Perfect Your Listing Presentation

You've done it! You're in the meeting with the client - you've done the hard part, getting the actual appointment, so why are your palms sweating, why have you spent the last 10 minutes in the car out the front of the house double checking paperwork and rehearsing your opening lines and ruing the fact that the powers that be have chosen today for you to be having a bad hair day? Chill out! You really have done the hard job already - how just use the following tips to put your listing plan together - this should be the fun part!

These tips work equally well for real estate sales or property management and - I think in most sales based industries where you have a pitch meeting with a client.

If you're talking more than 50% of the time - you're talking too much! Clients don't want to be simply "spoken at", treat this meeting like a conversation rather than a presentation.

Ask open questions. Sounds simple right - but do you know what your first questions are going to be? What about these as ideas: What would you say are the three main reasons you decided to call me (or my company) out today to chat with you? What are say the three most important things you're looking for in an agent / property manager? Not should this give you the basis for your presentation structure but by asking for three - you'll typically get 2 or 3, if you ask it without specifying a number you'll usually only get one answer.

There will always be a small percentage of people who you present to who are crazy analytical types. These people, and I'll admit I can be one of them, will have their entire focus shifted with a simple typo on your presentation. No longer will they be thinking about what you're saying - they just won't be able to get it out of their heads that you wrote "a lot" as one word!!! Always have one of these lovely analytical types (we all know a few!) proof read any of your handouts before you test them on clients.

I recently shared a stage with a great speaker by the name of John Shackleton - he said his philosophy on sales was simple and two pronged. Make friends and ask for the business! I couldn't agree more. So many people do a presentation but never ask for the sale. If you're in sales (and property managers you are too when going for a listing) you have to be able to close. Most of us however are brought up in an environment which actively allows us to be afraid of rejection or failure - which contributes to the fact that most people don't like to close (or ask for the business)! Think about it - in school, failing a test was never rewarded and yet even Bill Gates first business venture failed. How did you feel the first time you asked someone out and got rejected - yet James Dyson inventor of the Dyson vacuum was rejected by every major manufacturer in the UK and yet has now sold over $10Billion worth! Get over this fear of failure and rejection and practice closing every day.

End memorably. I don't care how you do it - but be memorable. Maybe it's that you drop a pre-written thank you card in the letterbox as you leave, maybe you've taken a photo of the kids at the house and you drop it back on a height recording chart, maybe you drop back a dog biscuit with your written presentation (provided they have a dog!) Find some way to stand out in this client's mind, some way to show you care. It doesn't have to cost a million bucks - it doesn't actually have to cost anything, it should simply show you cared enough to be different.

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