relationship foundations that make a sale work. Because finding it is one thing, listing it is another. But if you don't get this next part right, you may have a very short career unless you're in a hot market and it sells quick. Now you've come through markets where nothing's selling. Things are on the market for six months, 12 months. And some listeners would think no property's ever been on the market six to twelve months. That was quite normal a long time ago. And I think you really learn your skills early on when you are keeping the love alive with the owner. So take us into your thoughts, because you and I did some preparation prior to today, into the price market feedback and vendor management.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the best way of looking at this is to reverse engineer where things can go wrong. You know, where we get to that moment in a campaign where, yeah, you know, we we hope that we start a campaign and it goes really well. We've got lots of buyers, and it's one of those fantastic campaigns that just all comes together. But there's a bit of laziness in that, I think, too. So where things can go wrong, if you've got an offer that's not quite what the vendor expects, you're not getting as many people through, this is where, you know, you start to have a little bit of trouble in your vendor management. So I like to reverse engineer it and look at it and think, well, where can all the things go wrong in a campaign? And most of the time it's based on expectations, I think, Lee. I think, you know, the vendor might have a different expectation of the service and how the campaign's going to go. And a good way of getting around that is to have an expectations meeting before you even start the campaign. So we have a, you sign a, you sign a property up, bearing in mind that a client's probably, on average, seeing two other agents. And two weeks later you go to market. Sometimes they forget what you discuss, sometimes they forget price. There's there's lots of things that they don't quite understand because they don't do it every day like we do. So you have uh an expectations meeting, or McGraw used to call it a set-to-sell meeting. So you sign it up about a week out of going to market, you sit down with an agenda and you run through how the feedback is going to be, confirm open house times, where things could go wrong if we don't get a great reaction to the first open house. What are we going to do? What does it mean when we get multiple offers prior to an auction? All those sorts of things. So they're at ease. And uh before you even start the campaign, you're aligned.
SPEAKER_00:And Danny, I like your wording here. It's very fresh. We're we were all taught the set-to-sell meeting, but really the expectations meeting is far more up to date with if you were my owner and I said, Danny, we're about to hit the marketplace. Many things are going to happen. They happen fast. And I want to make sure I live up to your expectations and also my expectations of how we're going to bring this all together, because we're working together as a team now to get the result. You've got the product, I've got the expertise, we understand from the marketing, we've got to attract, engage, commit. But in between all that, there's things that can go wrong. Someone could just knock on your door and say, the agent said I could come over and have a look through, and we would never do that. They're trying to catch you off guard because they're hoping to get it for a cheaper price and cut out the agent. These things can happen. Sometimes people turn up an hour after the open saying, I had the time wrong. And we've just got to make sure we're clear on what's right, what's wrong. And for example, someone may ask you about pricing, what are you prepared to accept for it? And you say the wrong number when I need it that you never say a number because that's my job to do it. And that's the the tone and the groove that you're going for there, Danny, is no different to if you look at a the sale of a property as a very important project. A project has expectations, timelines, investments, and there's going to be an outcome at the end of it. And I know myself, I I do some large projects for real estate companies, and I spend all my time on the proposal so that if I have to go back to it and say the expectations were I was doing six of these, one of those. If that's not clear and documented and it was just a figure, it will go wrong. And it has gone wrong when people, as you beautifully said, don't remember what was originally said and they've hopped forward in their mind, or they've remembered what the other agent said and thought it was you. And that can happen.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And and you know, if you've done enough transactions or you've got to set your agenda for the expectations, I mean you've just got to think about where have campaigns gone wrong? Where where have things happened, like a buyer knocking on a door? And that's what forms part of your agenda to talk about to the vendor, because nothing really happens in isolation on campaigns, does it, Lee? Like there is a lot of repetition when you when you're selling a property, the same sort of things happen over and over.
SPEAKER_00:Couldn't agree more. And a couple of coachable moments there is, and this is just for the psychology of our agents who are about to go into this better communication program from listening to this audio today. Firstly, price is not static. The market speaks every day. And professional agents manage vendors through facts, not hope. What's your view on that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's and I think this goes down to a bit of management and communication as well. If the less that you communicate and the less information you give the vendor, the more you take ownership of what's happening in the market. And the market is not, is not our fault. You know, we can't control that environment. We can control what we do. So you you've got to always keep them up to date with the facts and what's happening. And it does change daily. Something might list around the corner, something might sell cheaper around the corner. Um there could be an election that gets announced, there could be a, I don't know, Donald Trump starts a war. Yeah. Who knows what it is? That we can't control those elements. But the better that you communicate and keep your vendor on the same page, the less they will blame you and the less that you feel responsible. Because I think part of part of the makeup of agents sometimes is that when you you're really busy and you think, geez, I haven't really stayed on top of this, you harbour a bit of guilt. And when you're harbouring guilt, you you tend to then overpromise and overreach. And it just gets even worse through the campaign. So you're trying to make up for your your lax um your lax service, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, very much so. And that can stand out versus, you know, nothing real can be threatened if you've done everything that you said you would do and it's been done, and that the market hasn't responded due to the market can respond as it likes and it can buy what it likes, you then start to come into this conversation that well well, firstly, price is a conversation, not a decision. And I think price is not set once and forgotten. And that was one great thing you did in auctioncraft, Danny, about you know, in the first week of the campaign, you would say, you know, it's not the response I was expecting, and I'm a little disappointed. But you were thinking, you know, we're 25% into our campaign year, next week's 50%, versus a standard agent would think, and standard meaning standard thinking, well, it's only the first week. That the first week's a quarter of the whole thing. And it's tested by the market, and professionals prepare vendors for movement, amateurs defend the original number, and I think that's where the flexibility backed by facts and wins becomes really important. What else can we give as a coaching to better improve the vendor management process?
SPEAKER_01:I think if we still still staying on the expectations meeting, I think a big chunk of that has to be working out a communication plan. So how do they want to be communicated to? And I'll give you a give you an example of this. If you involve them in that plan in in how this is going to go out, um the better, the better aligned that they are. So for instance, with my kids, so I've got teenage daughters, feel sorry for me. I've got twins. They're four they're 14. So what a lot of things happen at that age is you've got social media, you've got watching Netflix and and how much time you're gonna have in your iPad, etc., etc. So when I set out the rules with them, I don't say these are the rules, this is what we're going to do. I say that look, what do you think would be fair? What do you think would be fair when you come home from school? How long before you've got to start doing your homework? How long do you think you should be on social media? And then they start setting out the rules. And the funny thing with that is that that if they break the rules, I can then say to them, well, you know, do you think that we should um do you think they're not fair, what we set out? And they always say no, because they've said it with me. So when you sit down with a vendor and say, well, look, how much would you think is fair communication? Some might say, Well, look, every day I'd love to hear from you, even if it's just two minutes, Danny. Or, you know what, Danny, I'm really busy. Just send me a quick text. Every second day is fine. You know, I don't, I don't need any more than that. So I know how they want to be communicated to, and they've told me, right? So there's not going to be any angst as to, I haven't heard from Danny today, you know. So let them be part of how they want to be communicated to, and it'll make your life a lot easier through the campaign.
SPEAKER_00:Love it. Our next tip, what about the written communications or what success have you seen? Because you just looked after some amazing agents being head of education at McGraw, and WhatsApp is being used everywhere. What's your views on the actual physical digital communications?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, okay. So it's important and I think they're good for quick updates, just not anything detailed. So, because I think sometimes agents can hide behind text messages and digital updates with bad news. But I just I I've found that that just never lands very well. If you put it in a written report, that can be a little bit different. But if you've got some bad news to deliver, I think there's no better way than face-to-face is preferential. Next is over the phone. But there's also something about like if I'm delivering bad news to you over the phone lee, yeah, that'll kind of land. Only really gets emphasized once you get it in a written report. You've spoken before about reverse-engineered email. So if I want a price reduction, pre-write out an email on what I'm going to discuss with a vendor and then send them the email saying, look, I'm just going to send you an outline of what we discussed. It just reinforces what you've said. And there's something about the written word that people will read it over and over again. And vendor reports are like this. If you send a vendor report at the end of the week or the beginning of the week, they'll read it a couple of times. Then you might have a spouse or uh somebody else that's that's part of the ownership of the property that maybe is not so involved in the communication and they're the problem. They see the written report and then they're aligned. And I I do find that, you know, coaching a lot of top agents, they hate doing anything in writingly. But the reality is the way legislation's going as well, you're going to have to document everything. Because if you get audited for underquoting, for instance, you know, they're not going to really ring your vendor, they're not going to really ring buyers, they're just going to care about what's in writing. If it's documented, that's all they're going to look at. You know, we've got to, we've just got to get into that practice of take notes, put them in reports for vendors, and it makes your job so much easier.
SPEAKER_00:Danny, another coachable moment and something that you did incredibly well during that time we're doing auction craft. We did so much work about this. Early feedback is most valuable. Those first two weeks matter most. Everyone waits for the last two. It's the first two where you are winning the game. And then when buyers are watching closely, early feedback predicts the outcome. And professionals act early, delay costs the momentum of the campaign.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it goes back to what you were saying about, you know, 25% of the campaign's gone. It's again, we also feel responsible that that maybe hasn't gone so well because we're handling the campaign, hasn't gone well in the first week. It'd be really easy to just say to them that, oh no, it's okay, it's early days. Because we're taking that on ourselves. Whereas you just say to them, look, it just hasn't, you know, I loved your home. I thought it would have a better response. I thought this price guide would work. But after doing this for so many years, I know it's irrelevant. It's really what the buyer thinks. We're on the market live. This is live feedback that we're getting now. And it's pointless fighting against that and ignoring it. You know, we need to make an adjustment now so we can get momentum because momentum is everything in the campaign. You don't want to be chasing buyers and because your price just chases them down the hill. So the earlier you get onto things, the better chance that you've got of getting momentum and getting competition. And if you get competition, you get a better price. So it's vendors understanding that it is energy through a campaign, and you've got to ignite that energy whenever you can. You know, your best buyers generally in any market come through in the first couple of weeks. If you adjust a price after that, it's already too late.
SPEAKER_00:Danny, I took a note down from Auctioncraft, which was use evidence, not emotion. Opinions don't change minds. Take us into that.
SPEAKER_01:Again, taking too much ownership of stuff. And this comes down to pricing as well. You've just got to show them the fact and the and the data. And they'll get emotional about their price. Everybody always wants too much for their home. That's that's human nature. They're allowed to want as much as they can for the home. You've then got to discuss with them that that this is a a pricing issue or a guidance issue in terms of getting a traction to the property. It's not a you have to sell at this. We're trying to work out what it actually is worth and where are we getting traction. If we reduce it down to a price and you get an offer that you don't want to accept, then I'd rather you say no to a bad offer, you know, 10 times through the campaign than get nothing, because at least we know what it's worth. It's your choice whether you accept that price or not. My job is to find out what it's worth, number one. Number two, our job is then to sell it. But, you know, that's your choice on whether you release the asset or not.
SPEAKER_00:And I think a lot of agents look at adjusting the price as failure. Whereas last year we had a big focus on improving the price. And anything coming through the marketplace, everyone's got an expectation of what I think it's going to be. That's why auction is good. It's it can align what the price is going to be and water finds its own level. But still, most of the country is not using auction, especially in regional. They're using guiding and pricing. Adjusting the price is not failure. It's you're actually working out what it's worth. And if we don't get our thinking right on that, professionals don't think I'm failing. They think we're working out what it's worth. And I think in your own mind, you've got to get that right. The delay creates the stigma of the whole thing going wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and look, you we all lose listings. Well, we all say we lose listings sometimes on price because somebody else has overpriced it. You know, it's like, you know, fees and pricing. Everyone thinks that they're in a unique marketplace that theirs is worse than anyone else's. No, you're not. Underpricing and and uh going in cheap for fees happens everywhere. So we know we've got to battle with that. But the key to that is don't take ownership of the price. You know, you don't control the market. You we just mediate what we do within markets. If somebody wants to get a higher price, well, that's fine. Well, let's let's try that, let's see how it goes. But let's agree that after a week, if we don't get traction and interest, then we're gonna need to improve the price. Or that could be let me bring some buyers through that are at a higher level and let's see what they think. It's a promise that I'm gonna try. It's not a promise that that is the value of the property. So again, don't take ownership of it because that's not our job. We're not registered valuers. We can have an opinion on price based on the facts that are in front of us. The vendor should arrive at the same facts and opinions of value as as what we do. Then you know what? I'm gonna try and get you a record, Lee. Can't promise it, but I'm gonna try my best to get you the best outcome that's out there.
SPEAKER_00:And I think outcome is such a good word. I look back over the years of all the great agents who've ever attended courses or been on the audios. When I was writing the outline for today's program, I thought, what is it that they have? And interesting enough, I boiled it down to leadership. Vendors need leadership, not reassurance. We need to lead them on why the marketing campaign spend needs to be at a certain level in that time frame. We need to lead them to the decision of the right method of sale, even though they might not be in favor of that method, but let me do the right thing by your property. And then we've got to lead them to understand the adjustments required and then lead them to accept that figure as the outcome and then lead them to the settlement. There's a lot of leadership in great agents. It's not just a vendor management process that will fix it, and your listed to settle checklist is important, but it's only a checklist. And I think that leadership component isn't maybe thought about enough, maybe as a recommendation to our leader, see it as a leadership role, not a I'm there to just keep them happy all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, one of the things I used to say as an agent is that there's only once during your campaign that I will recommend that you accept an offer. Only once. When that day comes during the campaign, and I say, look, I think in my professional opinion, Lee, you should accept it. It's gonna have some weight, isn't it? As opposed to every offer I get. What do you think of that, Lee?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They're thinking, well, and I say to you when that first offer looked, Lee, I've got this offer for you. I've already said no on your behalf. Don't worry, we haven't lost them. I'm gonna go back and I don't think we should go back now if it's an auction. I think we should sort of wait a few more days because we've got a bit of interest. But if I say once, look, Lee, I think this is it, then they know that okay, that's the moment.
SPEAKER_00:But again, Danny, it comes back to that expectations meeting and having that as a moment. Uh again, on this program we've discussed many times a well informed owner is easy to manage. But if that management expectations meeting didn't happen, and that moment in that meeting, there's only one time that I'll say to you, and then they understand that it's not just a throwaway line, it's been discussed, and that consistency builds trust. And silence creates the doubt. And I think the silence is where people may be going wrong, and they've got to have a voice, have leadership, and speak up. Well, Danny, incredible little podcast. As we click in it just on 21 minutes there, just in our final wrap-up for the We Are Selling Week, great vendor management feels calm. You know, out of all the agents I ever seen perform wonderfully in the marketplace, this was definitely your skill of calm. When vendors feel informed, they feel safe. Take us into that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's they've got a lot of anxiety through a campaign and they're always wondering. And we've got to also remember they're not just selling something small. In most part, it's their largest asset. And there's a lot of knock-on effect if it doesn't work for them. Maybe they've bought first, maybe they can't buy what they want to buy if this doesn't come together. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of stress for the family. You can ease that tension by just talking to them and being calm. And it's a good, I mean, based on stress as well, sometimes you can get vendors that take that stress out onto you for no reason. So you've always got to remain calm. Don't ever say anything or bite back that you're going to regret. Um don't that doesn't mean that you've got to accept bad behavior from someone. You do have to kind of have a circuit breaker and set that standard. But you just got to understand that that that can be tensed through this whole process. And we've spoken a lot about all management and feedback and pricing and things like that. But don't forget the little service experiences that you can do as well. The little wow moments that you can do. One of the simple things that Diane and I used to do after every open house is that Di would bake fresh cookies and leave them for the owners after every single open house. Or it might be lollipops for the kids or treats for their dogs if they had dogs as kids. Little things like that add up. It might be flowers for the first open house. You know, always think about your vendor and think, how can I make them feel more important through this campaign? What can I do that's personalized? And geez, it goes a long way to building trust. And just you want to get to the end and they go, geez, that was a good service experience. So don't forget those little wow moments that don't have to cost you a lot, but they do have impact.
SPEAKER_00:Couldn't agree more. And the clarity around what you've just shared there is safe vendors make better decisions. I think anxious vendors make some silly decisions because they're just out of control. Great management can remove that drama, but the calm leadership, and there's that word again, delivers the results that the owner needs. And we've all had an owner who's not got the price that they thought it was worth in their expectation, and they've accepted the offer and angry on the Saturday night, and then they ring you on Monday, and you think, Oh, here we go again, and they go, Thank you. They were just out of their depth and they were spinning, they got family members saying it's worth more and screaming and shouting. And it it really is a moment. But how can we bring in that environment of safety? Because, and I'm not going to show you, if you haven't done everything you said you were going to do, it's very hard to get that safe vendors make better decisions happening because there's too much blame that can go back on the agent.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they need someone to blame.
SPEAKER_00:Very much so. It's a justification process through the whole thing. So, Danny, just in wrapping up, some of the key points that'll come out of this, and I'll put that in the show notes as well, but don't hide behind digital. Go and have real conversations and get face to face with the owners because it's very easy for them over a phone to not look in your eyes and see your intentions and so forth. So getting back to that, I think, just saves you a lot of phone calls and emails at the same time. Having that expectations meeting, which is our original setup to sell, and with an agenda, it's great when you go in and you're prepared and I just want to discuss this, this, this, and this. And the outcome there and the signal is you want the owner to say, very thorough, very professional. They need to feel right in the first week that they've made the right decision because they've said yes to go with you, but they're thinking maybe I should have gone with the other person. There's a lot of doubt, and this is where that calling every day for the first nine days is a great technique just to connect. Just them hearing your voice brings in that safe vendors make better decisions. And then when the grand finale comes in, you've got the foundations of the trust account, as we call it, where people you've invested enough that they can feel comfortable with that decision. Any final points from yourself?
SPEAKER_01:Always think about reverse engineering through your campaign and don't skip that expectations meeting. I think it's so crucial and will make your life a lot easier if you do it every time. I think a lot of our agents think, oh, you know, market's really good, I won't need to do that. But not every not every campaign goes swimmingly well. So make sure that you think about having that before you start the campaign. That's a must. And the communication plan, I think, is also crucial because any breakdown in any relationship lead comes down to poor communication. Even if you're a little bit scared of vendor and they're being grumpy with you, don't run. Have a circuit breaker, get in front of them. You know, even if you just say to them, if they're angry, you go, Look, are you okay? Or if they say something horrible, you just say, Oh, sorry, can you repeat that? Doesn't sound as good the second time round when they say it. Now, I'm not I'm not saying that I had a lot of issues with with angry vendors, but I did do a lot of divorces, Lee. So you'd occasionally get someone that would take something out on you. And I never used to accept the bad behavior. I was always calm, but I thought I'm not gonna run four weeks with this stuff. So communicate, be the calm one, be the leader, as you said. For the most part, you should uh have calm, nice campaigns.
SPEAKER_00:Well, Danny, I'm ecstatic. You are back in the training world, open to the nation. How do people get hold of you?
SPEAKER_01:Uh a couple of ways. So mobile number is 0404821155, or my email is Danny, D R D M Y at Grantspace.com.au.
SPEAKER_00:Now take us into the thinking behind Grant Space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so look, I guess the uh it was about finding your own space for training, really. So I felt that there's a nice avenue there for bespoke training, no matter what level that you're at. I you know, I never want to be one of those agents that goes, I just I just look after the top, you know, 1% of the agents in the industry. The reality is I want to look after everybody. So wherever you are in your real estate world, you know, we'll find a space for you. We'll uh lift your performance. Hopefully, you have a better life.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely amazing. Well, Danny Grant, thank you for coming back on the program. We look forward to your return visits in the future. And thank you for being on We Are Selling.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Lee. Thanks, everyone.