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Too many quotes, not enough work? Do you even know your close rate?

By Melissa Marro

Real Estate Agent with Keller Williams First Coast Realty - The Marro Team

March 28, 2009 03:07 AM

Ok, I'll admit that I've been guilty of this in the past. Sometimes I'm good at keeping track of things, and then I get busy and don't have solid system so things get away from me. This year Bevin & I are dedicated to keeping better track of our statistics and we've learned some really interesting things!

We discussed creating a staged home tracking system that would allow us to know how many homes we had staged in a year but then never did it as we always seemed to put it on the back burner - other things were always more important. This year we made it a priority and we are so glad that we did! Not only did the tracking system help us understand how much work we actually do, but it is also helping us close more deals!

How can a tracking system help close more deals? It's pretty simple really - it allows us better information to follow up with potential clients. Here's an example....

We gave several quotes the first week of March. Some of them had staged, some hadn't. Last week we followed up with the quotes that didn't stage with this email....

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"I just wanted to stay in touch with you on this property. I have some new statistical information I thought your clients would be interested in hearing.... Since we previewed your listing on 03/06/09:

1148 Harbor Trace, James Island ($395,000) was staged on 1/13/09 went under contract on 3/16/09 - just over 60 days. It was originally listed on 05/04/07 - over 18 month time on market prior to staging.

862 Fairlawan, Mt. Pleasant ($249,000) was staged on 02/24/09 at time of listing. It went under contract on 03/17/09 - 21 days after staging.

570 Hobcaw Bluff, Mt. Pleasant (415,000) was staged on 03/11/09 & went under contract on 03/20/09 - 9 days after staging. It was originally listed on 08/03/08 - 7 months of time on market prior to staging.

While the market may have its issues, it is clear that staging does make a difference. Saving days on market not only saves money in carrying costs, but also helps protect equity. The longer the home stays on the market, the more price reductions it will take and the lower the offers will be. I just thought your clients might want to know that this is the best time of the year to sell the home - there are a lot of buyers in the market right now, as I know you already know. Staging will make the most of every opportunity!"

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If you had your home for sale and knew that this was going on, wouldn't you begin to feel that not staging was a mistake? If you had a listing and knew this was going on, wouldn't you feel that this is something you really needed to make your client understand the importance of?

Adding a tracking system will allow you to track how busy you actually are - for instance, between January 1 and March 1 (we won't have March's numbers until the end of the month) we provided 51 staging quotes/written consultations.

We are able to determine what happened to all of the homes we quoted or consulted on, helping us to go back later with hard numbers. We'll be able to say how many of our homes sold vs remained on the market. We'll know how many we lost to other stagers, or never decided to stage and went unsold.

If you haven't already started tracking your statistics, now is the time before too much of the year goes by! For our newsletter members, you can download our tracking system for free under the members only section!

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First Impressions Home Staging & Interior ReDesign is a nationally award winning company owned and operated in Summerville, SC a suburb of Charleston, SC. We provide high quality staging for both occupied and vacant homes in the greater surrounding areas and beyond! For more information please visit, www.WeStageSC.com. If you are interested in learning about making Home Staging your profession, please visit, www.StagingAndRedesign.com for more information.

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Gary Barnett

Home Matters - Indianapolis, IN

Home Matters Property Stylist Group, Indianapolis

Melissa, just wait until you have a nice history with your tracking. You can start calculating DOM by price point, by area, by staging type. You can also do some neat stuff with tracking homes that were staged from day one versus those that were staged after being on the market for a while. I have to admit that I have the same problem as you when we get really busy. There are a ton of things that just don't get done promptly, but at least with the framework in place it is way easy to go back and pick-up where you left off and get caught up very quickly.

Mar 28, 2009 03:28 AM

Susan Cunningham

NE Atlanta Home Staging - Suwanee, GA

R.E.VISION - Suwanee, GA

Melissa...Love...It!

I, also, try to keep up with my personal stats, but what a great way to use this "tool." It's something concrete for the potential client to have and can easily wrap their brains around.

Nice post. Thanks!

Mar 28, 2009 03:36 AM

Connie Tebyani

Platinum Home Staging, Inc. : RESA-Pro - Calabasas, CA

Platinum Home Staging, Los Angeles and Ventura County

Great advice, Melissa. I was recently asked, "What are the statistics of selling my home faster if I Stage vs. if I don't Stage?" I prefer not to quotethe "national" statistics since every market is different, but since I knew the numbers of my OWN company off the top of my head, it convinced them and I got the job! =) Happy Staging, you busy Woman!

Mar 28, 2009 03:54 AM

Michelle Molinari

FEATURE THIS... Real Estate Staging & Interior Decor - Lafayette, LA

Feature This Real, Estate Staging & Curb Appeal Concepts

Wow, great blog. I'm want to sign up for that newsletter right now! Thanks Melissa!

~Michelle

Mar 28, 2009 04:39 AM

Lori Kim Polk

Premiere Home Staging : Home Staging Services - Roseville, CA

Home Stager - Roseville, Sacramento

This is priceless and a great closer. It does take time, but if you have it, your local area staging stats will seal the deal every time. So glad that you put this out there Melissa, you rock!

Mar 28, 2009 05:31 AM

Sheila Kennedy

J29 Project - Rochester, NY

Melissa, that is definitely worth tracking. I think that is an awesome email to send out to clients. Who can debate with success. Thanks for the motivation to do a better job at keeping track. Have you set up a special data base or are you just keeping track in their files?

Mar 28, 2009 06:26 AM

Kathy Passarette

Creative Home Expressions - Mount Sinai, NY

L.I. Staging/Decorating

Melissa ~ Great idea and I love your follow-up e-mail! I think seeing the dates and numbers will be a motivator.

Mar 28, 2009 07:05 AM

Melissa Marro

Keller Williams First Coast Realty - The Marro Team - Orange Park, FL

Jacksonville Real Estate and Home Staging

Gary - Thanks! It was after I saw your spreadsheet at the round table that I decided this had to be a priority!

Susan - We've always kept stats, but this gives us sooo much more information.

Connie - Showing what YOU can do is always better than showing just national averages.

Vivian - of course testimonials are nice too!

Michelle - go to www.stagingandredesign.com and go to 'become a member'. We'll get you hooked right up!

Thanks Lori Kym!

Sheila - it is a spreadsheet that contains all of the pertinent information of the sale. We keep one sheet for each stager on our team and one for the company with everyone's stats.

Kathy - It's actually been really interesting to see how much we actually accomplish. I think I really did not know how busy we really were!

Mar 28, 2009 08:41 AM

Sharon Tara

Sharon Tara Transformations - Portsmouth, NH

Retired New Hampshire Home Stager

Great post, Melissa, and great tool. I have already downloaded it. Thanks so much for the inspiration and motivation.

Mar 28, 2009 12:19 PM

Maureen Maureen

Orangeburg, NY

Hey Melissa - It is easy to keep track of this kind of stuff using Quickbooks. I wrote an ode to quickbooks a long time ago but I really can't say enough about it. There is a way to keep track of estimates, vacant stagings vs consultation income, then there is an entire part that will keep track of how the client found out about you. I keep stats on where all my jobs come from - that way next year I don't invest in advertising that does not generate revenue. OMG I could gush on all day about quickbooks but you'd probably be bored out of your mind.

If anyone is looking for intuitive bookkeeping software QB is a must.

Mar 28, 2009 02:56 PM

SHARON CHARBONEAU

UPSTAGING YOUR HOMES - Sechelt, BC

Great information, and timely for a newbie. I would certainly be impressed if a stager could produce those numbers to persuade me to stage my home.

Maureen, thank you for the endorsement of QB. I will follow that up too.

Mar 29, 2009 03:15 AM

Virginia Tatseos

Stage-Show-Sell - Bloomfield Township, MI

I can only hope to have enough job done so that I can compile stats.

Mar 29, 2009 03:31 PM

Tessa Skeens

Hampton ReDesign, Home Staging and Redesign - Grand Junction, CO

Staging For Realtors, Builders & Investors

Thanks for the reminder Melissa. Too often we get busy and let the paperwork (do they still call it that. lol) go. I have always wanted to try Quickbooks but was put off by the price. As a Mac user I just installed Numbers which is part of iWork and I need to start playing around with that and see what it can do!

Great tip!

Mar 31, 2009 03:01 AM