In real estate you get to meet a lot of people. So it goes without question that there will be times when you’ll be dealing with something most (if not all) salespeople dread- an angry client.

I’ve been working on a rental deal for a week now. Usually a rental deal is easy and fast to close. But for this deal, since my client is a company, they had to go through a lot of red tape to get this property approved. During the site visit, the listing agent told the client that the lease rate for this property was 35K/month, if above 5 occupants, it’s 40K/month.

The client ended up liking the property and so they started with the process of having it approved by their company. After a few days, their staff contacted me to verify the lease rate of the house . Since the listing agent already forwarded me the details prior to the site visit, I just copied and pasted the details in my text message to their staff. I didn’t know at the time that the listing agent had mistakenly put in the wrong lease rate. Instead of 35K she put only 30K.

And so the company proceeded to have the budget for this house approved with the wrong lease rate (only 30K/mo). To make the long story short, when I clarified with them that the lease rate was actually 40K and not 30K, their boss got angry. So he called me and lectured me about how I was inconsistent with the pricing and that they had to go through a long process of having it approved. And now it might not get approved because of the inconsistent pricing. I tried to explain that the listing agent sent me the wrong information but he wouldn’t listen. At the time I really wanted to talk back to him because I was felt that it was unfair of him to be giving me a piece of his mind when it wasn’t even my fault. But I held myself back because of 2 things:

First, I knew that talking back to him would not bring honor to the Lord, it would also make things worse. I knew that with the state of mind he was in, he would not listen to whatever I had to say. We would probably just end up arguing.

Second, I was thinking long term. If I talked back at him and we would end up fighting, it would make me seem very unprofessional. And I had made a commitment to myself long before that I would always act in a professional manner no matter what happened. I would never allow other people to influence my actions for the worse no matter how tempting it might be at the moment to fight back and also give him a piece of my mind.

So I just let him talk and when he was done I just said "ok". After our conversation I waited about 10 min for him to cool down and then I sent him a text message. I explained what happened and told him that in case his boss or whoever was in charge of budget approval for the house would like to talk to me about what happened, they can call me. Because it was not his fault so he should not be blamed. Then I clarified again the rent and asked him to let me know if I could do anything else to help.

Then he replied, " Ok. Thank you for the clarification and for the effort. It’s much appreciated."

So in the end, by keeping my cool and refusing to get into an argument with him, I was able to avoid what would have been a messy fight. I was also able to save my relationship with the client and was also able to act like a truly professional real estate broker.

How did I do this? Let me share with you a tip on how to deal with angry clients.

When they are going at you, keep your cool. Don’t react. Stand your ground. Here’s an acronym of what I do- PRAY.

Pause. Don’t do anything. Don’t say anything.

Resist. Don’t react. Just keep quiet. Reacting will only add fuel to the fire.

Ask the Holy spirit to guide you. Say a quick prayer for patience.

Yield. Give in to whatever God wants you to do.

By Gods grace, I was able to keep my cool and maintain my professionalism. It wasnt easy, of course. I wanted to talk back to him many times. But I PRAY’ed. And it got me through the situation. I just wanted to share this story because being a real estate broker for almost a decade, I know from experience that people can be hard to deal with. But it’s ok, you can still act with grace and kindness by staying true to your identity. My identity is, I’m a Christian real estate broker. And I’m a professional at what I do. I don’t get easily swayed by emotional people. I stay grounded.

What about you? How do you deal with angry clients or even angry people in general?

Share what you do in the comment section.

Till next time!

-Alex Zeta