One of our graduates reports that she has not taken less than a 7.5 per cent commission in 17 years in spite of the fact that competitors, including agents in her own company, offer to take listings at four and five per cent.
When a seller starts by asking what she charges, she asks, “Are you looking for a discount agent?”
When the seller says yes, she responds, “You don’t want me. I am the highest priced agent in the county. But I get more for the house and put more money in the sellers’ pockets. Would you like to know how I do that?”
She then shows the wisdom of getting more local agents eager to show a home that gives them a bonus commission and how more showings result in more and better offers.
Her closing line is, “A one-per-cent increase in commission offsets a five-per-cent reduction in price every time, don’t you agree?”
Dealing with indecision: Most people don’t like to make decisions … especially big decisions that have big consequences.
That’s why, when you get your listing prospects down to the moment of signing on the dotted line, many will hesitate, vacillate, stall, object, falter, waver, dither, dawdle or delay.
The best way to minimize this (you cannot eliminate it altogether. The fear of commitment often doesn’t strike until you put a pen in someone’s hand) is to get a tentative commitment early in the listing interview. My qualification procedure has four steps.
1. Basic questions: Why are you selling, where are you going and what is your deadline?
2. Probing questions: What happens if the home does not sell on a timely basis? What will you do? How will you feel?
3. Time target questions: Would it be in your best interest to have the home sold and closed in 90 days?
4. Tentative commitment questions: If you felt that you had a good chance to sell your home for the most money by listing with me today, is there any reason you would not do that?
It’s the last question that prevents hesitation, vacillation, stalling or objections when you ask them to sign the listing contract later. If they said no to your tentative commitment question, they will have a hard time justifying indecision later.
Your local statistics can be powerful: From your MLS, get the number of homes currently for sale and the number of sales last month. Example: 3,600 listings and 400 sales.
Divide last month’s sales by 4.3 to get the approximate number of sales last week (102).
Remind the prospect that buyers are people who actually buy homes. Everyone else is a potential buyer. That is an important distinction.
Divide the total listings available by the sales last week to show how many choices each buyer had on average (35).
Tell the prospect that, on average, buyers look at four homes before they make their buying decision. Ask if that sounds reasonable. They will say yes. Everybody does.
Multiply the number of sales last week by four. Explain that if every buyer was in a different home than any other buyer, there were only 408 listed homes seen by buyers.
Subtract the 408 from 3,600. Tell the sellers there were 3,192 homes that did NOT have a buyer through last week. Ask the sellers if they are absolutely serious about selling their home.
Finally, ask them if they see why it is important to price right, commission right, stage right and select an agent who knows how to increase showings on their home.
Jerry Bresser has been training and coaching real estate agents how to sell homes faster and for more money for over 35 years. He recently published his second book, More Money In Your Pocket. www.jerrybresser.com or for information about the book, www.moremoneyinyourpocket.biz.
