A seller of a one-bedroom flat in Vilnius for €60,000 is as nervous as a seller of a €2m house in Berlin.
In some countries I hear the same argument: our commissions are high, our sellers compare, so the lead has to go to three agents.
We tested it.
At UNTU, the seller-lead platform I built in Lithuania before HUNTERS (it was acquired by BCG last year, and HUNTERS runs white label of the same model). We gave every seller a choice: we pick the agent for you, or we send you three and you pick. Around 90% said the same thing: just send me the good agent, I trust you.
Here is what I think is going on. When we hand a seller three agents to choose from, we take part of the responsibility off ourselves and put it on him.
He is already in a stressful situation. Now he has one more decision to make, and one more way to get it wrong. We call that "giving the client control". He experiences it as fear of choosing badly.
So for me this is a question of responsibility, on both ends.
On the three-agent side, nobody owns the client. Agents call from scarcity and hurry, and the seller feels it. And the part I couldn't fix: agents talking down their colleagues to win the mandate. The seller hears it and trusts the whole profession a little less.
One lead, one agent gave us the opposite. A name attached to the mandate. A partner who knows the next lead depends on how he handles this one. A seller who is calm, because someone he trusts already made the decision.