Had a beautiful night last night hanging out at home with the windows wide open (it was 73F/23C here in Panama), making an amazing veggie Asian dish, and hanging out with my partner…..and BAM!  Thank God I didn’t answer the phone at 8 p.m. because one of my sellers left me the nastiest shit-o-gram you can imagine.

His problemo was two-fold.  One was a small, and I mean small, line item on his seller’s closing statement that was wrong.  Ok, my bad.  I missed it.  But for God’s sake man, CHILL!  It was only a $50 line item.  

Then he went on to say that I am not calling him enough to apprise him of the transaction/escrow.  Keep in mind I call him almost every other day.  I mean, seriously, WTH?

And you know, both of these problems are MY fault.

See, the one thing I didn’t do with this drama queen seller was to have that conversation with him up front and ask him what method and how often we should communicate.

I almost always do this with clients upfront.  This is the best way for you to know that you are meeting or exceeding your client’s expectations with regard to communication.

You know, some sellers want daily updates.  Some could care less and tell me to call them when it closes.  You need to know what they want right up front.

And this works especially well if you are taking at least one day off a week, which you should be doing so that they know upfront you are not communicating with them on Saturdays for example.

If you are not doing this, make your life a lot easier and have this conversation right up front when you meet.  

This one thing could lessen the number of your client’s shit-o-grams.

And that’s a good thing!