When was the last time you really took a hard look at your listing presentation?  If it’s been a while, take the time to get it updated.  Especially in a slow market, you don’t need to spend time with listings that won’t sell or sellers that won’t listen.

Use Your Listing Presentation to Educate and Evaluate Your Prospect

Just like a job interview, a listing presentation is an opportunity for you to decide if you want to work with the seller, while the seller decides whether he/she wants to work with you.

Given the fact that you are running a real estate consulting business, we should stop thinking about these meetings as listing presentations.  Maybe we should call them Home Selling Evaluation Meetings.  The seller evaluates you and vice versa.

Elements of a Great Home Selling Evaluation Meeting

Don’t Just Talk About Technology, Demonstrate it! – You’ve got a laptop computer, right?  Put your presentation materials in PowerPoint.  And, while you have the computer handy, show off a few other things:

• Naturally, you have a website, right?  Take your potential seller on a tour of your real estate web site.  Show them how their home will be featured on your site, other sites, syndicated, etc.  Show them how your website is set up to attract and retain buyers.
• Are you ranked on the search engines?  Do a Google search (check where you show up right before the meeting – the engines can be whimsical). 
• Do you have a link on your site so that visitors can call you while they’re on the site?  Put in your prospect’s telephone number and show them how responsive you can be.
• Virtual tours or single home websites on your list?  Show them a couple and paint a mental picture of the prospects seeing their home with professional photographs beautifully presented to potential buyers.

Education is Key – Especially in a slow market, you want to work with educated sellers.  That doesn’t mean they have to be educated before you meet.  But, you do want to make your Meeting educational, then watch carefully to see how the seller reacts.  If they’re set in their thinking and unwilling to listen to advice from a knowledgeable expert (you), then the hair should start standing up on the back of your neck.

• Eliminate the Jargon - The best way to educate someone is to speak their language.  That’s something I don’t think the real estate industry does very well.  What is a CMA? College Majorette Association?  How about calling it assistance in setting a selling price based on market trends, or Market-Based Selling Price Analysis?  Even the term Home Evaluation is too weird for me.  Does that mean you’re going to tell me whether my home is worthy?  has a high IQ?  is kind to others?  You get the idea.
• Cover the Key Seller Educational Topics – What are the things that most drive you nuts about working with sellers?  I mean, when you’re not actually enjoying it because that’s what you do for a living?  Turn those issues around – rather than addressing them in a “sales” mode, turn them into educational issues.
  • Selling Price – Don’t try to go into a lot of detail about the market and how prices are lower, etc.  Educate them about the most effective way to set a price and your role as the agent in that process.  Save the discussion about the price until after you’re sure you want to work with the seller, and they’re pretty sure about you, too.
  • Marketing Systems – Educate them about where buyers are looking, use statistics from the NAR profile, explain your unique marketing plan.  If most of your marketing plan focuses on the Internet, explain why.  Explain why print advertising isn’t an effective avenue.

This post isn’t intended to be a “how to write a listing presentation” kind of a post.  You have to put things in a logical order.  You need to have a section on why the seller should work with you – and don’t be shy!  List the benefits they will receive from working with you.  If there are statistics to support that, like a low DOM for all your sold listings, then use them.  But, don’t put your potential sellers to sleep with lots of charts and graphs.

Finally, take control of the meeting.  You know what you need to accomplish.  If the seller asks you what price you’d list the house at before you even sit down, just explain that there are a number of issues you’d like to discuss.  You could say something like, “That’s an excellent question, and I’d like to discuss that after we’ve had a chance to determine whether we really want to work together.  Let me tell you a bit about how we work, then we can discuss your objectives and get into the question of pricing.”

Then, fire up your laptop, and go get ‘em!