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A Lethal Listing Presentation

To create a “lethal” listing presentation, you need two pieces. What are the pieces? The first piece is knowing your market statistics so that you’re truly the best agent for the job. Becoming the market authority. Then the next piece is knowing the value of the subject property so that you can get the top dollar for your seller client. By knowing how to prepare the ultimate CMA, your foundation is complete.

Beginning the process without laying this foundation simply won’t work. It’s absolutely critical that you go through these first two steps before you learn the listing presentation, simply because the presentation builds on this foundation! If you’re just skimming through this approach so you can get to the “magic words” to say, you are wasting your time. This approach is not about having magic words. It’s about creating a magnetism that will attract your listing clients to you. That comes from building the foundation.

Without building your foundation on solid ground, you’ll instead be building your presentation on quicksand, and you won’t be able to list properties using this powerful and unique method. Why? Because you won’t have the most important element of any sale: the believability factor.

This listing approach is counter-intuitive. It is going to fly in the face of what 95% of the other agents are telling your client. As such, it demands that you have credibility. If you don’t have credibility, the listing approach will never sell because you’re asking the client to place his faith in an approach that, in all likelihood, he’s never heard of before. Take the time to build the foundation.

Last year there were more than 1.1 million Realtors in America, so I guess you could say that there are 1.1 million ways to sell a house. But the truth is that there are really only two ways to sell a house: you can sell it by price, or you can sell it by traffic. Every other sales method is a subsidiary of one of these two. We’ll explore the two different approaches at length and discuss how they differ and how one of them will yield far better results for your client while making you more money.

The Traditional or Price Approach. I’ve read dozens of books – probably hundreds of books – on the subject of real estate. Many of these books speak of the importance of listing real estate, and all of them describe nearly identical listing approaches, with only slight differences. Now, the reason for all this sameness is obvious: it’s the way listings have been done since the beginning of real estate. It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” thing. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is broke! If you expect to make a lot of money in real estate, you need to determine what everybody else is doing and then do the opposite.

Okay, here’s the basic formula for the “traditional” or “price” approach. As you’ll recall, we talked earlier about building a CMA, or comparative market analysis, for your client. The traditional approach teaches us to find the “reasonable range” of value and then try to list the property on the low end of that range. That’s why we used closed comparables only, and not active listings as comparables. It’s why we aren’t taught to adjust upward for the list-to-sale ratio. We start as low as the client will let us.

If the home doesn’t sell within a month or so, we’re all taught to…what? You got it! To ask for a reduction in price. Then if the property still doesn’t sell, we lower the price again, and again, and again, until eventually we find a buyer for the place. Think about it: we’re selling the house by price. We’re using the price as our marketing tool. That’s why we continue to lower the price, or wait for appreciation in the market to lower the price for us, until the house eventually sells.

One of the reasons this approach works well for the agent is that it places the entire burden of selling the home on the seller! Another reason for using the traditional approach is that the agent doesn’t have to spend a lot of money marketing the house. He doesn’t have to spend a lot of time or effort devising a marketing plan or promoting the property because the price is doing the selling for him. There’s no doubt that this approach will work, of course: it’s been working for decades with good and bad agents alike. However, there are a few drawbacks to the traditional approach that are seldom mentioned.

First and foremost is the agency issue. It’s your job as the listing agent to represent the seller’s interests, which include getting the absolute top dollar for the property. However, most agents don’t get top dollar when they use this approach, and the reason is as simple as supply-and-demand. When there are fewer buyers competing for a home, the sale price may need to be discounted substantially in order to attract interest. In economics-speak, “with a fixed supply and a scarce demand (i.e. fewer buyers), prices drop.”

Another drawback to using this approach is lack of speed: several months may pass before the traditional approach begins to have an effect. In the process, the home often becomes stigmatized. After several reductions, it’s not even shown to potential buyers because it’s been on the market “too long” and is now assumed to have something wrong with it. If the agent starts the process too high and then reduces the price too slowly, the home becomes very difficult to sell at any price.

Many times, listing agents unwittingly become de-facto buyer sub-agents. Even though I don’t know a single listing agent who would intentionally sell out his client, it’s entirely too easy with the traditional listing approach to help the buyer rather than the seller. And, yes, I realize that my judgment may sound harsh, but if you’ll honestly examine this method, you’ll have to agree that, very often, it doesn’t yield the best results for the seller.

When you negotiate, to what degree do you allow time to influence you? Do you even give consideration to the constraints time has in and during a negotiation? All of us have the exact same amount of time. Some of us become more successful than others based on what we do with our time. The same holds true when negotiating.

When you plan a negotiation session(s), give careful consideration to the implication of time. Be astutely aware of how time will bound your session.

One of the key ingredients to negotiating successfully is to gain awareness of the time constraints placed on the other party. To the degree you have information about their time constraints, you have a powerful tool in your arsenal of strategies and tactics you can employ. If you know they are under a very tight time constraint and you’re the only source from which they can get what they need, you’re position becomes even more powerful  (note: if at all possible, try never to place yourself in a position of only having one source from which to obtain what you seek).

As you negotiate, use the strategy of time constraint wisely. By that I mean, if you give the other person a deadline by which to address a situation, first, tie some form of penalty to that deadline. Then, if he does not meet the request tied to the deadline, be ready to apply the penalties.

If you allow a deadline to expire without applying penalties, or exacting some toll for its expiration, you will weaken your negotiation position, if you try to use time in the same fashion as before. In addition, your overall negotiation position will be weakened, because things you say after that point will be brought into question, as far as your ability to follow through.

When it comes to using time as a constraint, a tool, or a strategy, always consider the implication of it not being adhered to. Use time wisely and you’ll come out ahead every time … and everything will be right with the world.

The negotiation lessons are …

• Always understand the value of time when negotiating. The greater your knowledge about the other person’s time, the greater your negotiation position.
• Apply time constraints only when you’re prepared to back them up with some form of penalty. If you fail to apply a penalty to a time constraint, you reduce the effectiveness of the constraint.
• Remember, time as a strategy is a double edged sword. You can enhance your negotiation position by using it at the appropriate time, but without some form of enforcement, your position will be weakened and you run the risk of not being able to strengthen your position past that point should you try to use time again in that manner.

It can be so frustrating. You hear a comedian tell the absolute funniest joke in the world. It’s so funny that you’re on the floor for ten minutes, shrieking hysterically. The next day you tell the same joke to your friends and their reactions are, to say the least, more subdued.

Now you’re devastated. “Don’t you get it?” you ask. They tell you they did get it, but it just wasn’t all that funny. “I guess you had to be there,” you mutter.

You know, often it’s not so much the joke itself that puts you on the floor, but the way it’s told. Comedians are masters of expression, voice-tone, timing, and all the subliminal little things they do that makes their renditions sparkle. Without these, yours will most likely fall flat.

It’s the same with any form of public speaking. It’s not just the words you say, but how you say them and how you send them to your listeners.

In short, it’s all in your delivery.

Delivery is everything in a talk or presentation. Okay, maybe not everything. Of course its content matters greatly as well.

But … if you want to really WOW your audience, keep in mind that your content – your words – need to impact the listener.

Now, the word, “impact” may seem to suggest a ranting and raving not unlike a pep rally or a political speech a-la Martin Luther King, Jr. Yes, certain talks call for this sort of highly-charged, impassioned delivery. But even if your talk is of the lower-key sort – a business meeting or a class, for instance – you certainly don’t want to bore your listener.

Great delivery is, above all, a matter of:

1. Intensity

2. Expression

Today we’ll cover intensity. By this I mean, first of all, to speak intensely. Keep your voice strong and clear. Speak up! Don’t say you can’t. Of course you can! What would you do if your child just doused the cat with half a bottle of your $60 cologne? Mumble? Whisper? I don’t think so. No, you would use those lungs of yours! Do the same in your talks. Push, push, push! Belt those words out! Listeners love it.

Second, speak as if you are very interested in your subject. It would help if you could find your way toward becoming very interested in it. But even if you can’t … fake it! Like the saying goes, “fake it ’til you feel it!”

A good speaker can get an audience fired up about nearly anything. Even the most mundane subjects can, if delivered with intensity, come alive. Think of the announcer on a commercial for a “New!” tortilla chip. How does he talk? Pretty intensely, right? We’re talking about a bag of salty, greasy fried corn here. But the way this person is speaking, you’d think they’d found a cure for cancer.

So I don’t care if you’re presenting a quarterly sales report, or giving a lecture on upholstery repair. Present that information with as much intensity as you possibly can! Make the subject interesting. Make the content stick in the listener’s mind. Make an impact upon your listener. Make them glad they came.
Conjure up as much infectious enthusiasm for your subject as you possibly can. And let it show on your face.

In fact, exaggerate. By that I mean, whatever mood you’re trying to express, exaggerate it. Don’t just sound interested, sound very interested. Don’t just sound encouraging, sound very encouraging.

You see, more often than not, the intensity with which we speak arrives at the listener in a weakened state. I don’t mean just the volume. It’s as if traveling through twenty-five feet of airspace simply dilutes half the energy right out of it. So, to compensate: Put more intensity, interest, and energy than you think you need.

Don’t worry that you might go too far with this. I’ve never seen a speaker who I thought was too “into it” – with the exception of a few over-the-top politicians, perhaps. More often than not, the opposite is true.

Ask yourself: How many speakers have I heard who were too excited? Or who made me feel too excited? Then ask: How many speakers have I heard who weren’t interesting enough? (i.e., bo-o-ring!)

To be interesting, be interested!

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In Part Two of “Special Delivery” we’ll look at the truly fun component of great delivery: Expression. Until then, I wish you the best with your public speaking endeavors!