Listing presentations are a lot of work, and make the possibility that you won’t win them just a little bit crushing. It can be extremely helpful to prepare in every way possible to ensure that you do win them every time. I’m going to break down the 7 steps I take to ensure I win every listing presentation that I go on.
Win Listings Before You Arrive
The first, and probably the most time-consuming step, is to win before you arrive. What does that mean? It means you should create content that lives online for your leads and clients to see. And don’t just put videos out, create content that allows your leads and your community to get to know you, like you, and trust you before you ever walk through the door. Talk about anything and everything there has to do with your community or about real estate. Beyond that, you should be educating. When you create content like this, you are serving, not selling, and that is extremely important.
This way, you don’t have to chase anyone down or do anything uncomfortable like door-knock or cold-call. That becomes completely unnecessary because people already see you, your phone just rings.
That leads into step two: generating ads. What I do is create ads on Facebook with video content. Then I drive traffic that is highly targeted and specific to what it is that I'm trying to generate a lead for. So if I'm trying to generate seller leads, I'm creating ads that are intended to get sellers to raise their hand to want to work with me. Then when they raise their hand and say, “Hey, I'd like to work with you” by requesting a home evaluation, I get to step three.
Over-Serve
Step three is to drop off your book before your appointment. I have a book that's called the Savvy Seller, and I have three different versions of that book. They’re titled: How to Sell Your Home, How to Sell Your East County Home, and How to Sell Your Deer Ridge and Shadow Lakes Home. Depending on where they live they get the specific book that most speaks directly to them. In other words, if they live in Deer Ridge and Shadow Lakes, they get the Deer Ridge and Shadow Lakes book.
The fourth step goes right along with step three, and that’s to also drop off my marketing plan. This marketing plan is something I took my time with, it’s clean, well thought-out, and cost over $10,000 to create. It's beautiful to look at and serves its purpose in showing how I market my homes.
The Day Before a Listing
The day before my appointment, I complete step five, six, and seven. I email them the book, the marketing plan and seller's guide. Then I email a 17 minute long marketing video and follow up with a text message reminder to let them know. Now you're probably thinking, well, Krista, do they watch that video? They do, and it’s a game-changer. This video positions me differently than my competition. It shows all the things that I do that my competition is not doing in regards to marketing their home. It demonstrates them why digital marketing, social media, and exposing their property via the internet the right way is going to make a massive impact. Also, it exhibits them how I’ll get them more money, better terms and help their home sell for the very best possible price in the shortest amount of time. It shows them why they need me.
This Sets You Apart
What is the average agent doing? They’re probably simply setting the appointment. However, what you’ve done is broken down their barriers, developed a relationship, shown yourself as the authority and as the expert, before you even get to the listing appointment. So by following all of these steps, you’re so far ahead of the average agent it’s almost a guarantee that you win that listing.
Once the day comes and you actually go to your appointment, you’ve prepared yourself for a few things to happen. One is your client probably won't talk to you about commission. If they're interviewing other agents, they’ll cancel the appointments. They won’t beat you up on pricing. This is because they’ve seen that you are not a commodity, and that you’ll do things differently.
Is All of This Worth It?
As real estate agents, we have the ability to make so much money. The caveat here is that since real estate is such an over saturated industry, we have to be willing to do the things that everyone else isn’t. You've got to be willing to drop off the book, drop off the marketing plan. Do an amazing video. You've got to be willing to invest in yourself, invest in the marketing of your homes, invest in the knowledge to learn how to do it correctly in order for you to be able to have a unique value proposition. That you're not just like everybody else.
We are a dime a dozen, as real estate agents. Because of what happened in 2008, we're not the most liked profession and there's so much competition. In an article from the National Association of Realtors, they talk about how there are so many more real estate agents that now the average agent is selling less than two homes a year. So people that are in the top 20%, they're selling 10 or more homes. People from 80% and below, which is almost everybody, are selling an average of two homes per year. And the number of homes that are actually selling because of lack of inventory has gone down. It’s getting harder. You've got to be unique.
Where Can You Get Help with Listing Prep?
I teach my students how to do all these things and they are very difficult to beat when it comes to being on a listing appointment. In fact, I've had so many of them say, “Krista, since I started utilizing your listing process, I've not yet lost a listing.” When they're competing with two, three, and four other agents, they're not losing because they're different.
What are you doing to be different? Try utilizing this strategy and wait to see just what happens and how many more of these listing appointments not only do you get, but that you actually close.
