| Hey all, Yesterday we began tackling five of the most common listing myths we hear in the industry and we have a few more "sacred cows" to tackle. If you missed our email yesterday and want to see the rest of the list, shoot us an email. We would love to hear from you. Myth #6 " You should always include the price in your advertising" As with ads that say sold, any ad that includes the price will prompt very few calls. We actually ran an experiment, and the results were clear: ads with prices got two-thirds fewer calls than those without. And the disparity is even greater in online advertising where information is usually a click away. Think about it: what's the first thing someone asks you when he calls about a property? The price. It's the same everywhere. Put the price (or sold) in the ad, and you'' get many fewer leads. And since the only reason you should advertise is to get more customers, don't shoot yourself in the foot by minimizing your ad's effectiveness. Make the price a mystery, and watch that phone ring! Myth #7 "You have to stage it or fix it up in order to sell it" Back before we opened our own company, we worked for one of the big box brokerages you have heard of and we would have fun teasing one of the other listing agents in the office. When she listed a home, she was relentless. Before the owners knew what was happening, she would have them pressure-washing, repainting, re-carpeting...one time she even talked a client into sodding the yard! Her sellers spent half their equity in the home just trying to sell it. It is true that cute homes with perfect curb appeal sell more easily than "dog" houses. But an agent with a good marketing strategy can sell even those dog houses. When you use price to sell your home (the traditional approach), the overall perceived value is paramount, and part of that whole process is making the home look as close to perfect as possible, so as to have the highest perceived value. This idea is the very heart of feature-benefit sales. However, our listing approach relies on high traffic to sell the property so the condition is less important. The reason is simple: when you're selling by price, you're making the sale because features and benefits eventually present a compelling case to the buyer. On the other hand, the "traffic" approach works on a different human motivator--the fear of loss, as in "Somebody else might get my dream home!" Create competition for your client's property, and those cosmetic traits become less important in the buyer's mind. Myth #8 "Ads sell houses" One of the little-known secrets of advertising homes for sale is that ads don't sell houses. In fact, less than one-fourth of one percent of buyers actually purchase the home that's featured in the advertisement to which they've responded. That statistic doesn't mean that we shouldn't advertise; what it means that we need to know why we advertise. We advertise to generate a continual flow of leads. And having a continual flow of buyers allows you to build your business and increase your income and freedom. Show me an agent who is afraid to take some time off, and I will show you an agent without a steady flow of customers. When you advertise, you should do it for yourself and not because your listing client wants you to. You're spending your money and you should be doing it to build your business. Myth #9 "FSBOs and Expireds are the best sources for listing leads" All of us have heard this one again and again. The truth is if you want to market to those people who've been singled out by nearly every aggressive agent, go after FSBOs and expireds. The best source of listing leads, however, are your buyer leads. Just because someone came to you as a buyer doesn't mean he's not a seller as well. According to NAR, as many as 52% of all buyer leads are sellers too. And the beauty of these leads is that most other listing agents aren't marketing to them--yet. You can have them virtually all to yourself. Find the sellers among your buyers, and you'll have found the very best source for listing leads. Myth #10 "If it doesn't sell, the reason must be the price" I once heard a nationally known speaker and coach tell an audience that there's only one reason a home won't sell: price. And since then I have heard agent after agent repeat this same nonsense. The very foundation of economics is the law of supply and demand. Where the supply meets the demand, there you find price. In other words, the price is dependent on supply and demand. Obviously! If there's a large supply of something, but few buyers for it, prices will drop. On the other hand, when there's a scarcity of product but many buyers, prices will rise. As professionals, we have a responsibility to market our clients' homes properly. Accordingly, it's very important that we do so in a way that best represents their interests. And every seller I have ever met has the same two objectives: to net the most money and to sell his home in the least amount of time. In order to meet the seller's needs, you must market in such a way as to create the appearance of scarcity while generating an abundance of demand--and the easiest way to do this is by enlisting the buyer's agent. Together you can develop a sense of urgency by marketing, not to the public in general, but to the agents who'll be bringing their buyers. By using the traffic approach, you can generate higher-than-normal traffic and sell the client's home in half the time while netting more money. And that's what we are going to dive deep on in next week's emails. Until then, Levi Jones PS. Advertising should be about generating customers. If you don't already have a plan for generating 2-3 new leads every day with your advertising, check out our Pipeline Pro Tools system. Or you can skip straight to the point and get a live demo of our lead generating tools--click here. Guerilla Realty |
Sunday, August 12, 2018
Listing Myths - Special Weekend Edition
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