Estate Buyer Turnovers

Estate Buyers

We get customers from all “walks of life” in our buying offices. Sometimes, an estate buyer has difficulty buying from a particular customer for various reasons. Whether it is from a personality conflict, lack of buyer experience with the type of item they are selling, or your offer is not what they want, every effort should be made make the deal work. The best solution is to give the customer an opportunity to work with another buyer. We call this a “turnover” because you are turning the customer over to someone else.

The benefit to turnovers

• We can make a buy that we would otherwise lose.
• The estate buyer that turns over still gets 1/2 the commission.
• The estate buyer that closes the buy gets a commission that they would not have gotten without the turnover.
• The customer is given a high level of customer service and interest in their items.
• Improved comfort level and/or improved pricing for the customer. (This is especially important for customers with very expensive items.)

When to do a turnover

If you sense that the buy is not going well or if the customer says they want to shop around, then do a turnover. Sometimes personalities don’t click and a customer just needs a different face or someone else to reassure them. Also simply getting a manager involved can make a seller feel important or respected. It is the last step to try before letting someone walk, but use it whenever needed. Remember, if you don’t turnover, you will definitely lose the buy. A partial commission is better than no commission at all, especially if you are in an office with slow traffic!

How to do turnovers

Old Town buy office

Tell the customer that you will get a senior buyer or manager to help you. Have a manager or lead buyer step in to help the customer. Do this every time you have a customer that decides not to sell to you. This will ensure that we did everything we could to help the customer. Even if they don’t end up selling, at least we can make sure they do not walk away upset or with a bad feeling about us.

Remote buy offices

It is impossible to have someone physically step in when you are in a remote office. There are several things you can do in this case:

1. If you can’t make the buy for any reason, advise the customer that you’d like to continue researching their items. You must get their contact info and full details/description/photos for the item or items.
2. A manager or senior buyer will call the customer and see what he or she can do. This is essentially the same thing that we would do in Old Town, but just over the phone.
3. If an item absolutely must be evaluated or authenticated in Old Town before purchase:
   • First you must qualify the customer’s expectations to first ensure it is possible we can make a deal before sending them to Old Town. If so, set a time.
   • Lastly, record the customer’s details in the Smartsheet and inform by email anyone in Old Town who may see the customer about the situation: the buyer(s), EBM, ESM, COO. This will ensure someone will be familiar with the buy when the customer arrives, even if the primary contact is not available for some reason. In the absolute worst-case scenario, an uninformed person can simply look up the Smartsheet for details.

Example: On 6/3/11 Anit helped a customer in La Mesa with a 1.73 ct diamond. He was not able to come to a price agreement with the customer. Anit got the customer’s info. Cynthia called the customer and was able to get him to come into OT for us to take another look at the diamond. Beth ended up helping the customer and purchased the diamond the very next day for $1000 profit. Beth and Anit both made $500 BDS, whereas they would have made $0 without the turnover.

Any large buy, such as a diamond of a carat or more, a high-end watch, etc., MUST be turned over if you are not able to close the buy. This is very important. Larger items sometimes need more research into the highest price we can pay, or more reassurance to the customer that we are doing our best to help them. Enter the details into the Smartsheet System, so that both you and the buy manager can follow-up on the potential buy.