Ditch the Presentation, Try These Listing Strategies Instead

Tap Into Your Value: Sellers seek listing agents who present benefits rather than features or brag books.

By Donna Shryer

With the current nationwide dip in properties for sale, competition for listings is fierce. Maybe it’s time to recalibrate your listing presentation.

Or as Karen Hall, CRS, principal broker, @home real estate in the Washington, D.C., metro area put it bluntly: “Stop doing listing presentations!”

“A ‘presentation’ is about you presenting you,” she says. “Sellers want to know how I can help them. So when I meet a seller for the first time, we have a marketing consultation—a two-way conversation. They talk about concerns and I talk about my services that address those concerns.”

In other words, today’s seller wants to know What’s In It For Me—or WIIFM. That means delivering a benefits-driven presentation—rather than listing features.

If the benefit vs. feature contrast is fuzzy, here’s an example:

Feature: You provide agent feedback reports.

Benefit: You provide sellers with agent feedback reports that contain clearly stated assessment/impressions of the home and specific recommendations.

A Prelude to Hello

Before meeting a potential listing client, there’s research to be done—from collecting honed data to hints about the seller’s personality type and motivation to sell. Here’s how to use research from a WIIFM perspective.

1. Show You Know: Miguel Avila, CRS, a REALTOR® with Long & Foster Real Estate in McLean, Virginia, kicks off the initial in-person meeting with two well-researched, data-rich yet concise one-page documents. His Market Absorption Rate illustrates how quickly properties are closing in the seller’s market. His Market Velocity Rate looks at the previous month and how many comparable properties in the seller’s market closed, went under contract or are still for sale. MLS data feeds both reports.

Every REALTOR® weaves data into a listing presentation. Avila, however, reviews data from the listing client’s perspective, so they can tap into realistic pricing trends, fact-based closing expectations and seasonal influencers.

2. Anticipating a Game Plan: Emailing a pre-consultation survey, which asks the seller to describe their home, their motivation to move, how much they owe and other general questions helps prioritize her presentation, explains Kim Cameron, CRS, broker agent with Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate Preferred Properties, St. Louis metro area. “My presentations all include the exact same information, but the seller’s survey answers suggest what I need to focus on.”Sellers may never be aware of this benefit, but they’ll “feel” it as you move forward with a presentation that piques their interest and hits their hot topics.

3. Pre-testing the Waters: While every REALTOR® has a guide to help sellers prepare their home for showings, Cameron takes an unusual turn by emailing potential clients her 89-point guide prior to the first meeting. “Before I even arrive, the seller knows they have to have some skin in the game. I think that sends a message that we’re building a team—something too many listing agents don’t do.”

4. Rewriting History: Pre-presentation research for Hall includes looking into the history of the seller’s home. “We want to see if or when this property was last on the market,” Hall explains. “If the homeowner tried but couldn’t sell the property two years ago, what was the problem? Was the marketing effort weak? If so, then this may be a sore spot with the seller, and during our first consultation, I need to spend extra time explaining the benefits of my marketing strategy.”

The Main Event

When you first cross the threshold into a seller’s home, it’s time to put away your “brag book,” pack up your ego and forgo your list of features. Instead, consider these ideas to demonstrate your value as benefits rather than features.

1.Go with the Flow: Hall arrives to first-time consultations with the same one-page, printed list of bullet points about her marketing strategy. “As sellers take me on a tour of their home, they give me clues as to where my help is most needed. So, during the tour I’m mentally adjusting how I’ll review my marketing strategy.”

If there’s serious de-cluttering to be done, Hall dives into the bullet point about hiring a staging expert—before shooting marketing photos.

“When I bring up open houses, the seller’s body language tells me if they hate or love them,” Hall says. “If they hate them, I need to emphasize other tools we can use to sell their home.”

2. See the Home from the Seller’s Eyes—and Heart: “When we begin the home tour, most sellers say, ‘It’s just a house like all the others on the block.’ But as you walk through the rooms, they open up,” Hall says. “They’ll tell me how the sun accents the kitchen wall as they pour their morning coffee.”

Hall encourages sellers to share these “romantic” observations. A benefit of listing with her is that she uses personal stories in her marketing efforts to paint a vivid portrait of the home—so buyers can picture themselves living there. “I even put these stories in the 400-character MLS remarks section—instead of repeating what’s in the listing information.”

3. Narrow the Spotlight: Spreading all your marketing materials, testimonials, comparable sales, data spreadsheets, company services, company profile and personal bio on the kitchen table may make the seller more “snow blind” than intrigued. The solution is to spotlight what you do better than any other real estate agency around. That’s the benefit of listing with you.

• Gary Neubauer, CRS, broker associate, Coldwell Bankers REALTORS® in Fort Myers, Florida, shares videos he produced. “We have a professional videographer and I narrate each video. The result is a unique virtual walking tour of the property,” he says.
• If photo-filled marketing brochures are your forte, key into these. Before-staging snapshots add to your value.
• Do you optimize listings for mobile devices? Open all your devices to the same property listing. Many listers today highly value a partner who’s tech-savvy.

Close with an Open Door

A big WIIFM factor is promising consistent, informed, reliable communication. After you plant the “For Sale” sign in the seller’s front yard, you won’t disappear. Here are some ways to drive home this point.

“Often, sellers tell me that they hardly saw their REALTOR® after signing the listing contract,” Neubauer says. That tells him listing clients want a firm assurance that he’ll be back.

“Sellers call after every showing for the reaction to their property,” Neubauer says. So part of his listing presentation includes a discussion about Showing Time, a service he employs to coordinate showings with the listing client, and to send automatic emails to every showing agent for feedback. The listing client gets a copy of the feedback report, which keeps communication lines open and current.

Avila uses Showing Time and SentriLock, a lockbox service that records when every agent shows the home. He follows up by email with the listing client, requesting agent feedback.

Neubauer promises a personal phone call—not a text or email—with the seller every week. “Feedback reports are great, but we may need to discuss what the feedback tells us. I make sure the client knows I’m here for those discussions.”

Outside of technology’s impact on the listing presentation, today’s listing presentations are much the same as yesteryear’s. What’s different is that listing clients no longer want to review the bits and pieces that prove you’re No. 1. That’s not information that directly benefits them. And since you were likely referred by a trusted friend, the seller already knows your stellar reputation. For that reason, Cameron hasn’t reinvented the wheel by doing anything extraordinarily different than other REALTORS®. “What I changed is how I present information and convey my value. That’s what distinguishes me from any other agent.” 

Donna Shryer is a freelance writer based in Chicago.