Episode 64 -The Listing Trilogy - Connect, Qualify and Secure

Today’s episode explores the intricate process of listing homes in this changing real estate market, emphasizing the importance of connecting with sellers, qualifying their motivations, and effectively securing business. Reed and Jake discuss and highlight strategies for engaging FSBOs, navigating emotional challenges, and utilizing practical scripts to enhance listing conversations.  

Key Takeaways from this episode include:

• Exploring the significance of listings in a successful real estate career

• Understanding and engaging emotional connections in sales

• Addressing the realities of selling as a For Sale By Owner

• The importance of proper qualification for leads

• Techniques to secure listing appointments effectively

• Practical role-play exercises and scripting for better execution

Tune in to learn how to advance your real estate career by effectively connecting with, qualifying, and securing home listings!

Don’t miss out on the ONE tool that will refine your professionalism and establish your connection with sellers 🌟 Head over to http://areapro.com/rmg and save $200/month! 

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:03

If you're able to list property, you're able to create inventory. If you're able to create inventory, you're able to control inventory. I want to be able to know that I am walking into the situation that I think I'm walking into when it comes to your situation, your motivation, the house itself, as well as your intention to list Roll State Professionals. Welcome back to the RMG Agent Podcast. I'm your host, reed Moore, here with Jake Bartlett, hey guys, and we are working through our series on making sure that we're doing a great job preparing through practice to have great conversations with people, and so we're going to continue to do that today. And, of course, as you're preparing for conversations with people, we want you to go to areaprocom forward slash RMG.

Speaker 1 0:53

Check out that amazing market analysis tool. We did an episode on it. It's fantastic. If you go there, you're going to get a great discount on it. Great product, as always. Go like, subscribe, thumbs up, high five, all the things YouTube and Spotify and all the other places you can find this podcast. We just really appreciate the support as we help to impact and empower and encourage you guys. So, jake, what are we into today?

Speaker 2 1:17

Well, I think you forgot one thing Go to rmjagentpodcastcom and check out all of the action guides and all the things for our past episodes. Speaking of past episodes, we've done three episodes so far on practicing and different role plays and scripting and partners and all sorts of different things, and those are episodes 58 through 60. Yes, so make sure you go back and listen to those. We also are dropping a master series with Corey Meyer, who's awesome and amazing, and check that out. And then we have some more coming, but we're not going to tease those quite yet. That's right. So for today, we have the last of the practice series, which is the listing trilogy. Yes, connect, qualify and secure. So we're going to do role-playing and scripts and things specifically around listings for today. So first of those is converting.

Speaker 1 2:13

Yeah. So if you go back to like old school real estate, you know the things that you're told first by some old codger. When you first get in the industry. They'll say something like if you don't list, you don't last. Right, right Turns out.

Speaker 1 2:24

It's really good information, especially after last year, when the reality is you need to list buyers and sellers now at a higher level than you ever had. So it was always really good advice and we always want to be practicing these skill sets and specifically around listings, because listing property if you're able to list property you're able to create inventory. If you're able to create inventory, you're able to control inventory. And if you think about real estate, it's a very interesting business because if we were in a, you know if we sold products, we would have to have inventory in our warehouse or inventory in our store to be able to sell, and so listings are such a massive part of controlling the market because they are the inventory in our world manufacturer's company selling a car from somebody else's lot, right Like which is essentially what we do.

Speaker 2 3:27

Because of the multiple listing service and the agreements with the National Association of Realtors and all that stuff, it's created this weird, you know, symbiote that we essentially have, and the best way to control the market and be impactful is to have listing inventory in any market, right? So when we talk about converting on listings at a high level, what's the first thing that you think of?

Speaker 1 3:55

The first thing I think of is that, if we're going to control the inventory, the very first thing that we have to be able to do is we have to be able to have conversations with potential sellers that are impactful enough that cause them to give us the opportunity to sit down with them and interview for the person that they're going to choose to hire to be able to sell that house. And this is the heavy lifting of real estate, which is the tip of the spear for lead generation, and that is making outbound calls, having outbound conversations with people who are going to potentially need to list their properties. So there's a few buckets of individuals that qualify as maybe a good use of your time. The first one, of course, is going to be your network People that know you, like you and trust you, and you're constantly in conversation with them and making sure that you are top of mind when it's time for them to consider making a change.

Speaker 1 4:50

The listing side, especially when it comes to your network, can be very, very consultative in its approach, because if you're in long-term relationships with people, you might have conversations for several years or for several months before somebody decides you're going to sell their house because you're a part of their life and helping them make really good financial decisions when it comes to their personal property. The other buckets are you have people who are for sale by owners, and this is somebody who raised their hand and said I have motivation to sell my house and for my reasons, right, I'm choosing myself as my agent. Right, some people go for sale by owner because they feel very confident in their ability to do it. Some people go for sale by owner because they want to control the process. Some people go for sale by owner because they just feel like they owe it to themselves to kind of throw this Hail Mary out there to be able to give it a try.

The Value of Real Estate Agents

Speaker 2 5:45

I'll throw out the other one that I see a lot of for sale by owners. They go for sale by owner not because they think they can do it on their own, but because they've met with realtors and they didn't like the price that they were told about their house. I see that quite often and I think that's a good distinction of having different scripts and object handlers to be able to go in to those people. And I think for sell-by-owners is a great one to start for us on this section, because I think it's the most fear-inducing for a lot of people out there and as we talk about, you know, empowering people with this podcast, I think that's a great place for us to start. Yeah.

Speaker 1 6:23

And if we go all the way back to talking about some of the things we talked about, this this last year, in 2024, like when it comes to, like the trusted guide model, you know you have somebody in there, they're climbing Mount Everest and they're about halfway up and they look like they might not be, you know, on the way to summit or even on the way to survive. And If you're somebody who has confidence because you've practiced your skill sets and you have the ability to help Sherpa them up the mountain, you're in a really good spot and so it can be really intimidating as an agent. But the reality is somebody who is stuck halfway up the mountain. They might give you this false positive like hey, no, it's good, I know what I'm doing, I'm like it's all good. But if you learn to ask the right questions, you can actually find the real, like what's behind the scenes.

Speaker 1 7:06

Right, I had a for sale by owner one time that I set the appointment with this guy and he was rough man, he was brash. I had to close probably six or seven times to get the appointment Went to the house Last second. I took the paperwork because I just thought there's no chance this guy's going to list with me, right, he was very combative on the phone. I get to the house, knock on the door. He opens up. He says, all right, I give up, like I don't want to do this myself. Just tell me what my house is worth and let's sign paperwork. And I I'd almost left the paperwork at the office because that was the deal. But the soonest we went face to face he just realized. You know, like I didn't even say anything but the facade of like it's all okay, it turns out his wife was telling him it's not all okay and you're not doing a good job with this and we need to move.

Speaker 2 7:53

Right, so you just never know, yeah, yeah, and all handling all the phone calls and having to deal with showings and all that stuff all on their own. There is a reason why the majority of people use an agent in the process.

Speaker 1 8:05

Yeah, and it's the same. You know, part of it is that when you, when it comes to being a homeowner, it's the same reason that a doctor may not, you know, diagnose themselves, An attorney may not represent themselves because there is a, there is a connection for somebody to their home. That is not helpful for a sales process. A sales process is, at its best, something that moves away from emotion and moves into logic, and it's very, very challenging for most homeowners because there's a, there's an emotional process that a homeowner goes through and that is that they they need to be able to go from it being their home. That is the representation of all of their memories and all of their tears and all of their you, all of their times of laughter and game night with the kids. They need to be able to move from a home to a house and, ideally, to move from a home to a house to an asset.

Speaker 1 8:56

The very best, most successful sellers are people that are able to get all the way to an asset, which makes it something that is like a stock or like ownership or something. And you know, I want to sell my, my, my Apple stock. I pull it up. It says this is what it's selling for today. Is it a yes or a no for me to sell it? Right, right, that's. That's the most effective way for for a for a homeowner to get when it comes to selling their house. For them to do this themselves, to get all the way to that is very, very rare.

Speaker 2 9:25

Yeah, and it's also pretty. I wouldn't say it's rare, but you're not going to get everybody to an asset. No but you do have to get everybody from a home to a house, right, like a home includes all their memories, a home is we've talked about the circles of relating to the world in different areas. Their home is based for everything that evolves around their life and if you can't get them from that to house, it's very difficult to get them to change every other aspect of their life. Essentially.

Speaker 1 9:58

Yeah, so there's a big advantage to a really great real estate agent helping them out. And then, of course, the other thing that we'll talk about, you know, in different scripts and dialogues, is that when somebody goes to sell their house themselves, a lot of times they're trying to save money, right, the issue is that the buyers that they're going to directly attract are potentially being attracted because they want to save money, and so the person selling it themselves does all of the work and gives a discount if they actually do sell it to a savvy buyer. And now they did all the work for free.

Speaker 2 10:34

Right and a good percentage of for sale by owners. I've sold a bunch of for sale by owners by just on the buy side Right, yeah, and now you're negotiating. And somebody that does this as a for a living right Like Right, yeah, and now you're negotiating against somebody that does this for a living right, so you're giving away money. And I sat in front of a lot of people that asked me during 2020, 2021, 2022, when the market was going crazy like, why should I use an agent? I can just put it on Zillow right, and it'll sell. It's like, yeah, you probably can. Like, yeah, you probably can. But can you guarantee that you're going to get the highest and most money possible by getting all of the views on it, getting everybody looking at it and getting a professional negotiating on your behalf, not just on the buy side?

Speaker 1 11:15

Yeah, absolutely so. So because we're talking about practicing, let's just go ahead and practice a role, role play, and so we'll post this in the action guides. But we have a for sale by owner script the smooth and easy one and we have several different ways to close. So if you go on this, you can role play and practice your favorite one.

Speaker 2 11:32

I'm going to choose the second one as just a way to be able to walk through this and I'll be a seller who's been on the market for two weeks by themselves and I've got an inclination that maybe this isn't going how I want it to Okay.

Speaker 1 11:46

Sounds good. And remember, when we're scripting and role-playing, when we're doing it for the first few times we're going to, we're going to give people layups and then, as we get more and more into it, we're going to make it harder and harder and harder, and over time, we're also going to add real world scenarios so we can role-play things that we actually experienced, like yesterday. Okay, all right, good morning. Is this Jake? Yeah, this is who's this. Hey, jake, thanks for taking my call. This is Reed Moore with RMG Real Estate. I saw that your house was for sale by owner. Did you get it sold or is it still available?

Speaker 2 12:16

It is still available. I'm doing it on my own.

Speaker 1 12:18

Okay, great. So you've probably gotten like 500 calls from agents by now. Just out of curiosity, where are you headed when your house sells?

Speaker 2 12:31

You know I'm moving across town.

Speaker 1 12:32

I need to get up to the north side, because that's where most of my life's at now. Okay, up in the north side, great, so in a perfect world. How soon would you like to be?

Speaker 2 12:36

there. Probably the sooner the better, but realistically I need to be there by end of spring.

Speaker 1 12:44

End of spring, okay. So, jake, if your home sold in the next 30 days, would that pose a problem for you?

Speaker 2 12:50

No.

Speaker 1 12:50

Okay, great. Well, the reason I'm calling is my team and I have sold about 60 for sale by owners last year to help people move forward with their goals, and those are all people that were not able to sell it themselves, and so if I could show you how I could do that and actually make you more money, even after commissions, would it be worth maybe 10 or 15 minutes of your time.

Speaker 2 13:10

You know I'm not sure that I'm ready to meet with an agent on that. You said you've sold 60 of them.

Speaker 1 13:16

Yeah, that's right, you know, I totally understand. So if you're going to hire an agent, if you were going to hire an agent, you probably already would have. But were you aware that, out of all the homes that sell, only 4% are sold for sale by owner and, on average, for far less money than an agent handling the transaction?

Speaker 2 13:35

No, I didn't know that, okay.

Qualifying for Real Estate Listings

Speaker 1 13:36

Well, like I said, it's only going to take 10 or 15 minutes for us to get together and, honestly, if you don't like what I have to say, you can just kick me out. How does that sound, you? You can just kick me out. How does that sound? Uh, you know, that sounds good. Okay, great, all right. So then we would go to close by using alternative choice, like we talked about in one of our other videos, and go from there. Right, okay, yep, so that's step one is simply having this conversation with somebody and really getting to the point of motivation. One of the things that we do experience sometimes with for sale buyers is they actually genuinely lack the motivation. They put a sign in the yard. They actually don't care, they're not doing anything, but they also don't want to do anything, so you're going to suss that out in a conversation like this.

Speaker 2 14:14

Yeah, I call those make-me moves, right. Yeah, like if I wasn't an agent and I put my house up for a million dollars, which it's definitely not worth, but I would move if somebody gave me a million dollars for it, right?

Speaker 1 14:27

So, uh, we're going to go into the next portion of that which is how to help us sum that out, right, yes, so so that's going to be a for sale by owner version. There's going to be obviously an expired version, call around version. There's lots of different uh buckets. Right, your, your, your network or your sphere of influence, so you're going to want to role play all of these different versions of potential buckets of sellers. But once we do this and we do our conversion conversation now, we have another conversation we need to have.

Speaker 2 14:56

Yep, yeah, and I do the for sale by owner script slightly different too, because I'm looking for them as sellers, but also I have I have a big database of placing buyers and just another reason to touch base with people that I haven't. So I use a script that's very you know, very much like hey, I I'm actually not trying to list your house, I'm just trying to look for more inventory for my buyers. Would it be okay if I come by?

Speaker 1 15:21

Yeah, which is a huge valid thing, especially if you're working from a large data bank of people. Yeah, it's. If you want to get paid on the buyers that you have, you got to find inventory if it doesn't exist, so it's a great reason to call.

Speaker 2 15:34

Yep, okay, so now we are going to jump into qualifying. Why is it important that we qualify these people?

Speaker 1 15:39

Okay, so if you're a new agent, like you, just got somebody on the hook, that's exciting. Oh my gosh, that's great. You don't qualify at all. You show up and you find out that the house is mostly crooked and has a foundation that's, you know, not in the best shape, and they're underwater. And you didn't ask any of these questions.

Speaker 2 16:00

Right.

Speaker 1 16:01

Right, and so if you're a brand new agent, you might want to just go on the appointment because you need the reps, but what will happen is over time, if you're a brand new agent, you might want to just go on the appointment because you need the reps, but what will happen is, over time, if you choose to lead, generate and you choose to do the job of real estate agent, your time will get more and more and more precious and as your time gets more precious, you're going to want to do more pre-qualifying of the people that you're going to potentially list the home of, and you'll see this across all kinds of different verticals, right?

Speaker 1 16:25

So you see a doctor, you see a lawyer different professional verticals. The more in demand they are, the more picky they are when it comes to who they're going to take on as a client. Right, and this is exactly the way it will work in your real estate sales career is, as you progress and you get better and better and better and you build more and more and more of a reputation, then you will be able to say yes or no to different listings and you will want a process of being able to clean that up and to be able to figure out where are these people really at before you do all of the hours of preparation to go down and go, sit down and have the actual listing appointment.

Speaker 2 17:05

Yeah, I think a huge thing identifying where you're at in the process of your real estate career. Right, we talk a lot about careers. Are you in a position where you need, you know, 20 extra listing reps this year and you're willing to go do those? Or are you in a position where, like, you've got a lot of business and you actually can't take on an overpriced listing? That's going to end up being you know four or five hours worth of work each week? Yeah, right, like so. So understand where you're at in your real estate career and then and jumping into these qualifying ones. So are we jumping into that?

Speaker 1 17:38

Yeah, so so we have a, we have a script here again that we'll post, and this is qualifying for the listing um, the listing presentation. So this is going to be something you're going to do on the phone with them. So we just set the appointment and then the very next thing that we're going to do is we're going to say hey, I have a, I have a few questions. I want to ask you to make sure I'm fully prepared for our time together. Uh, would it offend you if we take a few minutes to be able to walk through these questions so that I'm ready to meet all of your needs?

Speaker 2 18:07

Yeah, we just talked about. You know it's only going to take 10 to 15 minutes at this appointment, right? That's what you just sold me on. It's like okay, so I can assure that we're going to be in that 10 to 15 minutes. Can we take five minutes now to go through some questions so that I'm prepared?

Speaker 1 18:20

Yes. So, jake, before I come out, so I can be professionally prepared for our appointment and so that you don't leave any money on the table, there are a number of questions I need to ask you. Is that okay?

Speaker 2 18:31

Yes.

Speaker 1 18:31

Great, so tell me again where are you moving to?

Speaker 2 18:35

Northside.

Speaker 1 18:36

Northside Excellent. And is this a business move or a personal move? Personal, personal, great. How will this move positively impact your life? It Right, how will this move positively impact your life.

Speaker 2 18:45

It will allow me to have more time with the people that I want to spend time with, because right now I'm spending 25 minutes drive each direction to go hang out with my family and friends.

Speaker 1 18:56

Okay, and so you mentioned that you wanted to be there by spring. Is that the ideal, or is there a more ideal time?

Speaker 2 19:01

Oh, I think the sooner the better. Okay, unless there's a reason why I would make more money by waiting.

Speaker 1 19:06

Okay, that makes sense On a scale of one to 10,. What is your motivation to sell your home? Probably nine A nine. Okay, that's fantastic. If I sell your home in the next 30 to 60 days, will that pose a problem for you? Nope, okay.

Speaker 2 19:26

And do you plan on meeting more than one agent for the job of selling your house? Well, as a FSBO, I wasn't planning on meeting any, so we'll see how that goes.

Speaker 1 19:30

Perfect. Great Sounds like we're going to be a perfect match. Then, before I meet with you, how much did you want to list your home for realistically?

Speaker 2 19:40

I have it on the market right now at $550.

Speaker 1 19:42

Okay, great, $550. And how did you come up with that price? The?

Speaker 2 19:45

market right now at $550. Okay great, $550. And how did you come up with that price? Neighbor's house down the street sold for that, and that seemed like that's what I'd like to get.

Speaker 1 19:52

Okay, great. As a professional real estate agent, I study home prices in your area every day. Therefore, I assume that you'll want to list with me at a price that could cause your home to sell. Correct, Correct?

Speaker 2 20:07

Okay, great. How much do you owe on your house?

Speaker 1 20:09

$350,000. Okay, great, and would you just quickly describe your home to me Beds, bath, acreage, outbuildings, anything that I can't see here online.

Speaker 2 20:18

I think online. When I bought it it was a three bedroom. We put in a fourth bedroom downstairs and we've got three baths. It's a normal city block, attached two-car garage and I think we're 2,800 square feet.

Speaker 1 20:33

Okay, that's fantastic, excellent. So there's several more questions. There's a total of 21 questions here, but I'll just kind of scroll down here and again we'll post this Okay, will all the decision makers be there when we meet?

Speaker 2 20:48

Yeah, I probably should have my wife there, right?

Speaker 1 20:50

Yeah, absolutely. We want to make sure we all are on the same page. Okay, when we meet, if you feel comfortable and confident that I can sell your home, are you planning on listing your home with me when I arrive tomorrow at 5 pm?

Speaker 2 21:03

Yeah, if the price is right and whatever you're going to charge to do that work for me is right. And yeah, as long as you're not a weirdo.

Speaker 1 21:14

Okay, fair enough, fair enough. So, just so you know, the appointment, like we said, will take about 15 minutes and if you need a little more time, we can take up to 30 minutes. Does that sound okay? Yep, great, okay, I'm looking forward to seeing you then. Sounds good, that sounds sound okay.

Securing Real Estate Appointments

Speaker 1 21:28

Yep, great, okay, I'm looking forward to seeing you then Sounds good, all right. So I'm going to walk through a list of questions like this, and this is going to make sure we do a couple things. One, I'm qualifying the situation, qualifying you. The other thing I'm doing is I am pre-closing on the appointment here, right? So I'm making sure that I know what I'm walking into, because it may not be, yes, I'm planning on listing with you. It might be, I don't know, like right, but I want to be able to know that I am walking into the situation that I think I'm walking into when it comes to your situation, your motivation, the house itself, as well as your intention to list.

Speaker 2 22:01

Yeah, right, yeah, and there's some really good questions in there and you know it's funny, you do these different ways and you hear the downswings in list with me and, and you know, sign paperwork and all that stuff which is, which is awesome. That's something. As you start to get more and more reps, you start to build more and more skill around. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 22:25

So okay. So so we we've converted to an appointment and now we've qualified the appointment. So what do we have to role play next?

Speaker 2 22:34

We are going to role play, securing the business which is actually at the appointment. Yes, so we've qualified, we're there and now it's basically we've got the fish on the line and we don't want to break the line, right?

Speaker 1 22:47

Yes, and because we've qualified the person, we have an idea as to the kind of situation that we're walking into. Are they going to be prone to listing with us? Are we going to be competing for the listing? Are they leaning away from us? We're going to kind of work through all of those different things.

Speaker 1 23:04

But keep in mind, just as a general rule of thumb, the nervousness that you might feel if you're not a seasoned salesperson is not. It doesn't readily line up with reality. If somebody says, yes, come over, sit down at my table and talk to me about listing my home, the vast majority of people are not doing that for entertainment, right? They do not want to waste their time. They don't want you to waste your time or you're to waste their time and so you're there to list their property. And so it's really good to go in with the understanding and the mindset I'm here to solve this problem for these people. I'm here to take to extend this, this conversation. You know this connection and this conversation we've already had all the way to the point of being able to solve for their future motivation, for their future goals.

Speaker 2 23:56

Yeah, one of the things I think that we did great in the qualifying, which is a question and a brief story here. I was nine years as a buyer's agent before I ever was a listing agent, and so some of this stuff I didn't learn in my first nine years and and nobody really thought that I should know. But asking if all the decision makers were going to be there, that burned me on like my third listing appointment. Like I went, I went on this listing appointment and the husband was there and the wife wasn't there, and it was now that I know it was definitely coordinated, that like, hey, if one of these people isn't, if one of us isn't here, there's no way I'm signing the paperwork. Right, that's right. So, um, yeah, that's great. Uh, so we're going to secure the appointment. What's the first thing that you think of?

Speaker 1 24:40

Uh, the first. Honestly, the first thing that I think of is this, this issue of decision makers. Right, one of the mistakes that you can make is to not connect with one of the one of the two individuals. So, if you have been on the phone the whole time with the wife or you've been on the phone the whole time with the husband, right, you have the beginning of a connection with that person, but you don't have it with the other person and you've got to be really careful about that dynamic because if, if they are not the best communicators with each other, which from time to time happens actually, probably like 90% of the time happens then when you walk into the meeting, you are going to have more of a natural connection with the person that you're on the phone with, and you got to be careful because the other person actually needs to have the connection process happen. So, if you think about what we talked about when we first started, talking about all of the practice stuff, it's the first thing that we're practicing is establishing a connection.

Establishing Connection and Expectations at Listings

Speaker 1 25:37

So, you got to be careful of that. The other thing you have to be careful of is you have to be careful of trying to figure out who the decision maker is by the level of dominance in their personality. It's very, very common that one of the spouses has a more dominant personality and is far more engaged and engaging, and that will draw your attention to that person, but you actually don't realize that the other spouse is the true decision maker, right? So again, when you go and you sit down, you want to make sure that you're connecting with and that you are recognizing both spouses. I can't tell you the number of times where I've talked to people who had a poor experience with somebody. At this point, in talking with a real estate agent, the real estate agent didn't do anything wrong other than the fact that this wife felt like this real estate agent only listened to and paid attention to her husband, or vice versa, right? Not intentionally, but certainly easy to do if you already have a connection or if one person's more dominant than the other behaviorally.

Speaker 2 26:44

One of the things that can really screw you up in this situation is where you sit down at the table. If you sit in a position where you're going to have to turn back and forth from one to the other and one of them is more talkative than the other, like, you're naturally going to stay focused on this person and that person is not going to get your attention. So where you sit, so you can see both of them, you can naturally go back and forth. Even if one person is the only one engaging with you, at least you're making eye contact and talking to both of them.

Speaker 1 27:13

So as we. So we're going to role play through what this looks like at the listening table. And again, this this is actually 27 different questions on this, and so what I want to do with this one is I want to go through establishing the very first piece of this and again, we'll post this for everybody. But what I want people to understand is that if you are somebody who naturally connects with people, you might have a tendency to push off the clarity and the intentionality of why you're there until afterwards and create this kind of ambiguity and we're hanging out and we're talking and we're connecting, and that's not great for all different personality styles.

Speaker 1 27:54

You can still take time and connect, but I think it's really good to be able to just set the ground rules right out of the gate, and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is if they're going to hire you to sell their house, they're hiring you to lead them through that process, and so if you show up in a way that is defaulting to them leading the process, that's not why they're paying you, and so I think it's really important to be very clear out of the gate as to what your intentions are and what are the things. That will happen, partially because it falls in line with what you call like a basic public speaking model, and that is I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you. Then I'm going to tell you, and I'm going to tell you what I told you. That's how a basic public speaking model works, and here's the reason for that.

Speaker 1 28:37

The reason I mentioned that is that model is so effective, because if you don't tell people in a short period of time what to expect, when you start talking to them through the process, in the back of their mind they may be checking out and not actually listening because they're waiting for the bowl to drop, right? What are you really saying? Where are we really going? What are you going to ask me? And the whole time they're not really paying attention because they're trying to figure out where their footing is and what they should expect. So if you clear the air ran out of the gate by sharing the expectations, that's going to put them at ease. And even if you don't take the listing, it's going to not be because they weren't following.

Speaker 1 29:18

It was because there's some reason that you guys are a mismatch. That makes sense. Okay, so now we're at the door. So, jake, thanks for having me over. I'm excited to get your home on the market and get it sold. Would it offend you if I take a quick look around your house by myself to get a view of it from the viewpoint of a buyer?

Speaker 2 29:41

By yourself.

Speaker 1 29:41

Yep, by myself. I want to just make sure I do a really quick tour of your home, and you guys won't be here when buyers are walking through it, so I want to have that same experience. Does that make sense? Yep, great. Okay, so I wrote down three really important questions for you, uh, and I'm going to set myself down here at the table and I'll be right back down and then we'll go over those questions that were for you.

Speaker 2 30:00

That works for me.

Effective Real Estate Listing Conversations

Speaker 1 30:00

Excellent, okay. Um so number one, jake do you absolutely have to sell your home?

Speaker 2 30:06

Uh no, but it would significantly change the quality of our life currently Okay.

Speaker 1 30:14

Sounds good.

Speaker 2 30:21

Will you price your home to sell or do you want to keep it?

Speaker 1 30:22

on the market for a long period of time. I'd like to price it to sell, okay, excellent.

Speaker 2 30:27

And do you want?

Speaker 1 30:29

me to handle this sale for you. Sure, okay, great. So all we need to do now is simply sign the contract so I can help you get you what you want in a time that you want. Won't that be great?

Speaker 2 30:39

Sure Okay great.

Speaker 1 30:41

So that's the quick down, dirty like do you want to do this thing? Okay, all right. So, uh, so let's just say that we, we did this and and we did it, uh, a little bit, we did a little bit longer version of this.

Speaker 2 30:53

Okay.

Speaker 1 30:55

And so we might say something like this so, jake, uh, at the end of my presentation night, one of three things are going to happen. Number one you all have the opportunity to list your home with me. Or you'll decide not to list your home with me, or I'll decide not to take your listing. Either of the any of these is fine. Does that make sense? Yep, great. Okay, let's take a quick moment to review the questions that we had over the phone. Now I'm going to go back and do the pre-qualifications. Yep, right, has anything changed? Has anything changed? This is really important, because people do change over the phone to face-to-face, yep. And so I'm going to walk through all of these questions and I'm going to come back to those first questions. Do you absolutely want to sell your house? Will you price it correctly? Do you want me to handle the sale?

Speaker 2 31:38

The other thing that's great about going back to those qualifying questions is now you're sitting in front of both decision makers or all decision makers, right and the person that you're talking on the phone might be the one that's dragging their feet on like listing with an agent and the other person's not right, or vice versa and now you're starting to actually do what they're going to pay you to do, which is to guide them through difficult conversations that they may be neglecting to have between themselves. Yes, Yep.

Speaker 1 32:06

So if we go that very first route, which is just boom, boom, boom, done right, that would come off of the back of a really good pre-qualification on the phone, and maybe even somebody who is from your network, like we've been talking about this for months. Do you want to? Do you need to sell your house? Yes, are you going to price it Right?

Speaker 2 32:31

Yes, do you want me to handle that? Yes, okay, we're done. The other thing that this could come off of a two-step appointment where you came through just to take a look at their house so that you could really give them the most accurate valuation of their home yes, yeah.

Speaker 1 32:38

So I'm probably not going to approach most conversations that way. When we go back to the idea of, like, I want to set their minds at ease, that's where I'm going to say there are three things that could happen tonight. You know you're going to list with me, you're not going to list with me, or I'm not going to list your home, right, and then go into the rest of these pre-qualifying questions Again. One of the things that'll happen is you'll get these false positives from people like they want to know everything about your marketing. There's some people that want that, so you need to be prepared for that. A lot of people need you just to ask really good questions that demonstrate that you are the professional that they should be listening with. If you can demonstrate by asking the right questions and asking the next right questions and walking them through this process, the vast majority of people won't want to see your 25-point marketing plan and all those things, because they already know it's irrelevant, because they know you know what you're doing right.

Speaker 2 33:33

That's the goal of doing this and, by, by the way, you do know what you're doing because you've been practicing, yeah, yeah, I think one of the words that you said in there is preparing, right, like practicing is also being prepared, and if you go into any listing appointment unprepared for any direction, that this could go like you didn't do the job that you should have, like you, you really, you really need to go back and rethink what you're doing on that.

Speaker 1 33:57

Yeah, and of course, you're going to practice objection handlers and and condition reflexes with these. You're going to practice for sale by owners, like we just did. We'll post that expires, call arounds, talking to your network, all of these things. So the whole idea of this, these, these four episodes, were not about like here's all the perfect things to say, although these will get it done right. It's about practicing over and over and over your professional skillset, which, for us in the real estate space, starts with our ability to have great, powerful conversations.

Speaker 2 34:28

Yeah, yeah, that's great and this quick one-minute presentation feels really abrupt, but for the right appointments. A lot of my two-step appointments, like I come the second time and it's other. You know, do you have any other questions other than what's the value of your home?

Speaker 1 34:45

No.

Speaker 2 34:45

Okay, perfect, let's jump into that. And then it takes me three minutes to show them how I got to it. Show them all the comps. This is the value. You're ready to sign paperwork? All right, let's go?

Speaker 1 34:54

yep love it all right cool.

Speaker 2 34:56

Well, hopefully you guys loved this episode. I thought it was. I thought this was, uh a really informative. I learned some through it because you know that fizzbo script's new for me and I'm excited to get to practice and prepare and start using that as well. As always, we are here to impact, empower and encourage you in all things you do and specifically your real estate career.

Speaker 1 35:19

Awesome guys. Thanks again. Take care and happy new year.