How To Get A Listing In 14 Days – Part Two

This guide is a continuation from Part One. Make sure to read that first if you haven’t already.

If you’ve come this far in the door knocking process and you’ve managed to find someone who is interested in speaking with you about potentially listing within the next 90 days, congratulations! This counts as a lead!

Remember, you must keep door knocking and speaking to 50 people every day until you acquire 3 leads in total.

Let’s get back to our guide, and note that any scripts I use are simply to illustrate a conversation. They certainly aren’t meant to be the best scripts.

So you’re still at the door, and the homeowner says:

That blank represents anything else the homeowner may say. At this point in the conversation, it’s a green light for you to move to the next stage, and that is booking a time to meet with sellers.

They might fill in that blank with a number of things, such as:

Whatever they ask, you do not want to begin your listing conversation on the doorstep. Aim to book a time to see the home later in the evening, or the next evening. You will need time to prepare data and come back organized with relevant information for them.

Let’s put this all together now and show you how to pivot to get an appointment:

Make sure that you will have enough time to prepare for the listing meeting, so if you need an extra day to get ready, book for the next evening. And of course, you go back to knocking the next door!

4. Preparing For Your Appointment

The time has come for you to begin gathering all the relevant information you’re going to convey to the homeowner. Your purpose is to help them understand likely outcomes if they decide to list now, given all the current variables in the market that could affect their selling price.

You will need to have a firm understanding of:

• all properties that are currently listed in the area
• more specifically, which ones most resemble their property as they will be competing for buyer attention
• recent sold listings in the area, especially ones that are comparable
• statistics that indicate the average time it takes for a home to sell in the area and the average sale/list percentage (ie., homes in the area may sell for 99% of the list price on average)
• current trends in the market (multiple offers, lowball offers, buyer sentiment)

Understanding What Their House Is Worth

The homeowner will expect you to determine what their property is worth and provide a CMA. Without seeing the home ahead of time, it’s best to determine a range where the lower end reflects a home that is outdated and the higher end reflects a stunning renovated property.

This range can be gauged based on comparable homes of the same size and type that have sold recently, giving you a price spectrum that reflects the condition of the home (and often times the circumstances of the sale).

There are a number of tools out there (some may be provided directly by your real estate board) that will allow you to plug in MLS listings and help you create a visual CMA to present.

Some agents prefer to only bring print outs of listings and free style the list price conversation. If you have little or no experience in doing listing presentations, stick with standard CMAs. This will force you to research the market a little more thoroughly and present yourself professionally.

What Do You Bring With You?

• Your ‘listing presentation’
• Your CMA
• The listing documentation
• A solid understanding of the recent activity in the area

** A quick note about ‘listing presentations’ and I’m specifically talking about the presentation you flip through that outlines information about you, what your marketing plan is, and what your commission fee is **

Please don’t download a listing presentation you find online, and don’t use your colleague’s listing presentation, or one that your brokerage marketing department makes for the office.

Every agent runs their business differently. In other words, the way you will market a seller’s property, handle their transaction, and the amount of commission you charge is completely up to you. Sure, there are common things that agents must do in order to get a property listed and sold, but the way you achieve that is what separates you from the next agent.

As a result, your listing presentation needs to uniquely reflect your approach to selling homes and how much you will charge for that service.

If you’re interested in learning how to create a custom listing presentation that is unique to you and can significantly increase your chances of signing a listing agreement, I am working on a separate guide which will be posted in the coming weeks. (Remember to sign up to my email list if you want updates on my new posts, which can be found at the bottom of this page)

5. Conducting the Listing Presentation

This is it.

Every step, every decision in your life has brought you to this defining moment.

The spotlights suddenly come on, the crowd falls into a dead silence, and all eyes are on you.

Turning The Listing Presentation Into A Conversation

We need to understand a few baseline things before we get started.

In it’s simplest form, ‘sales’ involves solving a problem for a customer in exchange for money. This can come in the form of a product or service, but the better you are at solving a problem, the more you stand to get paid.

What are we solving for a seller? They have a home they’d like to sell in a time frame appropriate for them so they can walk away with a satisfactory amount of money. One thing to note that although this is the main problem to solve, there could be a whole host of smaller problems that get in the way of this happening.

Your job is to understand the homeowner’s intended outcome, and then to show them that you are sufficiently equipped to bring them this outcome in light of any surprises that could come up.

All sellers will have some common questions that will need to be answered, but for the most part, it is you that will be needing to ask most of the questions if you want to understand their needs.

The biggest mistake most real estate agents do is to go into ‘selling mode’ when they’re on the listing appointment. A homeowner will have trouble feeling that you understand their needs when you spend 80% of the time talking about yourself and your company.

What you must do is to shift away from thinking of it as a listing presentation, and more of a listing conversation. This means that you’re going to have to get really good at asking the right questions, and we’ll cover that in a bit.

Understanding What Every Seller Wants

Let’s take a snapshot of you sitting at the kitchen table with the sellers.

You’re wearing a snazzy outfit, sweating a little bit under your neatly pressed collar. The sellers are across from you, cautiously listening to you as they try to size you up.

In this scenario, each party sitting at the table has a psychological barrier. The real estate agent fears rejection, and the sellers fear failure. The sellers’ failures could come as a result of picking the wrong agent, pricing the home too low, paying too much commission, and the list goes on.

How do we mitigate this fear? We must have outstanding answers to the following questions. Here they are:

1. How’s the market doing right now?
2. What is my house worth?
3. What will you do to sell my property?
4. How long will it take to sell?
5. How much do you charge?

If you can address these 5 questions to the sellers’ satisfaction, you’re already 50% of the way towards signing a listing agreement.

The other 50% depends on the whether or not they like you and trust you, much of which is based on the quality of the questions you ask to demonstrate you know what you’re doing.

How To Have A Winning Conversation At Your Listing Appointment

Building good rapport is surprisingly easy – you just ask questions to get to know someone better.

I’m talking about genuine, heartfelt interest to show that you care and you’re tuned into their needs.

You don’t need to pretend to love golf because the seller has his golf bag in the corner, or kiss ass by complimenting their lawn gnomes.

Getting the sellers to like you and trust you is as important as answering the previous five questions. This is why agents of all levels of experience have listings on the market. If listings only went to the most qualified real estate agents out there, none of us would be here because we’d never get listings.

Many new agents in the business get their first listings from friends and family despite having little experience. The trust factor goes a long way in real estate.

What sort of questions should you be asking at a minimum?

• Why are you selling?
• What major improvements have you made to the home since you moved in?
• Are there any major repairs that need to be done to the house before listing?
• Have you bought a home already, and if so, when’s the closing?
• When is your ideal closing date?
• What do you like most about your property that you think the buyer should know?
• Do you have a price in mind for your home?
• How did you come up with this price?
• What are your expectations of me as your real estate agent?
• How do you feel about open houses?
• What are the best days and times for showings that would be convenient for you?
• Are you speaking with any other agents about the sale of your home, and if so, what criteria are you using to make your decision?
• If you like my marketing plan and we can can agree on a price, are you ready to list the property today with me?

The answers to these questions will provide you with enough information to determine:

• Their motivation level
• The condition of the home
• How realistic they are on pricing and selling
• Their expectations of you
• How much marketing may be required to sell this home (which subsequently relates to the commission you charge)

The Commission Question

I want to preface this section by saying that I will not be suggesting specific commission fees here. As an industry, we need to be mindful when discussing commission percentages due to the optics of price fixing.

More importantly, however, is that your fee should be proportionate to the marketing services you provide and your costs to run a business. In other words, don’t charge what other agents are charging simply because you think it’s the standard. You must determine your own fees based on how you run your business.

With that out of the way, let’s examine how to tackle the commission component of the listing appointment.

Let’s look at where most real estate agents go wrong on the listing appointment.

There are 3 main duties that you will provide to your seller when they hire you as their listing agent. They are marketing, negotiating, and guarding.

1. Marketing – Listing the property for sale and exposing it to the most buyers possible in order to attract offers
2. Negotiating – Using your negotiation skills and situational awareness to get the highest price and/or most favorable conditions for your seller
3. Guarding – Anticipating, mitigating, and solving any potential problems that could arise during the listing process, the offer negotiation, and the period leading up to the closing date.

Most real estate agents spend far too much time making #1 (marketing) the focus of the listing appointment. Agents ramble on about the strength of their brand or their company’s brand, their social media accounts, the open house feature sheets, the drone video, the virtual tour, and so on.

From the consumers’ perspective, all agents brag about the same type of marketing, so nothing differentiates their services. Whether they interview one agent or a dozen, everyone appears to offer the same marketing services. When every service looks identical, the seller starts looking at the cheapest option.

Where we earn our money (and referrals) is by getting good at #2 and #3.

If you were to ask a seller how important it was for them to have the best negotiator working on their behalf at offer time, the answer would undoubtedly be “VERY IMPORTANT!”

But how do you convince a seller that you’re a great negotiator when they haven’t even seen you in action yet? You fight for your commission at the kitchen table. Let’s compare the difference between a weak negotiator and a strong negotiator.

Scenario 1 – The Pushover Realtor

Scenario 2 – The Strong Negotiator

Commission will always be a big issue to sellers in the absence of value. In the previous scenario we prioritized the element of negotiation to increase our value.

We can also emphasize the importance of guarding (or protecting) your client from initial signing of the listing agreement right up until closing date. There are many reasons why a deal could encounter problems after an accepted offer:

• Home inspection reveals unanticipated deficiencies
• The appraisal comes in significantly lower
• Title reveals liens, unpaid property taxes, or other hindrances
• Changes in buyer’s financial situation before closing (ie. loss of employment)
• Lender complications that cause the lender to refuse financing
• Property damage before closing
• Zoning or permit issues
• Survey discrepancies
• Final walkthrough issues before closing
• Insurance problems due to the property being uninsurable
• Tenant refusing to leave on closing date

One way to bring value to your clients is by proactively explaining the potential challenges that could come up, and convey your ability to help solve these problems. It’s important for the sellers to feel safe in your care, because the financial risk of a deal that goes sideways could be extremely costly. Failed deals often lead to litigation, which could further cripple the financial damage to a family. This level of preparedness and support enhances the homeowner’s confidence and peace of mind during the sale of their property.

As a result, it’s important for you to emphasize the value you bring to the homeowners beyond simply marketing the property for sale. Being a skilled negotiator and experienced guardian of the deal is the hallmark of a great listing agent, and will allow you to ask for a higher commission fee.

Addressing Other Concerns & Objections

In sales, we are taught that there are objections and conditions. Let’s quickly recap what the differences are:

1. An objection is a concern that is preventing the prospect from moving forward with the deal. In real estate, it could mean uncertainty about the listing price, the commission fee, or the marketing plan.
2. A condition is a factual circumstance that is preventing the prospect from moving forward that is typically out of their control. In real estate, that could mean requiring a divorcing spouse to sign the paperwork, or the property requiring extensive repairs before being listed.

In my experience, there is a 3rd type of dialog you can encounter, and it’s what I call exit questions. What is this?

3. Exit questions are deliberate questions that the prospect will ask you in order for you to answer no. The purpose of this is to give them a valid excuse to reject your offering and end the conversation.

For example, they might ask you how many houses you’ve sold this year. If you provide them a sufficient answer, they might ask how many houses you’ve sold specifically on the street. When you answer “none”, they will use this as an out and say “I’m sorry, it was really important for us to find an agent who has already sold listing on our street, thanks anyways for your time.“

Think of this strategy as punching at your offering until they can make a hole. How we prepare for this type of strategy?

We need to go back to what’s most important to the seller. These are the following questions:

1. How’s the market doing right now?
2. What is my house worth?
3. What will you do to sell my property?
4. How long will it take to sell?
5. How much do you charge?

If you are unable to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the sellers, you are already on your way to losing the listing. If you were unable to build rapport and get them to like and trust you, it’s game over. This is when the exit questions will come.

Let’s use an example to illustrate my point.

You’ve taken in your 3-series BMW for an oil change at the dealership. While you’re killing an hour of time, you walk over to the showroom and find yourself standing in front of the latest 5-series BMW.

It looks spectacular.

You look at the lease price and begin trying to convince yourself that it would be worth the extra expense to be driving around in this baby.

A salesperson notices you and slides up to start a conversation.

Now let’s examine the same conversation with a capable salesperson.

You’ll notice that the salesperson appeared competent, knowledgeable, and was able to provide you ample information and solve your needs. As a result, it’s not important to you knowing how long they’ve worked at the dealership or how many cars they’ve sold.

You want to always make sure you handling objections and conditions gracefully so that you don’t end up being hammered with exit questions.

Let’s proceed to Part Three of this guide where we will explore objection handling in more detail, talking about your marketing plan, and finishing off the listing appointment.