Ray White’s high stakes negotiation training blows all away

Today its members had the opportunity to learn from high powered US professor Dr Victoria Husted Medvec, a world leader in high stakes negotiation.  

More than 700 Ray White members were blown away by Dr Medvec’s high energy session aimed to help the leading group’s members to help them differentiate themselves during negotiations.

Ray White managing director Dan White said he was thrilled to see Dr Medvec back to help the network.

“We believe in providing our people with the opportunity to learn from global experts, ensuring we stay at the forefront of our industry,” Mr White said.

“Negotiating is integral to what we do and important for us to keep improving as an organisation. Dr Medvec has worked closely with some colleagues of mine and we were all blown away when Dr Medvec was here two years ago.”

Dr Medvec is the Adeline Barry Davee Professor of Management and Organisations, on the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management at the prestigious Northwestern University in Illinois.

She is a global leader in high stakes negotiation and decision-making who has worked with a significant number of Fortune 100 companies, including Google and Facebook.

Dr Medvec said every negotiation was a high stakes negotiation at Ray White.

Dr Medvec highlighted that the current real estate market was genuinely difficult, not just relative to a couple of years ago, and that navigating such a tough climate requires deploying the "best of strategy”.

She emphasised that implementing optimal strategies is essential to help vendors sell their properties; win new listings and negotiate effectively with buyers, aiming not only to complete immediate sales but also to build relationships so those buyers sell through the agent in the future.

The simple most important lesson in negotiations that Dr Medvec offers anyone is “do not focus on yourself; focus on the other side, do not make it about you, make it about them. That is such an easy statement but so hard to lie as people have an ego centric bias. It will hurt you every time you negotiate. This causes us to underestimate the importance of the other side’s pressing needs.”

Dr Medvec emphasised using third-party market data and expert quotes to establish credibility without seeming self-interested:

"I think it's far better when the information is not your perspective on the market, but it's the perspective on the market by others. Because when it's my perspective, I sound self-interested when I'm trying to convince you that that's what it is,” she said.

"I love quotes. I use them all the time from the other side, and I think when you are in a situation like that, quotes like this can be really helpful."

Regardless of whether an agent works in residential, rural, or commercial real estate, Dr Medvec framed the job around three distinct negotiation scenarios:

The Three Fronts: "Every one of you negotiates with the other side to win the listing. You negotiate with vendors to win the listing. You all negotiate with buyers, and you negotiate with sellers to manage expectations. I think of those as three distinct negotiations”.

Daily Practice: "You don't just negotiate every day, you negotiate every day in three different ways... You are expert negotiators”.

When audience members raised concerns about lowball offers, buyer hesitancy, and market uncertainty, Dr Medvec highlighted the importance of framing and perception:

Supply, demand and uncertainty: "I actually believe that uncertainty stalls all markets, that it absolutely just hurts no matter what the market is like... I think it's critical that we think about... how do we create a perception with the right framing... to try to bring more clarity to an uncertain market”.

Managing buyer expectations: "If I were a buyer in today's market, I would absolutely give you a low offer... buyers who are going to buy want a deal. So what we have to do is create a perception of a deal, so that they feel like they are getting a deal. You never want them to think that they are not getting a deal when they expect a deal”.

Motivating hesitant sellers: "I think that right now, a lot of sellers have a fear, which is: should I list now, or will the market start to go up really fast?... I think that that requires us to get them to envision how much it could go down by even more."

Dr Medvec warned that experienced agents often fall into specific negotiation traps because of their expertise:

Trap 1: Negotiating the wrong deal: "Experts often negotiate the wrong deal, because they have such a tendency to negotiate with a standard, with typical, with 'we've always done it like that', that they don't put the right issues on the table... Whatever we usually negotiate might not be the right thing to negotiate given my objectives”.

Trap 2: Commoditising yourself: "A lot of times, experts commoditize themselves and their business... What you definitely do not want to do if you work for Ray White is look like every other agency out there!... those boutique sellers do not have a training session like this where they learn excellent negotiation strategy!"

Trap 3: Failing to set ambitious goals: "Experts often set less ambitious goals than amateurs do. Why?... They're focused on what they always get, what they typically get, what the market rate is... What they should be focused on is the weakness of the other side's alternative... Goals drive outcomes, and people who have more ambitious goals get better outcomes regardless of everything else”.

Dr Medvec highlighted all of Ray White’s key differentiators which started with our real time data, plus our global brand awareness. 

“Ray White are also auction specialists who know how to create competition.”

Jody Fewster of Ray White Cottesloe | Mosman Park said she jumped at the chance to be in a room with someone of the calibre of Dr Medvec. “This training allows us to be able to differentiate ourselves from every other agent outside the network. For me personally, working with the high net work market in Perth, the ability to negotiate across different levels brings a special differentiator to me and my team,” she said.

Christine Rudolph of Ray White Collective in Brisbane said she loved the strength in being part of the Ray White group and being able to connect with so many agents throughout Australia. “It’s wonderful to be able to draw on the strength of the group and support each other through a changing market.”