When I look through any real estate publication (on or off line), it’s clear that many agents are still confused about the right way to write a property description. It sounds basic, right? How hard can this really be?
Well, the mistake I see agents making is in thinking the focus of the ad should be to move a particular listing, but this is not true. I teach agents to NOT try to sell the property in the ad, and even though that sounds counter-intuitive, I mean exactly that.
Agents traditionally give way too much information about the property which can lead prospects to disqualify the home. I call these eliminators. If you describe the home as a 3 bedroom, some prospects will eliminate the property as too big or too small, meaning they’ll never call you. If you specify it’s a corner lot, you will similarly eliminate calls from prospects who don’t like corner lots. What’s wrong with this, you might ask.
Well, think about it. How often do you actually sell one of your listings directly from the ad you placed? You might get some calls on your ad, but it doesn’t happen often that you end up selling that particular property to the prospect. More often, their call to you will initiate a dialogue that you use to engage them so you can work through the process of finding them a home they do want to buy. So the job of the ad wasn’t to sell the particular home it described, but rather to enable you to talk to a qualified prospect, putting you in a situation where you could convert them to your client (regardless of the home they ended up buying).
When I explain it this way, you can see that focusing your property description on the specifics of a particular home is wrong … because many of the home’s attributes will be eliminators for some buyers. Why spend money, therefore, on a “narrow” funnel that will only attract a limited number of prospects? Wouldn’t it be better to open the funnel as wide as possible so that many more buyers will call you on it?
The better strategy, then, is to give 3-4 brief points about the home within the larger context of the emotional appeal of the home. In other words, stop trying to sell the home’s “features” and instead present the home’s “benefits”.
There are really only two ways to attract a prospect’s interest to a property:
1. by hitting their emotional hot buttons with emotional buzz words or,
2. by hitting the affordability hot button
I repeat: Do NOT try to sell the property in the ad. Instead, sell the emotional benefits of living there by using emotional words that evoke a picture. What do I mean by “emotional” benefits? Well, consider the difference between “cozy den” (emotional) vs. “new paint” (not emotional), or “tree lined street” (emotional) vs. “new roof” (not emotional).
Many agents also make the mistake of giving the price and the address of the home. Why is this wrong? Well, again, think about it. Once the prospect has these pieces of information, they don’t need you anymore. Don’t make it easy for the prospect to cut you out of the picture. I teach agents to give the price (which acts as a qualifier) but to hold back the address. Also, stay away from giving mls #s etc.
Always give prospects the opportunity to get more information about the property. I directed all my prospects to a hotline I called my branded USP Property Tree. The property description script on this hotline was designed to compel the prospect to leave their contact information so they could receive additional information about the property along with other valuable pieces of information.
Here an example of an effective property description:
NEWMARKET - Lovely detached home, quiet street, low down payment.
Free recorded message 1-800-000-0000 ID#0000. Your Company Name.
I discuss better lead generation strategies such as this at my 3-day SuperConference, and my October 25-27/13 SuperConference in Orlando is only a few weeks away. This 3-days will be invaluable to your business. It is at my SuperConference that the most successful agents launched their trajectory to success, and you’ll meet many of them there to find out exactly how they did it. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, register now while space is still available.
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