Providing High-Level Fiduciary Services with Michael B. Bell

Michael B. Bell Ranked as the #1 agent at Sotheby’s International Realty – Greater Pasadena Brokerage in 2021 and #1 in sales volume at the brokerage for three of the past six years. Michael B. Bell is also the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of the book Seller Mistakes, available on Amazon. He is an industry leader and a highly referred real estate broker with extensive experience specializing in single-party seller representation. Experienced, resourceful, respected, influential, and trustworthy are the words Michael’s clients use to describe him. From luxury homes to challenging and highly specialized transactions, Michael has an intimate understanding of the real estate sales process. In his 20-year career, he has successfully handled over $500 million in sales along with his own real estate investments.

Episode Highlights Here:

Michael:

A lot of people think that’s just part of what you’re supposed to do to sell a house. And you’d be shocked to see what the statistics are.

Brett:
But what’s the number one secret to providing high-level fiduciary services?

Michael:

Well, I think the main thing is you want to avoid mistakes. And there are a lot of common mistakes that people make. And unfortunately, most of them never realized they made it. And it’s these mistakes that have been driving me crazy for my whole career. And my real quick story about this book is I got upset about how the industry was telling us specific things to do, which were not serving the client. It was serving the realtor in terms of generating leads. So what am I talking about open houses? I’m talking about real estate signs, I’m talking about mailers and door knockers, and all these things that Realtors do that make a lot of people think that’s just part of what you’re supposed to do to sell a house. And you’d be shocked to see what the statistics are. So I started doing research on all this, in finding that a lot of the stuff that the agents are doing, you just froze up, so I’m not sure if you can hear me.

Brett:

still hear it keep going. Just the video might have to catch up for us in a couple, couple seconds. But keep going. Got it.

Michael:

So I started writing what’s called a white paper. And some folks may know about those. It’s kind of like a research paper. And I love statistics. I love data because it doesn’t lie. And found that not only were, for example, open houses also come almost completely ineffective. They’re incredibly dangerous. And so I started writing a research paper and met a guy who is a publisher, and he said, There’s a great book there. And I thought, well, I’ll write a book. So it took me five years to write a book. And if any of your listeners are they’re out there listening and thinking about writing a book, let me tell you, it is hard. It’s a lot of work. I never want to do it again. But the results are it has been fantastic. I was hoping to sell 200 books, I sold 38,000 books. It hit the wall street journal bestseller list last September, number three. I’ve never written a book before. It’s just it’s taken off. And I think it’s because there’s a real thirst for this kind of information because it’s out there. But it’s not out there. The real estate community knows these numbers, but we don’t really tell people what the true effect is of a lot of their actions. For example, we just talked about open houses, and open houses have about a 3% effectiveness rate. But most home sellers believe that you have to do open houses like crazy to sell your house. But guess what, if you’re a real estate agent, you want to do open houses because guess who comes to open houses? potential sellers, looky-loos in neighbors, and real buyers don’t really go to open houses now they will go to open houses. But if somebody really wants to buy your house, and there’s no open house, trust me, motivated buyers will make an appointment.

Brett:

Make sense? Okay, so the number one, the number one secret is avoiding the mistakes of maybe the conventional thinking of certain things that are going to be effective for sellers. So really, given them that, what’s the meat? What really works in one of those, for example, open houses? Is that a fair summary so far on the first secret?

Michael:

That’s one of the many secrets Yeah, and just to go back, it’s funny that I think your audience would appreciate this. The working title of the book was high-level fiduciary sales. And for folks that understand what a fiduciary relationship is, it’s a very high-level relationship that you have with a client is the same type of relationship a doctor has with his patient and an attorney has with his client and or her client. And it’s kind of a boring title. So I just focused on selling mistakes. And one of the first mistakes in this book and show this book it’s not trying to sell the book, but I’d be happy to give it away for free, too, if anybody wants to reach it. I’m not trying to sell books. Let’s just put that out. I want to get the information out there, and it’s on Amazon. But one of the number one things you can do to make sure you don’t make mistakes is to hire a really good top agent. Same in your business. You know, there’s a lot of folks I don’t think there are that many folks that do what you do. There are just a lot of realtors out there, let me tell you, but you really have to hone in on the number one or number two in your marketplace because, usually, they’ll avoid all the mistakes that the common realtor makes.

Brett:

So hire the best and secret number two right doesn’t don’t settle for those who aren’t as experienced as those as proven. Pick and find the best that first summer, first secret number two.

Michael:

that’s that could be number two.