Why agents are losing listings

In real estate sales, being a strong lister is the most important skill set to have, and having great training can make all the difference in your success. By learning a structured, replicable listing presentation, and honing your skills, you can build a successful career that lasts a lifetime. When you have a robust listing strategy, you have stock, and when you have stock, you make sales. Making sales builds your rent roll, and having a strong sales and rental department ultimately leads to a profitable business and good income for salespeople.

The problem is that many real estate principals can’t or won’t train their team. Some don’t have a structured presentation themselves, while others fear their team members leaving and becoming competitors. This is where training from a network franchisor level becomes vital.

As someone who personally handles all the training at Coronis Victoria, I train teams and salespeople on the Million Dollar Agent System. This training methodology is geared around a strong replicable listing presentation that leverages existing listings to find new ones. Having a structured, replicable listing presentation that creates an environment to demonstrate your competence and strategy is crucial. Without it, you’ll struggle to get the traction you need to go to the next level in your real estate career.

I believe that real estate is like anything in life. Once someone gets good at something, they want to do it more, whether it’s a sport, a musical instrument or real estate. Once someone has a highly competent presentation, they then want to put themselves in a position to present, they want to prospect so they have the opportunity to showcase their talent. This is a win-win because the salespeople now have the tools for success and it is also a win for our franchisees as the business isn’t solely dependent on their results.

The listing presentation is the foundation of your success in real estate sales. Prospecting, or putting yourself in a position to present it is crucial to demonstrating your competence and value to potential clients. Structuring the listing presentation to explain how VPA can create strong competition and what that can represent to a seller’s sale price is also crucial. However, the explanation of each component must be executed in the correct timing sequence to avoid the focus being on fees or price before demonstrating your value.

All good businesses have great processes that they put on repeat. They “set and forget” these processes as they know they work well. Your listing presentation should be the same. As a salesperson, you’re a business inside a business, so having proven replicable success systems is essential.

Many agents lose listings because their approach is “ad hoc”. They think that if they’re likeable, they’ll win the listing. However, that approach won’t cut it in the major leagues. To be a high performer, you need something replicable that you can benchmark and critique for greater impact.

My advice is to learn from the best listers in the industry. If they’re not inside your office, go externally if you’re serious about being great! Once you learn a strong presentation, role play it, practice it, put it in your own words, and add your flavour to it, but follow the roadmap. This will be a turning point in your career and life.

Everything means and represents something. From the first phone call, to the closing question and the 19 steps in between. Remember, the difference between a gold medal winner and a silver or bronze medal winner in the 100-meter sprint final at the Olympics can be as small as 100th of a second — so essentially, you just need to be slightly better than your competitors at each step of the way to secure the business. Those micro wins along the way during presentation equate to achieving your macro goal of securing the listing, regardless of external factors like the weather.

In conclusion, a strong listing presentation is the foundation of success in real estate sales. Prospecting to enable you to put yourself into a position whereby you can then demonstrate your competence and value to potential clients is crucial. Having a structured, replicable listing presentation that creates an environment to showcase your competence and strategy is essential. To be a high performer, learn from the best listers in the industry, practice, and put your own personality on their success systems. Like anything in life, once you’re good at something, you want to do it more... getting good at listing homes for sale will absolutely change your life.

Adam Flynn is the state director of Coronis Group Victoria