It’s 8 in the morning and you start your day (hopefully) by running that days expired listings.  You review each listing and after years of being taught that if a home failed to sell, “it must be the price” so you start to figure out how big of a price reduction is needed to make each listing salable, subject to seeing the home of course.  Then you start making your calls or visits to set appointments to get the opportunity to try and get the listing at lower price so you can sell it.  In this blog post I will offer you a much better strategy to get these listings and actually show the seller that YOU are the best choice for them to provide the opportunity to sell their home.

Let’s start with a addressing the elephant in the room… PRICE!  The LAST thing these sellers want to hear is that they need to list with YOU and drop the PRICE.  If PRICE was the only reason their home failed to sell, then they really don’t need to change agents, they just need to change the PRICE.  So how much sense does it make to tell a seller that you’re the best agent with the best company, best marketing, advertising, etc. but they still need to drop their price $25,000?   The whole scenario begs the question “If you’re so great, and we should list with you, then why are you telling us to drop our price?”  This is why any agent worth their value propositions, should be willing to take that listing and at the least give everything they’ve got to try and accomplish what the other agent couldn’t do before even discussing price.  A simple comparison to going right after price would be if you went to the doctor with a stomach pain and the immediate diagnosis is surgery.  Any good doctor would try everything they could before deciding that surgery is the answer.  In the same way, we as Realtors, should do anything we can to make absolutely sure that when we recommend a price reduction that we’ve exhausted all other options because to a homeowner, a price reduction is major surgery to them.

Let me suggest a simple, yet powerful strategy:

1. Run the full printouts and examine all of the data, photos, accessibility, location, commission, unnecessary hoops to jump through in agents remarks, etc. and look for reasons, other than price, that could have contributed to the home not selling.

2. Once you’ve discovered the areas that YOU could and would do BETTER, then go to the sellers home and share this with them with the following script;

“Mr. & Mrs. Seller, I’ve reviewed your previous multiple listing information and have determined that with some changes and improvements to the marketing of your home and the exposure that my firm and I can provide, that I may be able to get your home sold.  What I can assure you is that IF I cannot sell your home in the next 30-45 days, then we will be able to accurately make the determination that price is the issue.  But only after I do everything I can to properly expose your home to the market would I even consider suggesting a price reduction.  I’d love the opportunity to sit down with you and show you everything that I and my firm do differently to get top dollar for our listings.”

With this approach it completely supports your entire listing presentation and value propositions.  It also provides with the seller a solid and legitimate reason to list with you over re-listing with the previous agent who was likely pushing for a price reduction for weeks before the expiration.

Now it’s important that you actually can improve the marketing and offer improved exposure and presentation to the market!   Here at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage we have incredibly powerful tools as well as an in house marketing expert that you can utilize to actually demonstrate to your prospect that you CAN and WILL dramatically increase the advertising and marketing for the home when they list with you.  Tools like the View Magazine with 1.2 million copies distributed each month, the View China for international exposure, our exclusive FAB+ program, our powerful and free Social Made Simple social media program, professional photography, staging, Quickview internal exposure program, YouTube On Location exposure, etc. etc. etc. will set you apart from every agent in your marketplace and instill confidence in your seller that you have what it takes to drive traffic to their home.

As always, I am here to offer ideas, strategies, and coaching to help you grow your business.  For more information on Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage please feel free to email/text/call  Brad.Pearson@camoves.com or 714-782-2723.

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Brad

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