Category: Listings

The Listing Consultation On Your Tablet

Is your listing consultation linear?  Does it go from point a to point b to point c, from slide 1 to slide 2 to slide 3 (and heaven help you if you get interrupted ’cause you may not remember where you were)?  If so, it’s probably not a consultation at all; it’s just some schtik you memorized, like the Gettysburg Address or the lyrics to Baby’s Got Back.

‘Okay? So now let’s go on to the next slide and I’ll show you all the awards my office has won!’ (slides finger across Ipad to display the next slide in the sequence).

Here’s the point:  you do need graphics to give power to your listing conversation . . . but they need to be called up spontaneously, as needed, not presented in a canned roll, like your high school heath class lecture on sex!

For me, this point was most dramatically illustrated when I saw Steven Covey speak before a couple thousand people.  I was on staff so was both in front of the stage and behind the scenes.  Covey came out and started talking.  Periodically he’d say something like: ‘Put that slide up with graph now …’ and the slide would magically appear behind him.  He had an assistant backstage who had all of his slides on his computer.  He knew them and Covey’s thoughts so well that he could access whatever graphic the master needed to make his point.  It’s one of the best ‘speeches’ I’ve ever heard because it wasn’t a speech at all:  it was a conversation with graphic support.  That’s what you want your listing consultation to be.

I am in Oaxaca, studying Spanish at the Instituto Cultural de Oaxaca.  It’s a wonderful school set in a sprawling hacienda on the edge of the historical district.  My teacher, Cinthia, is outstanding.  Not a word of Engish is spoken in her four hour class.  It’s against the rules!  But she has an Ipad on the table in front of her and when we Gringos need a definition she quickly accesses Google Image Search and shows us a picture of whatever we don’t understand . . . and then gives us synonyms for it in Spanish.  That’s what needs to be happening in your listing consultation.

Use the graphics when your sellers need help to understand.

The graphics are support for your conversation.  They are not the conversation.

How do you accomplish this?  First, you memorize the Gettysburg Address (your listing presentation) . . . linear-ly.  Learn it upside down, backwards, speak it in your sleep.  Tie each point your want to make to a graphic.  In other words:  do what every class on listing presentations has taught you to do.  Then break it down:  which slide(s) support each point you are likely to make with a seller?  Now, trash the script and start practicing having a conversation about listing using the truths you memorized.  Pull up graphics when they might help.

When you go live with a seller, have your slides laid out on your tablet in ‘slide-sorter’ view, so you have a thumbnail of each one.  When you need graphic support, simply touch the thumbnail you need.  When the seller has a question or needs clarification, touch the appropriate thumbnail.  When they need to see why staging is so important, touch a thumbnail.  When you are talking about how you out-perform the local MLS, touch the thumbnail with your stats.

Your tablet is an essential tool today, for listing and for so much more.  But don’t get sucked in to using it like the old presentation book you tried to learn so many years ago, going from page to page, from canned script to canned script.  You hated that at least as much as your sellers did!  Use the new tool to liberate your listing conversation.  You’ll get in, make your point quicker and more powerfully, and leave with  a signed listing agreement.  I promise.

Establishing Yourself As The Best Choice

Listings are a little easier at Help-U-Sell.  We have a superior offer to consumers.  Superior.  Once they see that, understand it and believe it, they happily sign up.  It happens almost every time we get in front of a potential seller.

Understanding the offer – seller savings, seller participation, effective marketing – is not difficult:  most get it in a few minutes.  But believing it?  That takes trust (in you) and trust requires a different set of tools.

In establishing trust – belief – credibility, we make copious use of testimonials.  They are in our marketing, on our websites, on postcards, posted in our windows and certainly in our listing package.

Remember what Don Taylor taught us:  our challenge it to have people in our targeted geography understand that 1) we are here 2) other people use us 3)it works and 4) they save.  Nothing says the final 3 items better than a brief testimonial with a photo of someone you helped in your local market.

I am so delighted to open Facebook and see testimonials in some of our brokers’ posts.  And sometimes, there’s a new twist on testimonials.  Brandt Williams in Sioux Falls, SD always posts a photo of his latest happy buyer in front of his or her new house with a congratulatory message from him.  The smiles speak volumes to anyone seeing the photos.

But let’s get beyond testimonials for a moment.  They are bedrock in establishing your credibility with sellers, but what else do you need to be doing to build trust and confidence?  Here’s a short list:

1.  Your appearance.  Head to toe, what does your dress, your posture, your expression say about you?  Does it say you feel great, you are energized, you are successful?  Or does it say you got into the real estate business to be semi-retired?  I love logo clothing . . . but sometimes . . . well, here:

For me, one of the happiest places on earth is Frys Electronics.  The huge stores are filled with every electronic thing imaginable.  Unfortunately, Frys has a dress code for their male employees – largely young people working their first real job.  They are required to wear white shirts and ties.  This makes them easy to spot, but does nothing to build respect for the Frys brand or confidence in their employees.  The shirts are often dirty, wrinkled, sometimes stained.  You get the impression that the employees feel persecuted by the rule and you have thoughts of sweatshops and so on, not at all what Frys intended.

So what about your career apparel?  Are you wearing the same logo polo you got five years ago?  The one that has been through the laundry 50 times?  The one that used to be black but now more closely resembles scary bathroom mold?  Maybe you’d be better to put on something fresh.  And, by the way, if you’re in the real estate business (and not selling ranches, farms or land), I don’t think jeans help you communicate energy and success.  There are other ways to dress casually, ways that require a little more care . . . which is communicated to your client.

2.  Your syntax.  Yes:  your syntax.  Are you plowing into your potential sellers with an hours worth of ‘PRESENTATION” that leaves them exhausted and not sure what they heard?  Next time you do a listing consultation, set your smartphone to record.  Ask permission if you want.  Afterward, listen to it.  What is the dominant punctuation mark in your own part of the conversation?  It ought to be the question mark – or the question mark ought to be at least 50% of what you hear.  Really:  if you’re not asking a question for every point you make, you’re steamrolling your sellers and presenting, not consulting.

3.  Your equipment.  Are you showing up to your listing consultation with tools that say you are on top of technology?  Your seller realizes it’s all about the Internet today:  are you showing them that you are in command of this fact?  Ipads make great presentation tools, especially for graphics, but so do Android tablets.  I lean toward Ipad for real estate (despite the fact that I really don’t own any Apple products) simply because it is the accepted platform and there’s tons of training for brokers and agents using Ipad.  I just learned that you can control slides on your Ipad with your Iphone.  So you set the pad up in front of yourself and your sellers and use your phone as a remote.  I think that says something powerful about your grasp of technology.

4.  Your dialogues and graphics.  You’ll use the Seller Savings Comparison chart to demonstrate the financial aspects of your program, sure.  And of course you’ll have a world class CMA for the pricing discussion, but what more do you need?  Not much.  In fact, those two items may be 80% of most presentations.  Still I think you have to be prepared to tell the seller why you – that means you personally and you, a Help-U-Sell broker – are a better choice than anyone else.

I like the approach that starts with pointing out that you are like everyone else in the business, you do the same things they do, but you are better because . . . You might be better because you are a CDPE certified distressed property expert.  You might be better because your production ranked you in the top 4% of all REALTORS in your Board.  You might be better because your business grew 40% last year – which was one of the worst years in real estate history.

I’ve carped about this endlessly, but you simply must do it:  take your 2012 production and examine it using 3 key performance indicators (KPI):

  • Days on Market (this means from the day the sign went up until the property went under contract)
  • Relationship between Listing Price and Selling Price
  • Fallout rate

Now, compare your numbers with those of your Board or MLS.  If you’re not beating the Board in every category – and by a lot in some – there’s problem somewhere.  They don’t have your smarts, your competitive edge or your drive.  You’re comparing yourself against the average, and you ought to beat that every time.  And if you can show a seller, numerically and factually, that you can sell their  home faster than your higher priced competitors, get them more for their home (list to sell price ratio), and make the frightening possibility of a sale falling through less likely . . . well, you will have said all you need to say about how you’re better.

I have to go to Spanish Class now, so while I’m studying a new language, why not spend a little time studying the language you’ll be using next time you sit with a seller.  You can help them make a great decision if you do a little practice and updating first.

Eight Things You Can Do To Get A Listing Today

Can you get a listing today?  I’m waiting . . . can you?  Let me rephrase the question:  If you were to be hung by the neck until dead at sunset if you didn’t get a listing today, could you get one?  I thought so.  Getting a Listing is something you can DO in real estate.  You can’t force a sale, you can’t force a closing . . . but you can DO a listing.  You can get one.  It is always in your power.

And today, more than ever, a listing is precious.  Inventories are so low right now and prices are inching (and in some cases, racing) upwards.  Multiple offers abound and the person with listings is in the driver’s seat.  But listings are also hard to come by.  Many potential sellers are sitting back, noticing the upcreep in prices and thinking: ‘If I just wait a few months maybe I won’t be so upside down . . . ‘

So, what can you do TODAY to get a listing?  Here are 8 ideas:

1.  Call all of your past clients.  It’s a simple dialogue:  you need their help.  Inventory is drying up, buyers are frantic to find something.  Have they heard of anybody thinking of selling?  I would be surprised if you didn’t uncover at least 1 listing lead for every 20 calls.

2.  Call all of your fence sitting, luke warm potential sellers and heat them up!   They’re not doing themselves any favors by waiting.  The bargains are disappearing rapidly and while they’re waiting for a few percentage points gain in equity, they’re missing opportunities.  Here – use this set of graphics from Help-U-Sell University:

3.  Pull all the expired listings for the LAST 12 MONTHS – that’s right, a full year’s worth – and drop them a note about the improving market, the scarcity of listings and the fact that you can save them money!

4.  Choose one of your buyer clients who is hot to trot but having trouble finding a suitable home.  Working with them, isolate the one or two perfect neighborhoods for them.  Then make a flyer with their photo and some humanizing detail,  saying they’re looking for a home in that neighborhood.  If you’d like to sell, contact Help-U-Sell.  And put your ETM on the back.  Deliver it however you’d like:  snail mail, Excel’s mailbox stuffer program, slide it under the doormat . . . although if you’re trying to beat the hangman at sunset, you’d better stick to doormats.

5.  Follow Kurt Steffien’s lead:  start cultivating probate attorneys.  They are certainly interested in being heroes to their estate clients, and will see your money saving (estate preserving) offer as a way to accomplish that.  In other words:  they get it.  And if you get one and do a good job, it’s not just one listing, it could be many.  For months and years to come.  Really.

6.  Work with Tony to build a landing page on your website to capture contact info on people wanting to know what their house is worth.  Then create a QR Code for it.  Have flyers made with nothing more than the QR Code and the words:  ‘See How Much Your Home Is Worth Today.’  Put them all over the place.

7.  Call every FSBO in the area and ask:  ‘If I were to find a buyer who made an offer that was acceptable to you, would you pay me a commission?’  (I know, I know . . .you guys usually choke when you have to say that word, but in this case it will serve you better than ‘Low Set Fee.’).  The answer will almost always be yes, because they’ve usually made the same deal with every other Realtor in town.  Quickly calculate what, say, 3% is (let’s assume it’s $4,500), and respond: ‘So if I find a buyer who makes an acceptable offer you’ll pay me 3% which is around $4,500 dollars, right?  Let me show you what I can do for you for just $3,950*.  I mean – I’m Help-U-Sell – you get my complete full service program for less than you’d pay some agent just to find you a buyer.  For $3,950*, I’ll help you refine your pricing (if necessary), do all the marketing, get you on dozens of websites, qualify all interested buyers, help you weigh the pros and cons of every offer and calculate your net proceeds, process all the paperwork and handle the details all the way to closing.  How’s that sound?’

(*Or whatever your Set Fee is.  By the way:  Commissions, whether percentage based of set fee, are always negotiable.)

8.  Call Jack Bailey and ask him what you should do.

This is July 5.  The longest day of the year was, what?  A week and a half ago?  So you’ve got a few extra hours of daylight to get it done.  Go on now:  get out there and don’t come home until you have a signed listing agreement in your sweaty little hand.

 

 

How Do You Present Your Pricing Today?

Here is a blast from the past . . . well, from six months ago. I just re-read it and it occurred to me it’s an important message for right now. Please give this a little consideration, Help-U-Sell folks.

Help-U-Sell is certainly NOT a For Sale By Owner company.  Yes, it’s true:  in the late 70’s Don Taylor pioneered the use of the phrase ‘For Sale By Owner’ on the Help-U-Sell For Sale sign.  In time, that phrase morphed to ‘For Sale With Owner,’ but the intent was never for Help-U-Sell to be a stripped down FSBO package vendor.  Our vision has never wavered from the notion that Help-U-Sell is a full service real estate company.

Having said that (and fully embraced it without reservation), I think it might make sense to examine our Consumer offer – the one to Sellers, specifically – and how we present it.

Pictured below is the graphic that is often used with sellers as we talk with them about putting their home on the market.  It acknowledges that there are really three ways a home might sell and prepares the seller for the good news that we charge them, not on some arbitrary percentage basis (no matter how the house sells), but on a logical pricing model that varies depending on how it sells.  This chart forms the real heart and soul of most Help-U-Sell listing consultations.

*Note:  the savings in this example are versus an ordinary broker charging, say, 6% commision on a $300,000 home.

We use the first option, the ‘You Show’ option to talk about seller involvement in the sale process through holding open houses, showing prospective buyers through and talking the listing up at work and in the neighborhood.  If they procure their own buyer in this way, then the Low Set Fee is all they pay; which means  maximum savings.

The second option, ‘We Show,’ is the place where we introduce the idea that one of the Buyer Agents in our own office may be working with a buyer for whom the home might be perfect.  If the seller opts we can include this option as well. (Notice, in this example, the broker charges a set fee on the showing side too and it’s equal to the listing set fee.  There are variations out there, but let’s remember: we are a set fee real estate company.  Shouldn’t the showing fee also be a set fee?)

Finally, option three has us putting the listing in MLS and having the seller be prepared to compensate an outside company and agent should they have a buyer and affect a sale.

Regardless of which options are selected at the time of listing, the seller will always pay based on how the house actually sells.  Even if we put it in MLS, if the seller ultimately finds his or her buyer, all they pay is the option one price: the Low Set Fee of $3,950 in the example.

There was a time when many sellers opted for  option one or one and two, choosing to stay out of MLS all together, thereby ensuring a large savings.  With the downturn in the market, however, this has become a rarity.  Most sellers, with the advice of their Help-U-Sell brokers, want to pull out all the stops when it comes to initial marketing and so go into MLS from day one.

All of this brings me back to option one.  I think it might be helpful to remember that a whole lot of marketing  happens in that option:

  1. A proper price is recommended.  Any truthful agent will admit that 75% of marketing is done the night the home is placed on the market, when the seller chooses a price.  Properly priced homes, marketed well, sell. Period.  Improperly priced homes don’t sell, regardless of how much marketing is done.   That simple Low Set Fee option comes with the credible advice of a knowledgable expert (you) on matters of pricing, terms,  fixing up, showing procedures and a multitude of others things.
  2. The brilliantly beautiful RED Help-U-Sell for sale sign is installed in the yard.
  3. Flyers on the property are created and made available inside the house and out.
  4. Directional Signs, Open House Signs, Sign-in Registers and other tools for holding an effective Open House are given to the seller along with expert coaching on how to hold a effective Open House event.
  5. The Buyer Agents in the office are briefed on the home so that they can talk intelligently about it when inquiries come into the office and do so in such a way that caller interest is maintained, even heightened.  And what do we do with these inquiries?  If the only option the seller has chosen is option one, we send them directly to the seller for showing.
  6. Dozens of photos and a virtual tour are created for the listing so that potential buyers can see it in its best light when deciding whether to proceed with a showing.
  7. The listing is input into www.helpusell.com and is available there for prospective buyers all over the world.  In addition, once on helpusell.com, the listing is syndicated out to dozens of other consumer oriented real estate websites for maximum web exposure.
  8. A QR Code for the listing is generated and made available for use on flyers and on the For Sale sign so SmartPhone enabled buyers can get the information they want, when they want it.
  9. A knowledgeable expert (again, you) is available to help with questions and concerns, to write any purchase agreement and to handle all the details of transactions processing and coordination all the way to and through a successful closing.
  10. And more . . . meaning that every office has other things they may do on an option one only listing.

Look at that list!  That’s a lot of stuff! And you know what?  That may be enough to affect a sale even in today’s tough market, a sale that could yield a very happy seller who saved thousands!

I’m not suggesting you abandon the MLS (although I am looking forward to the next generation MLS – the one that is not connected to your Board of Realtors and whose policies don’t restrict your business).  However, I’ll go back to what I said earlier:

A properly priced listing, marketed well, will sell.  Period.  And that applies no matter what the market realities.

Maybe it’s time to start offering this option more vigorously to our equity sellers who are willing to price right and are interested in saving maximum dollars.  It’s hardly ‘For Sale By Owner.’  It’s full of good marketing and advice.  And remember:  there is a direct coorelation between seller savings and seller delight; between seller delight and word-of-mouth advertising; between word-of-mouth advertising and the growth of your business.

 

 

 

 

 

DK Gets Listings

We started talking about an inventory shortage back in the Fall.  The perfect storm of no new construction coupled with investor frenzy at the bottom of the market and fence sitters finally deciding now was a good time to buy has left most markets with very little to sell.  Oh:  there is inventory, but it’s mostly overpriced or essentially unsaleable.  Anything priced properly has multiple offers.

So today, getting listings is essential.  We have to build inventory to meet the demands of our marketplaces and thus, prosper.  But how?

We’ve got great tools at Help-U-Sell.  I’m very excited about Excel Print/Mail’s new mailbox flyer program.  It’s a perfect way to get your seller message out to a defined geography.  And using postcards to work the neighborhood around a listing has never stopped being effective.  A few weeks ago, we learned that Robin Rowland had sent a letter to every listing that expired in 2011 . . . and ended up with a couple of listings.  Not bad.

But mostly, getting listings today is not much different than it was last year or five years ago or more.  It all comes down to the basics.

‘Remind me again,’ you say, ‘What, exactly, are these basics?’

David Knox has a ton of good stuff on his website to develop great brokers and agents.  Each month, on the first Tuesday of the month, he releases a free salesmeeting on video and this month it’s all about the basics of getting listings.  I urge you to go to his website and click on the video link to ‘First Tuesday’ – it will wake up your possibly hibernating listing genes.  While you’re there, click around a bit – it’s a treasure trove of good ideas.

And here’s another thought:  Why not set aside that trashy novel you’re nibbling at every evening before you go to bed and get a copy of what I believe is the best book ever written about how to list and sell real estate, ‘How To List And Sell Real Estate’ by Danielle Kennedy.  It’s been in existence for what?  30 years or something but has been updated, revised, made more relevant . . . and is packed with great ideas on how to get more of what this business is all about:  inventory.  (You can get it at Amazon and B&N, too, but make sure you get the 2011 edition)

Interesting:  both of my recommendations, David and Danielle, have the same initials:  DK.

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