Get Better at Selling Your Own Listings

It is easy for real estate agents to get complacent in the marketing of their own listings beyond the hundreds of relationships their brokers and the association have already concreted for them. The past success of this is still winning new listings and sales. The majority of the time in the recent past, another agent would bring their client after the REALTOR® emailed them the home or they found limited information online and contacted their agent to show them and get more details. In years past, the buyer did not have the access to information the internet now provides, hungry for house details, more consumers would engage agents earlier in the home buying process relying on them to provide this information, allowing this old school marketing to reach all consumers. This is only one side of the new world of real estate.

REALTORS® now have more access to consumers in the home buying process but it's going to require more effort to draw them out.  

REALTORS® have traditionally spent more time trying to attract other REALTORS® because they were the ones in charge of getting their clients to come. This model is weakening as the buying public is out in front of the search process exposing themselves to listing agents like never before. This is very cool as next-generation marketing methods are changing as we speak away from traditional models. This will cause further innovation in the world of real estate and what has encouraged us to come out with the Real Estate 2020 podcast, to discuss the evolution of the industry and what it takes to be successful.

The advancement of technology, the explosion of photography, and the acceptance of realtors letting the consumer control the house finding has decreased the engagement of their traditional buy-side agents and empowered the consumers to shop alone until ready to write.  

This approach is not exposing the consumer to portals to get their data. This has also changed the influence that agents have on reaching the consumer directly through effective and enhanced market brought online.  This enables listing agents to reach their intended target consumer directly, the buyer, making it easier to sell the house versus selling through the agent. The intent is not to cut out the buyer broker (I double dipped less than 5% of my sales as I keep my reputation high) and often buyers have an agent they prefer to write the contract but to get more traffic through your house in hopes of selling faster and for more money. Your goal as a listing agent is to drive maximum traffic through your listings, which leads to faster sales for a higher return for the seller. Advertising directly targeting the consumer goes way beyond photos in MLS that are syndicated to agents and consumers, and now leading agents will win deals at massive rates when they understand how to leverage this paradigm shift.

Now that consumer-friendly companies are in control of the data, like Zillow, Trulia, Homes.com, and Realtor.com, they have elaborated and expanded the offering gaining the trust of consumers. I am talking about how REALTORS® can leverage this versus selling against it.  These portals are accepting consumer contact information hand over fist. It is best to get engaged with the portals, understand the offerings and benefits in hopes of luring their viewers to the homes you are trying to sell and this does not mean buying the leads. The best way to do this is clearly the open house. We have seen spectacular results having 50% of our homes sell from open houses over the past 6 months, which amount to 4-5 sales per month.