It's hard to believe that fall is around the corner. Having spent 12 years as a REALTOR® myself, I know that this is one of the busiest and most important times for agents. It's a time to review your business approach, and make sure you're refreshed and organized for a productive and profitable year ahead.
One of the most important things you can do to get ready for the fall market is to bullet-proof your approach to getting more listings. (We all know that we need to "list to last"!) From my perspective, there are three crucial things every agent must take care of now, in order to kick-start fall with more listings.
Top 3 "Must-Do's" for More Fall Listings
1. Spruce up your listing presentation
These days, competition for the best listings is fierce. As sellers become more sophisticated, they're interviewing several agents and making side-by-side comparisons of what each has to offer, before choosing that one lucky agent to list their home.
More than ever, it's crucial that your listing presentations be able to stand up against other REALTORS®'. If you haven't updated your listing presentation in the last three months, you need to make sure you do so in time for your fall appointments. Need a template? You can order a free 40- slide, fully-customizable listing presentation developed by Top Producer here.
2. "Complaint-proof" your listings
One of the most common complaints that sellers have about their agents, is that they're "not doing enough" to market their home. It's a complaint I've heard myself, even when I was working myself to the bone hosting open houses, driving across town to do last-minute showings, and running print and online ads on their behalf!
Over the years, I've learned that the most effective ways to handle that complaint (and to secure or extend listing contracts), is to make sure you have hard evidence of your efforts. For example, you probably know that every REALTOR®-listed home in the U.S. is on REALTOR.com®, the #1 website in the U.S. If you request a complimentary report on how many potential buyers are looking at your listings on REALTOR.com, you can share that information with your current seller clients on a regular basis so that they understand exactly how many buyer prospects you're driving to their online listing. Sharing these numbers with potential sellers also immediately positions you as an agent that delivers hard results!
A second complaint I've heard from sellers over the years is that agents don't keep them "in the loop" once they've signed the listing contract. So every fall, I recommend that you "complaint-proof" your listings in advance by preparing an arsenal of communications materials (e.g. checklists of listings activities and email templates) that you can use to keep sellers up-to-date on the activities you'll be performing to sell their home.
Better yet, if you know you're going to be pressed for time during the busy fall season, look into systems that automate communications with your sellers. With a sales and marketing system like Top Producer 8i for example, you can easily create individual, password-protected Web portals for every client. Your clients can log in 24/7 to view the activities you've completed to help sell their home. It's easy to update, and saves you time!
3. Maximize Business from Every Listing
You already know that every listing that you have is going to be a magnet for new business opportunities. This is the time to ask yourself if you have everything in place to make sure that you're ready to generate more exposure for your listings, attract more open house visitors and drive more engaged traffic to your website.
Ask yourself: do you have a plan in place to mail Just Listed/Sold cards so that you get the most people contacting you from the immediate neighborhood surrounding your listing? More importantly, do you have a system to automatically stay in touch with those leads until they're ready to buy or sell themselves? If not, this is the time to set-up a system like Top Producer's Just Listed/Sold marketing system which automatically mails postcards to the people in the immediate area surrounding your listing.
These are my three recommended items to tackle now so that you're set to get more listings and business in the fall. What are your top 3 items for fall business preparation?
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