How Often Should I Contact the Vendor During a Campaign? Matt Condit Explains

We break down effective vendor management strategies, emphasizing proactive communication, structured reporting, and price adjustment.

• understand the vendor timeline: initial excitement (weeks 1–2), expectation for offers (weeks 3–4), and growing concern if unsold (weeks 5–6)
• maintain consistent communication with owners, setting a minimum of five contact points per week through calls, SMS, emails, and written reports
• discuss price every week, forecasting potential adjustments to keep owners informed and prepared
• use reverse-engineered emails to structure difficult conversations, ensure all points are covered, and reinforce professionalism
• gather detailed buyer feedback, including web data, inquiries, saves, ratings, and withdrawn interest, to justify decisions and provide closure
• leverage digital tools (e.g., Pitch platform, realestate.com.au Ignite app) to track market performance, competing properties, and engagement, making reporting clear and data-driven

A practical guide to vendor management that combines regular updates, structured communication, and data-backed insights to maintain trust, manage expectations, and facilitate timely price adjustments in any market.

Hosted by Lee Woodward Training Systems

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Transcript

Lee Woodward: 0:03

Hello and welcome to the podcast we are selling. My name's Lee Woodward of Realtair. Realtair is the one platform of choice of real estate professionals, allowing you to pitch, sign and sell real estate. For today's podcast, our focus is vendor management, the adjustment of price. A well-informed owner is easy to manage and the sequence of events of your communications plan. So let's get started with the vendor timeline. When a property has been listed, in the first two weeks, the owner loves the agent and is very happy with their decision. In weeks three and four, they are now starting to want an offer, expect an offer, and this is why auctions are held on the fourth week traditionally. In weeks five and six, the owner is now very concerned that the property isn't sold, and they now believe that they are with the wrong agent and are looking at their next plans that will allow them to get the property sold. And that is known as the vendor timeline. Coaching alongside me today is WA agent from the professionals, Mr. Matt Condit. Matt, welcome back to the program. Thanks, Lee. Good to be back. Thanks for your tips last week. This week we're on vendor management. What are you doing in vendor management, especially in a change market, that can be our tip of the day for we are selling?

Matt Condit: 1:32

So I think the main thing with vendor management, this is kind of from the from the supercoach days that really got this properly systemized, is we need to be giving the owners all of the relevant information, both in writing and with phone, SMS, and all the usual forms of communication. The way I always like to say it when I'm discussing with owners is I want to make sure they know what I know. So they have every little piece of information about individual responses to their property, clients who've attended, online traffic, also just the market in general and what's happening. So they've got the information to make relevant decisions on if things are going well or if they're not and they need to look consider price changes.

Lee Woodward: 2:11

And what about contact points throughout the week? What's your minimum and what's your recommendation for our listener?

Matt Condit: 2:17

If I had a property that was getting lots of traffic, I'd talk to them a lot. So I'd call to set up the appointment and I'd call them afterwards and you know in touch a few times a week, you know, or half a dozen, it'd be great. And if you get a property that doesn't get one inquiry, you'd call them once on a Monday and not call them again until the next Monday. The system was just working out what minimum contact points are. So we kind of set it up with five minimum contact points a week. So basically Monday is the main one. So Monday mornings are following off all the interested buyers, then calling the owners. The written report follows from there. A day or two, so Tuesday, Wednesday, a day or two later, we send the kind of a mini appraisal, just what's on the market and what's sold in their suburb. Then if nothing else has happened at all, you know, Thursday or Friday, I'll just send them a text saying, hey, just touching base, no new inquiries, I'll let you know we've gone the weekend. And then same thing again, if nothing happens on the weekend, just touching base, no new inquiries, I'll call you tomorrow. Obviously, those last couple get removed if we are getting contacts. We're setting up the appointments, giving them feedback, that type of thing. But even if we have a property that's getting absolutely no inquiry, they're not they're never left wondering two things. One, what's happening, and two, that I'm on the ball and paying attention and thinking about them.

Lee Woodward: 3:29

Do you discuss price every week with them?

Matt Condit: 3:32

Uh yeah, yeah. That was um that was another another good one from Supercoach. That the um I think it was something like if you're calling them every week, you're discussing price every week. Otherwise, what's the point? Making sure that it's not something that you're scared to talk about. And that that is the main thing that we need to be looking at as far as what market response is like for the property. So when you discuss it every week, it's very easy to say on the first week, wouldn't make any changes to anything. We've just come to market, you know, even if a property is priced correctly, it doesn't always sell in the first week. So that would always be kind of week one. Uh week two is the, you know, in most cases, is the we haven't had great inquiries this week. Uh I'd like to leave it one more week just to see what additional inquiries we get and with the few that have viewed already. If we get to the same stage next week without having any strong inquiry, that's usually an indication that we are priced higher than the market's willing to pay, and is when I would suggest considering a price adjustment. So that's kind of the you know, the prep that we are going to be looking at a price adjustment next week. And then, of course, you know, week three would generally be the you know suggesting a price adjustment if it's we're not getting the activity we need.

Lee Woodward: 4:44

A great technique that many of our agents have now engaged from the coaching world is reverse-engineered emails. Matt, just explain to our listener what that is and how you're using those.

Matt Condit: 4:56

So this was a great concept from the training, and it was the thing I liked about it was when you're doing talking to an owner and giving them bad news, it's really hard to get through all the points because it's a very difficult conversation. One of the reasons I did all these Monday mornings, and the worst part of your week was over, especially when you get in a bad market and you're calling 20 people and selling them, it's not tell them it's not going well. And generally, when we're looking at price adjustments, there's actually a few things we're gonna need to go through. We need to explain buyers who've been through the activity online, what's been happening in the market in general. So there's you know, three, four, five things we're trying to convey. And when you're you know kind of highly stressed and giving someone bad news and they're not reacting that well, it's very easy to kind of just kind of gloss over it if you don't have it all prepped. So the reverse-engineered emails were great. So we'd have do everything first. So on the screen, I would have all the viewings, the email inquiries, you know, the phone calls for the week. I'd have all my notes from all the buyer inspections, I'd have what I'm gonna put in the progress report as far as you know that we're recommending a price adjustment, and here's how much, and here's why. We'd have all that on screen. So I wouldn't read it out word for word, but I'd have all of those points there that I would go through, and then I had a much better chance of not missing anything and getting all the relevant info out. So it was a real good one anytime you're having a difficult or a complex, or in the case of price adjustments and vendor management, generally both difficult and complex conversations at the same time.

Lee Woodward: 6:25

Yeah, the reverse-engineered email, hence the nature of today's tip, is such a powerful part of a structured conversation. And it also does give that follow-through at the end of that phone call. You can say, look, there's a lot we discussed today, I'm just going to shoot it through in an email for you. They receive that and they think, how professional. And Matt, you've always been a very strict, disciplined professional, and that really falls in line with you. For a lot of other agents, they think they can just say it and they'll remember it. And I think this is the key part of a t a technique like this makes you that difference in a professional. Do you feel it helps you remove all the obstacles for the price adjustment?

Matt Condit: 7:04

Uh well it does, and that's kind of the goal. Because if you look at there's just a uh a fairly decent list of what I would call reasonable and genuine reasons why not to adjust the price. Sending the reverse engineer email, one of the main ones is you're generally only talking to one person. So there's, you know, if you're talking to Hubby, you know, wife needs to have a, you know, wants to know what's happening too. And so though then when the email is when it's coming from me, hopefully the message will get through better than just one person relaying it to the other. The other big one is you have to get closure with every buyer. On our follow-up notes, every single buyer they get to the point where they're in some way, they're either interested and we're proceeding, and we're, of course, not adjusting price because we're you know waiting to get an offer or something, but if they're not, they're marked as cold. Now that can be they've bought something else, that can be they couldn't get financed, that can be they decided against it because they need room for the workshop. Um, that can be I've just called and left messages two or three times and they haven't gotten back to me, but I'll put that in the notes. But the main thing is then so when because what's happening is we show someone through, we tell the owner, yeah, they kind of liked it. You know, they thought it would be okay, they need, you know, they're gonna look at some more. The the kind of the slack approach with an agent is, well, if they don't call me back, they're not interested. Whereas the owner's thinking, hey, what happened to that guy from three weeks ago? So that's a big one. And then also, you know, the one of the reasons we send the mini appraisal uh info each week is you know, so people can't say, well, nothing's selling. We can say, well, there are selling, which unfortunately yours isn't selling, but there are other properties selling in the suburb. And then the website data is great. And this is one of the things I love about all the structures we got at Supercoach. We didn't have the website data 15 years ago. But what we when that came in, and all of a sudden we've got you know not only views, not only inquiries, but saves, we that just kind of incorporates into the system. And so the, you know, so that's a that's one we use all the time is the saves. We say, hey, look, we've only had five inquiries in the property, but 40 people have saved it. And a save is pretty much one step below an inquiry. So that's they don't want to inquire on it, they don't want to view it, but they kind of like it. And if price changes, they would might be interested. And so as we kind of kind of tick all of those boxes, it's addressing all of those valid reasons why the property might not be selling. If all of those have been dealt with appropriately, it comes down to what's left, which is price.

Lee Woodward: 9:17

Matt couldn't agree more. And you know, written reports, five minimum contact points, discuss price every week. The reverse-engineered email is a technique of its own. This does remove all the obstacles for a price adjustment. Having that clean web data, and I love the save, and also the rating of a buyer, that the person is inquiring is of an eight out of ten. And the only thing I I'd add to this final wonderful little tip today is also report on withdrawn interest, where yes, they were keen, but they've now bought another property for forty grand less. They are withdrawn interest, and that just brings closure to the owner that everything's been done to justify the reason for the price reduction versus you haven't worked hard enough, you haven't sweat, so why would I do it? But following that structure today, Matt, that is a brilliant way of looking at vendor management. And thank you for joining us on We Are Selling.

Matt Condit: 10:12

No worries, Lee. Thank you.

Lee Woodward: 10:13

And that concludes today's tip. So, firstly, the vendor timeline, understand how that works. Confirm your vendor management reporting process. Report weekly with minimum contact points that is consistent, that the owner understands what they will receive. Call the owner at a set appointment time each week. Don't just say I'll call you Monday, say I'll call you at 5 p.m. on Monday. I think the midweek text link to a property that is sold or even a price update from the pitch program of competing listings is another great way of doing it. But discuss price every week. Also discuss an adjustment by forecasting it forward, meaning let's leave it where it is today, but if we haven't got the result on the 20th, we will adjust the price as follows and give them that number. Get closure with each buyer and report on the withdrawn interest. And last but not least, your ignite app from realestate.com.au has that performance report, competing properties, all can be shared in a PDF. And if you want to do daily vendor reporting, that app is brilliant. If you don't know how to use it, please get your rep to show you. It is the Swiss Army knife of the vendor management process. Thank you for listening. I'm Lee Woodward from Realtair. If you need any help from us, go to Realtair.com and I look forward to seeing you next week on the podcast We Are Selling.