Treat every property every time
Nose Blindness
What you should know to get top dollar
You smell!....... Yeah you!
How do you ask? Well olfactory receptors of course!
Located in the nasal cavity your olfactory is your most primitive sense! Olfactory forms the perception of smell and has many purposes, such as the detection of hazards, pheromones and food. Olfaction is also responsible for your sense of taste and even storing and recalling memories!
Now what does this have to do with agents, sellers, property owners, landlords, fleet managers, commercial property and residential leasing managers?
Let’s not forget, olfactory is responsible for the detection of hazards. When a potential hazard is no longer deemed a threat, your nose can forget or become used to the scent around you. This is known as olfactory fatigue or nose blindness.
This means after just a few hours, minutes or even moments, your brain has adapted to your client’s smell(s).
Let's just lay out a little scenario.
Let's say you are a real estate agent (which you may be). You're in front of many clients and in and out of many properties. You’re likely nose blind to many pungent odors. This is due to the recognition and frequency of smells being stored and catalogued by your brain as non-hazardous.
You've been working with this client and you just listed their home. You likely met them at a cafe or coffee house. During this time you have become accustomed to their underlying scent, deeming it to be non hazardous. Now, you walk into their house and likely miss the odors in that home.
The opposing agents will likely miss that same odor as well due to the frequency of being in and out of homes themselves.
The issue is you're not looking to impress the other agent, you're looking to impress their clients who may only be used to their own odor, their office’s odor and vehicle’s odor.
Now all of the sudden that client walks up to the doorstep of your clients home for a showing and as soon as the door opens the positive pressure of your client's odor that you and your client overlooked just sent your potential buyer into hazard mode!
Their brain searches their index for this compilation of smells as far back as childhood and can't make a match, a red alert to that buyer. Worse, if they do make a match, it may likely be linked to a bad memory. Out of all the senses, olfactory is the strongest at storing and recalling memories, some of which are not pleasant
Let's talk about how fast a potential buyer's client makes a decision about buying the house you're listing!
Let's do a Q and A to make it fun!
Q:
How fast after cracking that door of a home is the realtor's client bombarded with a rush of odors, including pet odors, tobacco odors, marijuana, food odors, body odors, to mystery smells and even the overwhelming coverup smells of air fresheners and over the counter disinfectants. Worse, you and your client likely didn't even recognize the odors were there thanks to olfactory fatigue.
A:
0.024 seconds 24 milliseconds
That's right you have 24 milliseconds to make a first impression!
This goes for potential renters as well!
