Smart Tips for Successful Real Estate Listing Presentations

The thought of doing real estate listing presentations often strikes fear into a real estate agent’s heart.  But, there’s a way to get around that.  An effective listing presentation isn’t a presentation at all.  If you think of it as a discussion with a homeowner where your goal is to help them sell their home, you’re much more likely to be successful.  That’s especially true if you use these smart tips to plan for the meeting.

1. Do the Right Preparation

You need to go into the listing meeting after establishing a relationship with your prospect, and with information about the local market, for example:

• Get to know the homeowner before you meet. Find out why they’re selling, what their timing is, how they will decide who will list their home.  If the homeowner is interviewing several agents, ask to be the last meeting in that series; your meeting will stay in their minds longer if you’re the last, and they may have questions that came up in other meetings.
• Research the local market and prepare market information.  Be prepared to discuss the market in their community, for example: are prices rising or falling, what is the average days on market (DOM), what is the inventory level and what is the average list to sale price ratio?  Put these statistics into an easy to understand chart for your listing package.

2. Prepare a Listing Package

Your listing package should contain the backup to your discussion.  You don’t need to use it as a page by page presentation, but you do want something to leave behind for the homeowner to review later.

The package should include the following types of information:

• Your background and expertise: Wherever possible, quantify the results you achieve such as DOM, average list to sale price ratio for your listings, etc.
• The strengths of your brokerage
• Market information
• An overview of pricing strategy: It’s critical to explain the problems that arise if a home is overpriced, and how you avoid that situation.  After you have toured the home and taken the time to prepare a CMA, you can schedule another meeting to discuss your pricing recommendation.
• Your marketing plan: Make sure to list all of the things you do to sell a home such as virtual tours, professional photos, real estate showing feedback, etc.  Don’t assume that the homeowner knows you prepare virtual tours just because you showed one to them.

3. Plan the Listing Meeting

Real estate listing presentations don’t need to include a formal presentation.  The homeowner should talk more than you do.  You’re there to tour the home, answer their questions, find out what their goals are, and explain how you can help them achieve those goals.

You do need to know how you will explain things to them when the discussion gets around to what you can do for them.  Therefore, you need to plan the parts of the meeting where you will be communicating important information.  The most effective way to communicate is through discussion and demonstration.  Plan on having your laptop or tablet set up to help you demonstrate rather than explain.  For example, plan how you will describe and demonstrate:

• the market conditions in their area
• your expertise
• your pricing strategy
• the things that are included in your listings such as professional photos, video tours, etc.
• the structure of your marketing plan, including the internet visibility your provide, how you attract buyers, etc.

Practice what you’ll say.  You don’t need to write a script, but it might help clarify your thoughts.  If you’ve practiced beforehand, you won’t be searching for the right words when you’re in the meeting itself.  If you’ll need to use pages from your listing package during the meeting, store them on the computer to avoid flipping between the computer and the listing package.

Real estate listing presentations don’t need to be stressful.  Forget the presentation – continue to establish a relationship with the homeowner to bring your discussion to a successful conclusion.