Through the pre-listing period and listing presentation, you should have done the following:

1. Spent time counseling the clients on the phone
2. Researched comps and other information about their home, neighborhood, price range, etc.
3. Prepared a great listing presentation compiled from your research
4. Reconfirmed your appointment with the clients
5. Reconfirmed the clients’ core motivation for selling
6. Shown up for the appointment
7. Toured the property
8. Quelled their major concerns
9. Met, and hopefully, exceeded their criteria
10. Prepared a “Features and Benefits” list
11. Demonstrated how the “Features and Benefits” list will be presented to the world
12. Showed them a high-perceived value team
13. Showed them their responsibilities as team members to help achieve their goals.

You have had two major opportunities to ask for the honor of representing their property. The first opportunity was right after quelling their concerns, talking about the features and benefits of their home, and meeting their criteria.  The second opportunity was after presenting them with the team approach.

In my twenty-five years of making listing presentations, I was successful the majority of the time in getting the required signature on the listing agreement at this point.  However, if I had already decided that this listing had a very low closing percentage due to a soft market, non-negotiable price, or lackluster seller motivation, getting a signature was not in my plan or in my best interest.  The remaining portion of potential clients at this juncture had more questions, concerns, and objections.  You can answer concerns and objections any time, but let’s deliver the rest of the value that is available in our pre-planned listing presentation.

I will assume that your client wants more information.  The problem with this is you are always tempted to give them your every “bell and whistle” service.  Many of these items are expensive and will begin to decrease your net while also increasing your time involved with the transaction.  A classic example of such a service is home staging, where you can spend literally months of time preparing a property for its maximum sales price.

Sure, you could attend a home staging seminar; however, I have found that it is so rarely necessary that you should not offer it unless directly asked by the client.  I have seen many times where a real estate agent suggests the benefits of staging and actually loses the listing because the sellers do not want to be involved.

There is a simple truth to staging – if the client wanted to fix up their property prior to sale, it would have already been done.  Any seller smart enough to make a mortgage payment understands that spending money and time on fixing up their property will have a pay-off.  They just did not want to do it.  Either you are going to be doing the staging yourself, or you are just going to be irritating the client.

If you have the time to do a major staging project on a home, my suggestion is that you purchase properties for yourself and do the staging for yourself.  Only get involved in the staging process for a property if the client directly asks for the service or has been approached by the competition with a staging offer and the client seems to be interested in it.  It is an easy concept involving a decorator, a handyman, and a little common sense.  Let’s see if we can add more value to a listing presentation without adding massive amounts of time or overhead to your operation with some better ideas.

Stick to the theme of “under-promising and over-delivering.”  Under-promising and over-delivering means you will want to do more after the listing than what you have told them you will be doing to obtain the listing.  This concept is refreshing, and it leads to happier clients, greater repeat business, and more enthusiastic and numerous referrals.  Exceeding clients’ expectations is the fastest way to their hearts.  The fastest way to exceed their expectations is to stop growing their expectations by over-promising.  Remember, 95% of marketing is how you price the property. 

We’ll pick up with the balance of this value proposition in tomorrow’s blog post.

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