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Do you rely on your natural charm or do you have a strategy?
The hard work’s been done – you’ve gathered your leads and nurtured them, you have mail dropped, emailed prospective customers and done some door knocking. As a result, you now have someone wanting an appraisal on their property and asking you to present to them.
So now you have the attention of a future customer, how do you prepare for this presentation?
A good intro into this is to ask yourself how you different have your last 10 listings presentations have been? Did you vary them for your audience or were they all some sort of combination of looking through the property, walking through a CMA with comparable, establishing your credentials and a market price for the property, and talking through a marketing strategy?
A little help goes a long way.
At RP Data we’ve have been looking at growth strategies for our customers. This entails how we help our customers grow their businesses and how we can prove to them that we have delivered extreme value to them. Part of the process of delivering value has alerted us to consider how we communicate our value. While we believe we have great products with lots of new features designed to grow our customers’ businesses – do they actually then use these features? And if not, what part of our communication is not getting through?
Communication with a customer requires a strategy and then a tactic. The strategy uses an understanding of who your customer is and how they make decisions, and then planning your meetings with them using this understanding. The tactic is the approach during a meeting to implement your strategy. For Agents the strategy is planning, and the tactic is the prelisting presentation.
Some top agents we have spoken to ask a few questions to prepare their strategy:
- Who am I presenting to? Is this a single parent, a couple, or some other combination of sellers?
- Why are they selling? Are they downsizing for retirement, upsizing, moving interstate?
- Who is the primary driver in the selling decision? For example, is this the husband keen to sell while the wife wants to stay?
- Do I have any contacts who know the vendors?
- What other influencers are at play? Is there another property professional they are already dealing with such as a mortgage broker or financial planner?
These questions then help them form a quick strategy about how they will present to the vendor and win their business. The strategy prepares them to:
- Answer the larger questions the customer has about the life changing event of selling a house. The more the agent can help them with these larger questions, the more she becomes a trusted adviser. For example, if the vendor is downsizing you can help them choose their next property and give them an idea of the price they will pay for it. This makes the decision to list with you a lot easier, they are both more comfortable with you and with the decision to list
- Overcome vendor objections to listing with you at the price you recommend. Knowing who is a supporter of yours, who wants to list, and why, helps you frame your presentation and your answers to their questions and their needs
- Link the customer into their network of trusted advisors such as brokers, planners and others
A lot of data about a vendor is relatively easily available. How long have they held their property? What did they last pay? How old are they and what is their family structure? Most of these can be answered through either some research in a data platform such as RP Professional, or in the appointment setting call (‘are you looking to buy in the area?’, ‘Why are you moving – schools, job, etc.?’).
We have found that simple planning and research dramatically improves the chances of getting the listing and providing a good outcome for the vendor which leads to referrals!
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