e-Book Edition

The Ultimate Listing Presentation By Matt Jones

Contents THE ULTIMATE LISTING PRESENTATION: PART 1 Introduction Chapter 1 What Does It Take to Become the Top Listing Agent In Your Market?

Chapter 2 The Most Important Piece of the Listing Puzzle

Chapter 3 How You Can get Hundreds of Listing Clients to Come to You Every Month

Chapter 4 How Lead Capture Technology Differs from a Website

Chapter 5 Why You Must Solve The Lead Capture Problem First

Chapter 6 How You Can Know Which Ads Are Working, Which Aren’t, and Exactly How Much Every Lead Costs

Chapter 7 The Best-Kept Secret About Finding New Listing Leads

Chapter 8 How You Can Be Certain You’ll Never Violate The “Do Not Call” Regulations

Chapter 9 The Top Ten Listing Myths and Why They’re Not True

Chapter 10: Is There a Better Way?

Chapter 11 Ethics and Listing at a Premium

Chapter 12 Becoming the Market Authority

Chapter 13 The Credibility Factor

Chapter 14 Summing It Up

Chapter 15 The Ultimate CMA

Chapter 16 Putting the Pieces Together

Chapter 17 Only Two Ways to Sell Any House

Chapter 18 What to Say and How to Say It

Chapter 19 Taking Listings Over the Phone

Chapter 20 Pulling Out the Secret Weapon

Chapter 21 Real Life Examples

Chapter 22 The Technology Element

Chapter 23 The Human Element

THE ULTIMATE LISTING PRESENTATION: PART 2 Chapter 24 Transcript of the Listing Interview

Chapter 25 My Listing Presentation

Chapter 26 One Last Thing

A Final Note from Matt Jones Testimonials About the Author

Foreword Broker Agent News became acquainted with Matt Jones before most of the rest of the world did, and we’ve enjoyed a mutually appreciative relationship with him ever since. Like us, he has a sincere interest in keeping the real estate industry healthy, and his contributions to date have been notable. Certainly, Matt’s series of articles in Broker Agent News have won him fans and the attention of industry leaders. His company, FavoriteAgent.com, became first in his market in less than two years, and he has hundreds of agent partners throughout the United

States, Canada, and Australia. However, it was his first book, LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, that fully introduced all of us to the phenomenally innovative concept that is helping revolutionize the way real estate is practiced today. And now here we have Matt’s second book, The Ultimate Listing Presentation. For anyone who can’t quite believe that a presentation could be handled so well, so smoothly, or so successfully, here’s your chance to reconsider. Matt Jones is generous in sharing his method with other real estate professionals. Go ahead and learn how he does it – and then do it yourself! Chad Golladay, Editor-in-Chief, Broker Agent News

Introduction When I wrote my first book, LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, it never occurred to me that I would receive such a huge outpouring of interest in my listing approach. While I knew that the approach was an integral part of building my own personal real estate success, I felt it was just that -- a part of my success. To me, learning to generate my own unending supply of customers was much more important, but I soon realized that there’s an insatiable appetite among REALTORS® -- a hunger for more listings. I’ve received many hundreds of calls, letters, and emails

asking me for more details about my approach to listing. Because it’s so different, my listing presentation has seemed to resonate with other agents struggling to get ahead in a market that’s getting more difficult with each passing day. How could an agent (a beginning agent!) have an approach that sets him apart from the crowd? How could he truly provide a better service to his listing clients? And how could he make a reasonable or -- even better! -- a good income as a listing agent at a time when commission rates are falling and advertising costs are rising. So in response to that mandate, I’ve set about giving you my entire listing approach --not just the presentation itself, but the whole approach. If you’ve already read my previous book, you may notice that some of its material is repeated here, but in much greater detail. (If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!) However, what you’ll find different in this book is that you’ll now have the complete listing package. You’ll know exactly what I did to become one of the top listing agents in the country, listing 114 homes in a single year, all at 8% commission or higher!

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As you read this book, do it with a highlighter and pen. Write on the pages. Jot down your notes in the margins. It’s truly my desire to help you make my listing approach yours. I believe in a principle of reciprocity: whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. If you plant corn, you’ll grow corn. If you want to reap beans, you must plant beans. Well, I want to reap success. Therefore, I must plant success. And I can think of no better way to do that than to help thousands of my fellow real estate agents become successful at what they do. That having been said, here’s to your success…

Important Update Thank you for purchasing and reading my e-book. I hope you find it helpful in your real estate practice, and more importantly, I hope that by using some of my ideas contained in these pages, you’ll make a lot of money! As you’ll discover soon enough, my approach to this business is probably very different from the traditional real estate model. My approach is a technology-based model, and it is very cutting edge. It’s not for everyone, and it might not be for you. But if it is -- if it resonates

with you -- then you’ll need some very specific technology in order to implement it in your practice. That’s the reason for my update: At the time when I originally wrote this book, my company only offered a technology option called Pipeline-i, which is a state-of-the-art virtual office technology suite we developed to meet the needs of agents, teams, and brokerages. While it continues to be a great application, many agents told us that it was too expensive for them to be able to justify for their single agent practices. Well, we listened and we developed a brand new technology tool to meet that need. It has the very same lead capture technology only without all the enterprise bundle, and of course, without the enterprise price tag. Now, instead of only the one option, we now offer two. Our new LCM Gateway is a state-of-the-art lead capture technology for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day and it has no long-term contract! And as my way of thanking you for reading, I’m offering it to you at a substantial discount.

So, as you’re reading this book and you encounter places where it makes reference to our technology, please keep in mind that we now offer both options, and not just the one that it refers to on the page. Thanks again for reading,

Matt Jones Broker/President/CEO FavoriteAgent.com

THE ULTIMATE LISTING PRESENTATION: Part 1

Section One "It all starts with lots of seller leads: How do I get them?"

There’s an age-old dilemma: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, in real estate there’s a very similar dilemma: you need listings to get leads, but you also need leads to get listings. Which is more important? Where do you begin? This section holds the key. This is where you’ll learn the secret to getting all the seller leads you’ll ever need for building and maintaining a huge listing inven-

tory. It’s almost too easy! Get out your pen and your highlighter, and turn the page.

Chapter 1: What Does It Take to Become the Top Listing Agent in Your Market?

What a great question! If you've ever asked yourself that question, you're already on your way! You've shown that you're interested in mastering the listing side of our business. And you’ve acknowledged that you’re competitive – very competitive. You've shown your desire to become the very best at something, so you're not interested in mediocrity. What if I told you that the difference between a struggling agent and a master listing agent is very small?

What if I told you that most agents I've met have within them the potential to become top agents? "Okay, Matt," you’re probably thinking, "if it's so easy, then why are most agents struggling today?" I believe they struggle because of fear. Fear of believing that they can be great agents. Fear of trying something that they've never tried before. Fear of investing in their own business. Fear of what other agents or their broker might think of them. Fear of going for it. But that fearfulness can stop today. As you begin to read this book, I want you to consider that, in all likelihood, you already have the ability to become a master listing agent. You simply need some help pointing yourself in the right direction. Well – that, and you need to face your own fears. How do I know? Because I nearly failed in real estate – and I nearly quit the business because I was working very hard and making very little money. Thankfully, I didn't quit. Instead, I went on to list dozens of properties over the next few months. During my first calendar year I listed 114 homes, and all at 8% commission or more! I did it

in a below-average real estate market. And if I can do it, I know that most of you who are reading this can do it too. In this book I'm going to tell you exactly what I've learned to do – the very step-by-step process. If you follow it, and follow it step-by-step, I know it will work for you as well. Before I get into the actual steps, however, I want to share with you an email I received last week from one of our brand new agent partners. "Dear Matt: I wanted to send you the listings that I have obtained in the past 2 months at 8% commission. It has been very exciting to obtain the listings because I have not had one commission objection! $ 59,000 @ 8% $ 79,000 @ 7% $ 432,000 @ 8% $ 349,000 @ 8% $ 341,000 @ 8% $ 525,000 @ 8% $ 489,000 @ 8% $ 169,000 @ 7%

$ 375,000 @ 8% Total listings $ 3,497,000 and total commission $ 277,280 – wow!!! Now, what I want to do is to get more listings at 8%! You say it is a numbers game so I know that some of this is going to close and I want to maximize the numbers. Just for your information, of my last 8 listing presentations I have closed 7 of them. So interesting because I have no commission objections! More to come. This is just the start of something HUGE!!! Brian Bell Sutton Group Lake Front Realty" Let me ask you a couple of questions. Do you think this agent had any idea, before reading my listing seminar, that he could be this successful? Did he suddenly get smarter? Did he suddenly work harder? Absolutely not! He did two simple things. First and most importantly, he realized that he could do it! Then he took the very same procedure that I’d used, and he implemented it step-by-step. I know it sounds too good to be true,

but go back and re-read his letter. Even he seems surprised! But more significantly, he knows that his business will never be the same again. Read the last line: "This is just the start of something HUGE!!!" So let me ask you another question: could this be you in two months? I think it could be. In fact, I know it could be. If you truly want it to be you, if you're reading this and dreaming "What if it could be me?" – let's make that dream come true. Somebody has to list those houses in your market. Why shouldn't it be you? I say it should be you! So here’s what we’re going to do. As you read this book, I'm going to challenge you to take action to become a master listing agent. You too can list two houses every week, always at a premium. You really can. My father used to say, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." The same is true with this book! I urge you to take responsibility for your own success. You can become the dominant listing agent in your market if you do what I did, and I’ll show you how. We have agents using this approach in markets from

Florida to Washington. From New York to California. Small markets and large markets. Buyers' markets and sellers' markets. My system works virtually everywhere that an agent has the courage to apply it. So take the time to read and study the material. This process could be the most profitable thing you've ever done. At the least, it will open your eyes to a listing approach that you've never heard before. This much I promise. And it will help you to list at a premium – even while our entire industry suffers from a downward trend in commissions because of discount brokerages and agents who can't hold the line on discounting. But there's one last thing I’d like to address before we dive into my listing presentation, and this is it: what’s in it for me? I assume that you’re intelligent and therefore naturally suspicious – so you may be wondering why, if I truly have such a great listing approach, I give it away for the price of this book instead of teaching it across the country and selling our materials.

I would certainly ask that question, and I would expect anyone of reasonable intelligence to ask it as well. Well, the answer is simple. If you like my approach – if it makes sense to you, and you decide you want to implement it for yourself – then you're going to need to build or purchase some simple technology. My approach isn’t all about technology, but the technology is critical if you want to have the same kind of success that I've had. And my company, FavoriteAgent.com, happens to sell that technology, so we would appreciate your at least considering our solution if you decide that it’s a good approach for you. Make no mistake: I developed this technology for my own use, not to sell to agents. But as my real estate practice grew and began to receive national attention, I was continually asked if we could provide the same technology to other agents. After saying no for nearly a year, I reluctantly agreed to license it to a limited number of agents, but only if I felt that they would actually use it to build their businesses. The fact is that we turn away many more agents than

we sell to. So don't expect a call from our sales department – we don't have one. If you become interested in our technology, you'll have to call us. And if you ultimately choose to build or buy this technology from another place, we won't have any hard feelings. And aside from our technology, another way that I could benefit, obviously, would be through book sales, even though – let’s face it – nobody gets rich writing a niche book like this one! But, okay, enough of what's in it for me. Let's get started making you money.

Chapter 2 The Most Important Piece of the Listing Puzzle

Houston, we have a problem. Recently we surveyed more than 481,000 REALTORS® with an average of 12.1 years in the business. You know what their number-one need was? More listings. You know why? To get more customers. Why more customers? Because experienced agents don't trust lead vendors for their business. Many of us have tried them and found their leads to be expensive and of poor quality, so we’ve resigned ourselves to getting our own leads. And what’s the best way to get leads? Have listings. But

to get listings, you have to have leads. It seems like a vicious cycle, doesn't it? Which comes first, the listings or the leads? If you have to have listings to get leads, and you need leads to get listings, where does it start? I say it all starts with getting seller leads! Lots of seller leads! Anyone who's been in real estate for any length of time knows that this business is becoming a business of extremes. Either you have more business than you can handle, or you struggle to pay the bills. There is no middle ground. And it's getting worse every year. Soon you'll either have a large real estate team, or you'll work for one. It's called consolidation, and it's happening everywhere. All the traditional ways of getting business are becoming less and less effective, and many veteran agents are getting so frustrated that they’re wanting to leave the industry. But what if I told you that you could easily get two or three new inbound listing leads every single day? What if you were able to generate ten or fifteen new seller leads every week, week in and week out? Leads who

not only were interested in selling their homes but also, in many cases, had begun looking for a replacement home? Would that make it easier to become a top listing agent? Would that make it easier to list two homes every week? Well, I solved my lead problem, and that's exactly why I listed so many houses. It was very simple. Let me ask you another question: when you're desperate for that listing, don't you think the seller can tell? Of course he can. And if you very seldom get any seller leads, you can't help communicating that sense of need. Often your desperation results in a reduction of commission, so that if you actually do get the listing, it’s hardly worth the trouble. After you deduct the cost of advertising and all the other listing expenses, the resulting commission doesn't begin to make you any real money. But what if you really did get ten or fifteen listing leads every week? Would you appear much less frantic? Would you convey a totally different message of "I don't really care if I get this listing or not"? Absolutely! And when you combine that relaxed attitude with an incredibly innovative listing presentation (you'll see

what I mean in future chapters), you'll find yourself swamped with new listings. I know from experience. You'll become irresistible! But if the listing leads aren't there, you'll not be able to convey that same take-itor-leave-it subliminal message to your sellers. So you absolutely have to solve the listing-lead problem first. That's the bottom line – it all begins with solving the lead problem. And, no, I’m not talking about buying leads! Many agents believe that the lead vendors have ruined our industry. I disagree. Don't get me wrong: they've made it very tough to survive, but they've really done us a favor. Without them, most agents would've never realized that our customers were moving to the Internet. And for those who are unwilling to learn how to capture business effectively from the Internet, the lead vendors serve as a valuable, albeit expensive, safety net and source of business. It's not only possible; it's probable that you can get the majority of your business from the Internet today. Our average agent partner generates forty to fifty seller

leads every single month. And each one of them generates nearly 100 buyer leads as well! They don't depend on lead vendors for their business. Instead, they make their own leads as they need them, and they do it at a much lower cost and a much higher quality than if they bought leads from a lead vendor. They've taken their success into their own hands.

Chapter 3 How you can get Hundreds of Listing Clients to Come to You Every Month Today, as many as 92% of all home buyers and sellers begin their quests on the Internet, and many of them start by going to a search engine such as Google, where they do a search for homes or REALTORS®. They then choose a link to a real estate website, which they visit, hoping to find some help for their search. The overwhelming majority of these real estate customers are looking for home searches. If they don't find a good, easy-to-use home search, they will generally move on to another website.

It seems pretty easy, then: just get a website with an IDX home search. Heck, you probably have one already. But here's where we come to the first problem. If that website is a "typical" real estate website, a very small number of customers will fill out a guest registration form and identify themselves – generally only about 1%. What this means is that, out of every thousand visitors, you, the website owner, will actually capture only about ten leads. The capture is very inefficient because real estate websites are not designed around capture, but rather around giving out information. So here's the problem: real estate traffic costs money. Either through pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or through search engine optimization (SEO), the website owner is able to have his website listed on the search engines so that it will be displayed whenever a customer does a real estate search. Pay-per-click advertising often costs several dollars per visitor, while search engine optimization costs several thousand dollars up front and needs to be continually managed in order to keep the site ranking high. Now, when you take that high cost of traffic and place

it with the low capture rate (1%) of real estate websites, the actual cost per lead becomes extremely high, usually well over $100 per lead. This is the reason that many agents, even those with websites, choose to purchase leads from vendors rather than making their own. But then, lead generation companies often charge $50 and up for leads, and many times they sell the same lead to multiple agents. Some vendors charge as much as 30% of the closed transaction, resulting in lead costs of over $2000. To make matters even worse, not only is the lead expensive, but often the lead quality is poor as well. This is the very problem that caused me to begin to look for a solution. Ultimately, we developed a technology called an LCM gateway, or Lead Capture Module. Instead of having the inefficiencies inherent in even the best real estate websites, which are designed around delivering information, this LCM gateway was designed to do only one thing: to capture Internet traffic. Furthermore, rather than having a capture rate of 1% or less, as with typical websites, the LCM gateway captures between 30% and 40% of all visitors, thus bringing the cost per lead down to as little as $3. More

importantly, the quality of lead is much higher than the quality of the leads supplied by lead vendors. I can remember buying leads from companies such as HouseValues, HomeGain, and Service Magic. I remember getting the same lead that had been sold to three other agents, and I remember getting some "leads" that were comprised of only a name and an email address! I remember a high number of bogus leads. The situation was frustrating, but I was desperate. So I decided to learn how to make my own leads. Now we generate all our own leads using our technology – over two thousand good leads every single month! Is it any wonder that we've grown so fast? And there's no reason you can't grow this fast as well. What it comes down to is having the customers. Let me give you an example. In Eagle, Idaho, we have an agent partner named Kyle Wilson. A relatively new agent, Kyle worked for Silverhawk Realty and had closed a very respectable 25 transactions in his second year. Since he began using our LCM gateway technology, though, he has grown to a team of fifteen agents and is looking at expanding to other markets. Kyle will

do hundreds of real estate transactions this year, and now he's one of the biggest producers in Idaho. He lists homes at 8%, and the only thing slowing his growth is his ability to recruit and train more agents. What a success story! So let me ask you a couple of questions. Did Kyle suddenly get smarter? Did he start working twice as hard? No. The fact is that Kyle is a very sharp and very talented guy. We simply helped point him in the right direction and gave him a few tools to make the process easier. He created the success. And that could just as easily be you. Why not? Do you work hard? Are you smart? If you answered “yes” to those questions, not only could it be you, it should be you! And why not?!

Chapter 4 How Lead Capture Technology Differs from a Website

As in the example above, a real estate customer goes to a search engine and clicks on a link to find properties. But, unlike the previous example, this time the customer is diverted to the lead capture (or LCM) gateway technology. The gateway is designed to capture a maximum number of visitors, so instead of capturing only about one percent of the visitors to your site, you’re now capturing between 30% and 40%. The first time through the gateway, the user has to register to use your website. From then on, he or she can come

and go freely without ever reregistering. The procedure is very simple and very effective. Why does the lead capture gateway work so much better than the registration forms on most real estate websites? Why couldn't you just put a registration form in the customer path and receive the same results? Well, you would probably receive much better results than you receive now. We've seen agents take their site conversion up to the 5% range just by doing that one thing. However, the LCM gateway is specifically designed to maximize lead capture, while web forms are not. Lead capture is a science. Everything about our gateway continues to be tested and modified in real time, so as to maximize lead capture. As I write this book, we’re testing three distinct versions of our LCM gateway, all in real time. What we continue to learn is that every nuance makes a difference – from font face, to font size, to font colors, to page background, to icons, to server side scripts, to PHP, Java, and CGI client side scripts, to form validation, to everything. What worked well last year is not working as well this year, as Internet shopping habits change with the maturity of the Inter-

net. For example, several months ago we experimented with changing one phrase on the LCM gateway landing page. We tried several different versions over a period of a month or so, with over 50,000 unique visitors, and we learned that one particular offer consistently pulled nearly 3% better than another. Some of the differences were visible, while others had to do with the processing of the online form. Since we began in 2004, we’ve changed the way the gateway goes about processing mail three times, every time improving conversion and the number of leads captured for our agent partners. The typical website, even when all the registration forms are enabled, has site capture rate (CR) only in the range of 5%. The very best and most expensive sites capture about 6%-8%, making any real lead capture on the website impractical and expensive, and the situation is worsening as more and more people are bidding up the cost of Internet advertising. But with the addition of an LCM gateway in the customer path, website lead capture is not only practical; it’s probably the cheapest form of lead capture available. I know that, in our market, we capture some leads for less than $1 per lead, and we produce our most expensive Inter-

net leads for under $5 each! With lead costs that low, we can afford to make more than we will ever use, and having more leads than we can work gives us room to grow. It means recruiting and team building. It means increased market share. But every agent is different. Some have no interest in building a large team, while others do. We have one partner agent who creates thousands of leads, does the initial follow-up, and then hands off warm leads to other agents in his market for a referral. He no longer works with customers directly but manages his own private relocation company! How you choose to work your business is entirely up to you. The key is that, with lots of customers, you have lots of options. So how well are you tapping the largest of all markets – the Internet? Do you have efficient lead capture on your website? If you don't, the first step to becoming a dominant real estate agent is having too many customers. You really have to start there. Everything else is second to that. Today, the lead vendors are spending lots of money tapping the Internet; and if you're going to compete with them, you're going to have to have

technology that places you on the same level. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself depending on lead vendors for much of your business. So what's next? In the next section, we’ll be discussing advertising. Where should you be spending your marketing dollars if you’re to become the top listing agent in your market? What strategies will get you the most bang for your hard-earned buck? Is it possible to be effective in advertising without breaking the bank? How can you know for certain which ads are working and which ones aren’t? All these questions will be answered in the next chapter, so you won't want to miss it. I’ll also be telling you my secret for finding hundreds of new listing leads without ever calling a FSBO or an expired listing!

Section Two "How to Get the Most Bang For Your Advertising Buck”

Imagine being the top listing agent in your market. What if you got to the office and did nothing but negotiate sales and talk to sellers? What if you actually listed two or three homes every week, without fail? I know that this sounds like a lot of listings, but think of the freedom you’d have! And, if only half of those listings were to sell, you’d close over fifty transactions this year! When I finally realized how nice it was to be a listing

agent, I was at the Outer Banks of North Carolina, on vacation with my family. While there, I did absolutely no work, but I did take a handful of calls from my office during the week. And while I was playing, I had two of my listings sell. How cool is that?! There’s nothing like the feeling of your business running itself, making you money, while you’re lying on the beach in the sun, listening to the waves crash in and catching up on your reading. Well, if you’ll do what I did, it’s not that hard. Most agents I know could do it – if they would do, step-bystep, exactly what I did. There’s nothing I did that can’t reasonably be duplicated by any intelligent agent with the motivation to learn something new and the willingness to work hard. Nothing! So let’s pick up where we left off in the last chapter.

Chapter 5 Why You Must Solve the Lead Capture Problem First

Allow me to tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a huge river, stocked full of home-buyer and homeseller fish. All along the banks of that river were REALTORS® with their fishing poles. Everyone was catching all he wanted, and life was good. Then one day, way upstream, a big commercial fishing company set up operations, with its computerized fish finders, its power nets, and the latest in fishing technology. The company began to pull many of the home-

buyer and home-seller fish out of the water before they could make it downstream to the unsuspecting agents. And it wasn't long before the fishing began to get tough – so tough, in fact, that many REALTORS® just threw in the towel and quit the business. Others worked longer hours and did what they could to survive, while a third group simply gave up on the whole thing and bought fish from the big commercial fishing operations. But what if an individual agent were able to get the same technology that the large commercial fishing operations were using? What if he were to go way, way upstream and begin to catch large quantities of homebuyer and home-seller fish? Not only would life be good again: it would be great! What a huge advantage that agent would have! Well, believe it or not, this story is actually true. The big commercial fishing operations are the lead vendors, such as HouseValues, HomeGain, and ServiceMagic, and every day the “fishing” gets tougher because new lead vendors open their doors. If you don't believe me, just check your email inbox. Not a day goes by that I don't receive

some new version of the same old thing – somebody using my listings to advertise on the Internet, catching my customers, and then attempting to sell them back to me. But there’s another part of the story that’s also true. It’s possible for an agent to use the same kind of technology that the lead vendors use to capture leads – commercial lead-capture technology on a single-agent level. And for those agents who use it, the technology produces amazing results. So how about a couple of real-life examples of what happens when agents use lead capture? In Greensboro, North Carolina, we have an agent partner named Kay Hunkins. Kay is a veteran agent who was one of the first in her market to begin trying to tap the Internet. Well, she was getting literally thousands of hits to her websites every month and had her sites listed in lots of online relocation directories, and she was getting between ten and fifteen leads from the Internet every month. When she installed a lead capture gateway on one of

her existing websites, however – she did nothing else out of the ordinary – she was immediately so busy that she actually found herself ignoring most of her prospects and following up only on the choicest leads. She began taking listings left and right, and she put a deal in escrow the same week she started with us. Without upping her advertising a dime, she began to capture more than twenty leads every day. All of her leads were people who had been coming to use her site anyway, but now she was able to identify them! Or there’s John Miller, an agent in Austin, Texas. When he began using lead capture technology on his website, John was struggling with only a handful of leads each month. Now, using the lead-capture gateway technology, he captures between 300 and 400 leads every month. His business will never be the same! Now he’s so busy that he’s having to recruit agents and build his own real estate team! So did these agents suddenly get smarter? Did they begin working harder? Did they work longer hours? Did they just get lucky? No. No. No. No. They just got better fishing equipment. Now, instead of having to be

dependent on “commercial fishing operations” to sell them leads, they make more leads than they can possibly use, and all for next to nothing. And I could go on and on with story after amazing story. There are many talented agents out there, just waiting for the tools to succeed and someone to point them in the right direction. They are the reason for their own success. We just happened to be fortunate enough to help them assemble the right tools and then point them in the right direction. The simple fact is that you have to solve the lead problem before you can attack the other challenges in this business. Having more business than you can handle allows you to work without pressure. It allows you to turn away those “problem” customers. It gives you the ability to multiply yourself by building a team, if you so choose. And, most importantly, it gives you freedom. No longer are you at the mercy of lead vendors, RELO companies, or even your broker. You have the freedom, finally, to take some time off and enjoy life again. A good lead count will solve virtually every other business problem you can have.

Chapter 6 How You Can Know Which Ads are Working, Which Aren't, and Exactly How Much Every Lead Costs

Lee Iacocca, as head of Chrysler Corporation, once made an amazing statement. When asked about advertising, he said he was convinced that half of the millions of dollars that Chrysler spent each year on advertising was wasted. Half! But then he added that, if he could only figure out which half was being wasted, he could save the company a lot of money. As REALTORS®, we typically spend 20% of our GCI,

or gross commission income, on Advertising. Magazines, newspapers, business cards, fliers, direct mail, websites, radio and television spots, billboards, and every promotional gimmick that comes down the pike: we sink money into all of these in a frantic attempt to generate enough customers to keep our businesses rolling. And the sad thing is that we know deep down in our hearts that much of what we spend our hardearned commission dollars on is utterly wasted. Just like Lee Iacocca, if we could only figure out which half was wasted, we could save a lot of money. Well, I have good news. By using lead-capture gateway technology, it’s possible to know which ads are pulling and which aren’t. It’s possible to know exactly where each customer came from and how much each lead cost. Let me give you an example from my own real estate practice. Currently I split my Internet advertising between two sources: Google and Yahoo (formerly Overture). My cost for Google is slightly lower per visitor, but my CR (capture rate) is slightly lower as well. With Yahoo, my per-visitor cost is higher, but so is the actual CR.

I’m able to monitor each of those advertising expenses in real time. No more waiting until the end of the month to see how the magazine did. No more wondering if an ad is working. I have the answers in real time. And here’s how I know. I assign each ad its own unique URL (web address), and the server log tracks how many visitors and leads have come in for each one. I then take this information and make a quick calculation to determine exactly how effective each campaign was. No guesswork! This is a business. Let's say that, in a week, you had 110 visitors who came from your ad in Google, which cost $124. Of those visitors, you got 32 leads. During the same week, you had 98 visitors from your $125 ad in Yahoo, resulting in 30 leads. Then let's say that your yard signs sent you another twenty visitors, and, of those, ten registered. Total cost for sign leads: zero! Here’s how it all breaks out: Google: CR of 29.09%, with a lead cost of $3.88 ($124/32) Yahoo: CR of 30.61%, with a lead cost of $4.17 ($125/30)

Yard Signs: CR of 50.00%, with a lead cost of zero! ($0/10) Totals: CR 31.50%, with an overall lead cost of $3.46 ($249/72) This is a “typical” example. What would 72 leads every week do for your business? They would probably force you to start recruiting! Or you would log in and put your ad campaigns on hold for a while. Either way, your business would be forever changed. But then what if a particular source of advertising was costing you $125 per lead? (When I quit doing direct mail, that’s what it was costing me.) What if sitting an open house cost you half a day on the weekend, plus $100 in promotional stuff, and you picked up five leads? If your time is worth $100 per hour – and it should be – your ad cost was $500. (You captured five leads; your cost per lead was $100.) Or what if you spent a day passing out fliers? Do the math! And what would several hours of cold-calling cost you – not to mention the risk of violating the Do-Not-Call laws and

the potential $11,000 fine? On the other hand, what if you could generate hundreds of your own leads for only a few dollars each, and then stop when you had enough business? This is how mega-agent teams have begun to spring up around the country. One agent figures out how to produce more leads than he can handle, and, before you know it, he has a dominant team taking a huge slice of the local business. Well, that mega-agent could easily be you, if you want it to happen. First you get the leads, then you get the listings. Before you know it, you’re “forced” to build your own agent team, and in a year you have a dozen agents working for you.

Chapter 7 The Best-kept Secret About Finding New Listing Leads

Most agents know what to do when a customer fills out a CMA request on his website (or calls to ask for one). The problem is that those are few and far between. Another concern is that most sellers who ask you for a home valuation also ask several other agents at the same time. Some other frequently mentioned sources of seller leads are FSBO (for sale by owner) sellers and expired listings. As with the CMA requests, the problem with both FS-

BOs and expireds is that you’ll be competing for those listings with the hungriest and most aggressive agents in your market. And while both types of property are good sources for listings, they tend to be tougher to sell, either because the seller is unrealistic or because the property has been stigmatized by having been on the market since before you entered the picture. I like getting my seller leads from a place where nobody else is looking: from buyer leads. What?! You read it right – from buyer leads! Let me explain. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, first-time homebuyers account for 40% of all real estate purchases. This number has held constant for years and shows no sign of changing. Well, one thing is for certain: none of these first-time homebuyers are listing leads. Another 23% of homebuyers are looking for investments, while 13% are purchasing vacation homes. Of the investment properties, some are bought to “flip,” while others are bought to hold. The same is true of vacation home sales: many are bought to hold, while many others are step-up purchases, resulting in potential listings as well. The best numbers from the NAR

reflect the fact that 52% of all buyers are also selling, some in the same markets as their new purchases and some in other markets. Therefore, over half of the buyer leads that you get will also be sellers. Now, here’s the little-known secret that will give you the first, and hopefully only, shot at those sellers: Most buyer leads find their replacement homes before they even begin to think of selling. As professionals, we understand that this isn’t the wise or proper way to handle the situation, but the human psyche is hard-wired with a security need. We don't quit a job until we line up another. We don't sell our car until we find a new one. Well, the same is true with real estate. The key to generating an unending supply of fresh listing leads is to generate lots of buyer leads and then find the half who are selling too. In most of those cases, you have the opportunity to list a home without anyone else’s knowing that it’s going to be on the market. What a huge advantage! So over half of the buyers will either have a home for you to list or – better yet – have a listing lead that you

can refer back to its original market, giving you a referral with no work whatsoever! No picked-over expireds. No FSBOs that know it all. Just an endless supply of new seller leads with no competition. This is the key to becoming the dominant listing agent in your market.

Chapter 8 How You Can be Certain You'll Never Violate the "Do Not Call" Regulations

In March of 2005, the FCC imposed a $770,000 fine on a Phoenix, Arizona, mortgage company for violating the Federal Do-Not-Call Law. Alleging that Dynasty Mortgage had made seventy calls to fifty homes in Arizona and California between March 2, 2004, and January 20, 2005, the FCC levied fines of $11,000 per incident on seventy separate counts, and the company was given only thirty days to pay. Curtis White, Dynasty's president, protested that his

company – in an effort to ensure that the do-not-call rule wouldn’t be abused – had installed extensive preventative systems. However, he admitted, some calls could have been made mistakenly because of a "flaw” in those systems. The company is now working to remedy the problem. If this situation doesn't make you think twice about cold-calling, nothing will! I can remember many times when I would make more than seventy cold calls a day! And of course it would’ve been easy to violate the DNC law accidentally by calling homes that “showed” to be “okay” on the latest list (which might have been out of date at the time of my calls). And $11,000 is a huge marketing cost to incur accidentally. But how can you be certain that this kind of disaster will never happen to you? By making prospecting calls only to inbound leads! With lead-capture gateway technology, every lead is permission-based. In other words, I mean that the lead has first contacted you and given you his phone number and, with it, his implied consent to market to him. The law is very clear that, in such instances, there’s a three-month window of exemption

from the date of inquiry. And your innocence is easy to prove if you have a time-and-date-stamped inquiry on file for each lead. Inbound Internet leads are the safest of all leads to call – period. How safe, then, is your marketing? Do you have efficient lead capture on your website? If you don't, the first step to becoming a dominant real estate agent is having too many customers. You really have to start there because everything else is secondary to that requirement. Today, the lead vendors are spending lots of money tapping the Internet, and if you’re going to compete with them, you’ll have to have technology that places you on the same level with them. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself depending on lead vendors for much of your business. So what's next? There are many myths when it comes to listing real estate. Most had their roots in sound reason and business practices but simply became part of real estate tradition over time. And, as in the story of the emperor’s new clothes, nobody wants to say,

“The emperor is naked!” Therefore, since nobody else will challenge these sacred cows, I’ll step up and do it. In this next section I’ll explain and debunk the top ten listing myths that we’ve all heard and believed for years. You won’t want to miss this section!

Section Three "Debunking the Top Ten Listing Myths"

Our industry is at a critical juncture: the gatekeepers of industry knowledge are finding themselves illequipped to help the new recruits who’re coming into the business. Strategies that used to work are no longer working. Marketing that once pulled well is no longer pulling. Techniques that built many a successful business in times past are no longer guaranteeing success. Something is wrong, and anyone who’s been in real estate for very long can sense it. So what is it? What’s causing the failure of over 85% of

all first-year agents? Why does our industry turn over a third of all its professionals every year? Why are veteran agents working harder than ever before, yet having a tough time surviving? I say that the real estate business is undergoing a tremendous upheaval. The Internet has changed all the rules. New technology has allowed national lead aggregators or lead vendors to step in and grab much of the business before it ever reaches a REALTOR®. And with this new and changing model, much of the conventional wisdom has changed too. Many of the traditionally accepted “facts,” or rules of thumb, no longer apply. In this chapter I’ll discuss ten of the most frequently repeated age-old truths of the real estate business – and I’ll debunk each one of them. I understand that, in doing so, I’ll probably ruffle some feathers, particularly the feathers of those who are unwilling or unable to learn something new. But the reality is that our industry is changing; and if we want to be successful agents in this new age of real estate, we must learn to change too. So without further delay let’s begin looking at each of these ten “myths” and discuss why it’s a myth. And then, instead of just attacking the status quo, I’ll offer

a solution – the actual “new way” for today’s Internet real estate economy.

Chapter 9 The Top Ten Listing Myths and Why They're Not True

Myth #1: “You have to list to last.” When I became a REALTOR®, the first piece of “wisdom” I learned was that “you have to list to last.” And because my business plan called for being a listing agent, I initially had no reason to question that conventional wisdom. But after becoming the dominant listing agent in my market – after listing 114 homes in one year, all at 8% or more, while the next-best agent listed fewer than thirty homes, at 5%-6% commission

– then I began to believe I had the authority at least to question that conventional wisdom. While I enjoyed working the listing side of the business, I couldn’t see any reason for my very survival to be predicated upon my listing homes. I began to ask the old timers why it was that I needed to “list to last.” And as far as I could see, there were only three reasons to list homes: 1) to get leads (the previous chapter of this book should’ve made it clear that I solved that problem by using lead capture technology); 2) to build my visibility by always having signs in yards (so I could get leads); and 3) to give me freedom to work my own schedule and not be continually at the mercy of a buyer’s schedule (again, solved by lead capture technology and the ability to build a large real estate team). The more old-timers I asked, the more I heard the same three answers. Regardless, though, there are only two reasons to list real estate: 1) to get more customers and 2) to have freedom. The bottom line is that, if you can solve the “more customers” problem and gain more freedom by some other method, you may never list another home, yet still do very well. Your choosing

to be a listing agent should be based on whether the job suits your personality and skill set, not on your ability to generate enough leads to create your own freedom. Myth #2: “The CMA is the most important part of the listing presentation.” While you’ll certainly want to do your best to prepare an accurate property valuation, your CMA isn’t the most important part of your listing presentation. The reason that the CMA has historically been critical to the traditional model of real estate is that the traditional model relies on selling the client’s home by price – a method that requires a low starting price and an agreement to adjust that price downward periodically until the property eventually sells. Another approach to selling the home would be the “traffic” approach discussed in this Ultimate Listing Presentation. By using this approach, you’ll find that the lowest starting price isn’t important at all. The traffic approach is successful because it uses a price that’s at the very high end of the reasonable range. In the event that the home is overpriced, the burden of jus-

tifying the purchase price is then shifted to the buyer and the buyer’s agent. That’s why we use appraisers: to protect the interest of the buyer and particularly the security interest of the lender. Myth #3: “You should never take an overpriced listing.” This is one of those myths that I’ve heard again and again, and it’s pure fiction. It even goes against common sense, and here's why: it’s more important to persuade the seller to commit to selling the home than it is to haggle about the listing price. Everyone knows that the listing price is invariably just the starting point – a point at which very few homes sell. In some markets, homes are routinely bid on way above the listing price, while other markets experience deep discounting due to market conditions. If the home is severely overpriced, everyone, including the seller, will know it very soon. And when the seller eventually reaches his “pain point,” the price will be adjusted. But in the meantime, you have a sign that gives you exposure and generates buyer calls (i.e.

leads). I say that there are no bad listings. Even if the home never sells, it has provided you with market visibility and produced leads for you. I can’t tell you how many “overpriced” listings I’ve sold at prices that some agents have considered “inflated” – and then closed them without appraisal problems. Let’s not forget that, as listing agents, we have a duty to represent the seller’s interests and thus help him get the top dollar for his home. “But it costs money to advertise a house,” you may say, “and if it's not going to sell, the advertising is a waste of money.” However, I say that advertising isn’t for selling houses – it's to generate buyer leads. And lead generation should be the only reason you advertise. The notion that there's a downside to listing a home above the market price is clearly erroneous. Show me an agent who turns down overpriced listings, and I’ll show you an agent who doesn’t understand marketing. My observation has been that this third myth is just a sourgrapes response from agents who’re unable to close listings. So I reiterate: there are no bad listings – only bad agents.

Myth #4: “Customers want the ‘dog and pony show’." Let's be honest here. It's 6 PM, and you’re supposed to be meeting your clients to give your listing presentation. As you get to their home, Mom and Dad arrive at the same time with kids in tow, coming from different directions. You can see the “oh, I forgot” look in their eyes as they attempt to compensate by greeting you pleasantly. When they open the front door, the dog springs into action, yipping and jumping on anyone and everyone within reach, while the family sings a chorus of “Down, Boy!” in fractured harmony. The kids are hungry, the house is a mess, and let's not forget that the dog demands to be heard! If you’re a listing agent, this scenario has presented itself to you more than once. And I’ll be willing to bet that you weren't excited about rising to the occasion and giving your presentation in that particular kind of environment. All the characters are playing their parts as scripted, but nobody wants to be there. The seller, who just wants to sell the house, has taken on the role of prudent consumer. And many of us agents have never questioned this traditional approach or considered

that there may be a better way. The fact is that the seller simply wants to find a competent agent who’ll net him the most money in the least time. He doesn't care about your company, your zillions of dollars in production, your fancy Power Point presentation, your brochures and pamphlets, or even about making a new friend (although, if you do your job right, he’ll make one). He just wants results. One thing is for certain: he doesn't want the circus that I just described. Customers appreciate it when you offer them competence, whether in person or over the phone. And, yes, you read it right! I’ve listed well in excess of 100 homes over the phone, and the customers have appreciated my respecting their busy schedules and sparing them the production. Sellers are searching for professionalism, so if you can demonstrate that you’re the agent who can get the job done quickly while netting them more money, you’ll get the listing every time. Myth #5: “You should always put up the ‘sold’ and ‘pending’ riders.”

This is one of those marketing blunders that has always mystified me. Now, the thinking behind the strategy is sound enough. The idea is that, by putting “sold” or “pending” riders on the yard sign, you’ve shown all the neighbors how well you did at marketing the home (even though the odds are that another agent actually sold it). This method was an outgrowth of the farming strategies that were so prevalent before the Internet broke all the geographic barriers. Back then it wasn’t a good idea, but today it’s a truly bad one. The only reason we should advertise is to get customers. The minute you put up a “sold” banner (whether on a yard sign or in an advertisement), the phone will quit ringing. You’ll lose 30-45 days of prime advertising time while the home is in escrow, and probably that many new leads as well. And if the sale should fall through, you’ve effectively taken the property off the market and lost valuable marketing time for your seller. Then, when all the neighbors see the riders coming down, they’ll deduce that it’s your fault the home is back on the market, even though nothing could be further from the truth.

Myth #6: “You should always include the price in your advertising.” As with ads that say “sold,” any ad that includes the price will prompt very few calls. We actually ran an experiment, and the results were clear: ads with prices got two thirds fewer calls than those without. Think about it: what’s the first thing someone asks you when he calls about a property? The price. It's the same everywhere. Put the price (or “sold”) in the ad, and you’ll get many fewer leads. And since the only reason you should advertise is to get leads, don't shoot yourself in the foot by minimizing your ad's effectiveness. Make the price a mystery, and watch that phone ring! Myth # 7: “You have to 'stage it' or 'fix it up' in order to sell it.” Before I opened my own company, I used to tease one of the other listing agents in our office. When she listed a home, she was relentless. Before the owners knew what was happening, she would have them pressurewashing, repainting, recarpeting – I remember one time when she even talked them into sodding the yard!

Her customers often spent much of their equity in the home just trying to sell it. It’s true – cute little homes in perfect condition sell more easily than “dog” houses. But an agent with a good marketing strategy can sell even those dog houses. When you use price to sell your home (the traditional approach), the overall perceived value is paramount, and part of that whole process is making the home look as close to perfect as possible, so as to have the highest perceived value. This idea is the very heart of featurebenefit sales. However, my listing approach relies on high traffic to sell the property, so condition is less important. The reason is simple, although not immediately evident: when you’re selling by price, you’re making the sale because features and benefits eventually present a compelling case to the buyer. On the other hand, the “traffic” approach works on a different human motivator – the fear of loss, as in “Somebody else might get my dream home!” Create competition for your client's property, and those cosmetic traits become less important in the buyer’s mind. That's how I'm able to sell my

clients' homes in half the time, regardless of condition. Myth #8: “Ads sell houses.” One of the little-known secrets of advertising homes for sale is that ads don't sell houses. In fact, less than onefourth of one percent (.023%) of buyers actually purchase the home that’s featured in the advertisement to which they’ve responded. That statistic doesn't mean that we shouldn't advertise; what it means is that we need to know why we advertise. We advertise to generate a continual flow of buyer leads. And having a continual flow of buyers allows you to build your business and increase your income and freedom. Show me an agent who’s afraid to take some time off, and I’ll show you an agent without a steady flow of customers. When you advertise, you should do it for yourself and not because your listing client wants you to. You’re spending your hard-earned money, and you should be doing it to build your business. Myth #9: “FSBOs and expireds are the best sources for listing leads.”

All of us have heard this one again and again. I remember going out to a listing appointment after getting a lead from the Internet. When I visited the client's home, there on the kitchen table lay three postcards from other REALTORS®. If you want to market to those people who’ve been singled out by nearly every aggressive agent, go after FSBOs and expireds. The best sources of listing leads, however, are your buyer leads. Just because someone came to you as a buyer doesn't mean that he’s not a seller lead as well. According to the NAR, as many as 52% of all buyers are sellers too. But the beauty of these leads is that most of the other listing agents aren’t marketing to them – yet! You can have them virtually all to yourself! I’ve seldom gone up against another agent in a listing presentation – and why would I want to do that if I didn't have to? Find the sellers among your buyers, and you’ll have found the very best source for listing leads. Myth #10: “If it doesn't sell, the reason must be the price.”

I once heard a nationally known speaker and coach tell an audience that there’s only one reason a home won't sell: price. And I’ve heard agent after agent repeat this same nonsense. How ridiculous! The very foundation of economics is the law of supply and demand. Where the supply meets the demand, there you find price. In other words, the price is dependent on supply and demand. Obviously. If there’s a large supply of something but few buyers for it, prices will drop. On the other hand, when there’s a scarcity of product but many buyers, prices will rise. As professionals, we have a responsibility to market our clients' homes properly. Accordingly, it's very important that we do so in a way that best represents their interests. And every seller I’ve met has the same two objectives: to net the most money and to sell his home in the least amount of time. In order to meet the seller's needs, you must market in such a way as to create the appearance of scarcity while generating an abundance of demand – and the easiest way to do this is by enlisting the buyer's agent. Together, you can develop a sense of urgency by mar-

keting, not to the public in general, but to the agents who’ll be bringing their buyers. By using my “traffic” approach, I’ve repeatedly been able to generate higher-than-normal traffic and to sell my clients' homes in half the time while netting them nearly 3% more money in the process.

Chapter 10 Is There a Better Way?

I say there is! I’ll go into great detail in the next few chapters in order to explain my listing approach fully – not just show you a presentation, but rather demonstrate to you how and why it works, so that you can benefit from using it as well. Before we get into the listing presentation, however, I’d like to tell you exactly how I stumbled onto it. As with most truly great lessons in life, this one happened by accident. Back in the early 1990's, before I came into real estate, I lived in an immaculate home on the tenth fairway of

a very nice golf course. Unfortunately, our house was located twenty or thirty minutes from everything; and with young children in private school, and with all their normal activities – from soccer to art lessons to dance lessons – that thirty-minute drive became a big issue, and we decided to move to a more centrally located area. After buying a replacement house, I called a friend who was in real estate and asked him to help me sell my dream home. (Notice how I managed to reverse the order of things! Just like the people I mentioned in the previous chapters, my family and I had a security need that caused us to hang on to the old house until we were sure we had a new place to live.) Anyway, my REALTOR® friend came out to see us and brought three comps, suggesting that our house should be listed at $165,000. Now, I had recently had the home appraised at $170,000, so, needless to say, I was surprised at this suggestion. Nevertheless, since my friend was the “expert,” I heeded his advice and listed the home for $165,000. I should mention that this was at the height of the biggest seller's market we’d ever experienced in our area, and most homes were selling quickly.

Well, after a month with our house on the market, but without a single showing, I called my friend to ask his advice. He suggested lowering the price to $162,000, since “the market has spoken,” and since we were “over-priced.” So I reluctantly followed his recommendation, and another month passed, again without a single showing. Was the house a “dog” house? No, it was pristine – in brand-new condition, in fact, with stunning views of three lakes, and perfect landscaping. The house was beautiful by anyone's standards, and by then it was vacant, making it easy to show. It had new paint inside and out, polished hardwood floors, and new carpet in the bedrooms. So again I asked my friend what he thought we should do, and he suggested that we lower the price to $160,000 in order to attract buyers. (Remember, the house had been recently appraised for $170,000.) This time, however, I balked. I was frustrated! I asked him how he could say that we had a price problem when nobody had even seen the place! I told him that we didn't have a price problem – we had a traffic problem. Because we were friends, we were accustomed to speak-

ing very directly to each other, and he said that, if I was so smart, what was my great idea to sell the place? I told him that what I wanted to do was raise the price to $170,000 (where it had appraised) and leave a copy of the appraisal on the kitchen counter. Then I wanted to raise the commission in order to “bribe” agents to show the home. So we did just that, and we sold the home for a full offer in only one week! Lesson learned. Price doesn't sell houses; agents sell houses. If I wanted to attract buyers, I had to attract agents. It was really that simple. Was this a carefully devised marketing strategy? No. It was a knee-jerk reaction to the utter frustration of having the perfect house and no buyer customers. But it worked then, and it’s worked hundreds of times since then. This is simply supply and demand: more demand with a fixed supply gives you a higher price. So selling my family’s house wasn't luck. It wasn't a fluke. It was Economics 101 at work in my neighborhood…and it will work in your neighborhood as well. Now, as we begin to get into my listing presentation,

I want you to resist the temptation to dismiss this approach as being market-specific. I have agent partners using it across the country and in Canada, in all kinds of markets. And as long as there are buyers and sellers, it works. It works in buyer's markets and seller's markets. It works in low-priced markets and high-priced markets. It works because the law of supply and demand works the same everywhere. The real estate industry is changing drastically, and all the old rules are changing with it. Don't be left behind! There are more real estate transactions being closed today than at any time in history. So what’s next? Next we’ll be discussing the actual listing presentation that I used to list 114 homes in a single year -- all at 8% or more! What’s the key to building your credibility as a listing agent? How can you go up against the top agents in your market and come out with the listing? How can you be totally confident walking into every single listing presentation? How can you make your presentation different from that of every other agent in your market? All these questions will be answered in

the next chapter, so you won't want to miss it.

Section Four "Prepping for the Listing Presentation"

This listing presentation will show you how to list at a premium virtually every single time! Oh, I know that statement sounds incredible, but it’s true! There’s no reason that you can’t list for 8% or even more. (Okay: maybe you’re in a 4% market. Well, you can list at 6%!) The secret is in this presentation.

Chapter 11 Ethics and Listing at a Premium

Okay, before we dive into the presentation, it’s important that we first mention ethics. In other words, “How can I better serve my clients while charging them more?” Simply by having that thought, you’ve confirmed that you’re an ethical REALTOR® who’s trying to put your clients’ interests first. That’s a good thing. Having said it, though, I need to underscore the fallacy in such a line of thinking. The question we’ve asked seems to imply that you cannot earn good money by doing the right

thing. But the truth is that it’s possible to serve your clients, your fellow REALTORS®, and yourself; and with this presentation it’s also easy! Let me explain. We’ll begin by discussing agency —specifically, seller agency. As a listing agent, you realize that your client is the seller in any transaction. You’re the seller’s agent, and you have a fiduciary obligation to represent him or her to the best of your ability. As a rule, you should be trying to get your client the most money in the shortest amount of time, since that’s the goal with most sellers. And when I mention “money,” I specifically mean net dollars. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how large or small the commission is: what counts is the total that your seller takes away from the closing table. So if you knew about a strategy that would net your client more money while selling his home in only about half the usual time, wouldn’t it be in his interest to use that strategy? Of course it would! Well, that’s what this listing presentation will do for you. As compared with traditional listings of homes in the same market, my presentation will give you a strategy that has traditionally netted my clients 2.7% more money while selling

their homes in only 55% of the average DOM (number of days on the market). More money in half the time! Think of it: your clients (and the other agents in the market) will love you, you’ll benefit financially in the process, and you’ll begin to acquire a reputation for being the agent with the high-paying listings. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take this thing one step at a time. So...On the flip side, if you knew that selling a house by the traditional method would double your client’s waiting time and, in the process, net him less money, would that be good for him? Of course not! Not even if you saved him some money in commissions! Your job as a listing agent is to represent the seller and to place his needs first, and that’s what we’re going to do.

Chapter 12 Becoming the Market Authority

Before we get into the listing presentation, it’s important for you to do an honest assessment of your ability as an agent. Can you look into the mirror and feel, deep down, that you’re the very best person to represent your seller client? If you can’t do that (regardless of the listing approach you use), it would be unethical to offer your services to this client in the first place. In fact, you’d have a fiduciary obligation to recommend your fellow agent, Mr. or Ms. So-and-So, as the best agent to help him.

So how do you go about creating in yourself the best agent to represent your client? You need to do your homework! You need to study your market. You need to know the market statistics. You need to have clearcut marketing strategies. You need to have a specific marketing plan that will yield results superior to those of the competition. Otherwise, you’ll have nothing to offer your client! Does what I’m saying make any sense to you? Why should your client list his most valuable asset with you if you don’t know what you’re doing? Would you list with yourself? And if your answer to my last question isn’t a resounding “Yes!” – Then you need to become that ideal agent before you read another word in this book. Prior to listing the first house, I knew our market statistics cold. I pulled the raw data from our local MLS and crunched the numbers. Was it fun? Of course not! Nevertheless, I needed to know what I was talking about. Trust me about this: your client will recognize whether or not you know what you’re talking about. If you’re bluffing, he’ll sense it. You can’t “fake the funk,” as they say. I wish I could tell you how many

times a listing client has quoted an agent on something that I’ve known to be incorrect. Because I was completely familiar with my market, though, I would be able to explain that the agent, while very likely a nice person, had his facts wrong. Then I would lay the statistics on the client, and it was quite obvious to both of us that I knew what I was doing. Here’s the basic market data you need to know before you go to your first listing appointment: 1) Days on Market (DOM). Average days on market is critical to your seller client for several reasons. It’s important in setting realistic expectations about the time needed to sell a home. It will help you evaluate any offer that comes in and make an educated decision about whether the client should wait for another offer or take what’s on the table. And, if you know the DOM for your market (or, better yet, for the client’s neighborhood), you’ll be able to guide him or her through the process like a professional – which is exactly what you are! There’s a problem with DOM statistics, however. Most

MLS databases have a much-manipulated DOM number which is invariably skewed low. So how can you know what the real number is? Is it possible to determine the actual DOM for your market even if you’re not a rocket scientist? Absolutely! Just use the absorption rate to calculate the true DOM for your area. Let me explain. Here’s how you get the real DOM. Find out how many homes sold in your market last year and how many are currently on the market. For example, if 10,000 homes sold last year, and there are currently 5000 on the market, what those numbers indicate is that the inventory turned twice last year (10,000⁄5000 = 2.0). Now, there are twelve months in a year, and 12⁄2.0 = 6.0, which is the absorption rate, meaning that the average time actually on market is 6.0 months. So to convert the absorption rate to days on market, you simply multiply this last number by 30 (6.0 x 30 = 180). And if you figure DOM this way, you’ll eliminate all manipulation in your market by builders and agents who re-list stigmatized homes, which of course are those homes that have picked up a negative image due to their excessive time on market.

2) DOM Standard Deviation (STDEV). What?! By now you’re thinking, “Matt Jones has lost his mind!” Before you dismiss this concept (and me) as crazy, though, let me assure you that it will be an easy statistic to calculate and a powerful advantage for you once you know it. So how do you calculate it? The easiest way to calculate DOM STDEV is by using a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel. On your computer, pull up all the closed residential properties for your community from the last year. You’ll want to pull them up in your MLS, using a one-liner format. Then copy and paste that data onto a spreadsheet. Next you’ll want to delete all but three of the columns: list price, sale price, and DOM. At the bottom of each of these columns, calculate the average and the standard deviation. If you’re using Excel, the functions will look like this: =average(b1:b20000) and =stdev(b1:b20000). Both of these examples assume that you’re calculating the average and the standard deviation for column B and that there are numbers in

the rows from 1 through 20,000. Now repeat this for each column. Okay, let’s look at another example. Let’s assume that (according to your calculation of the absorption method) the true DOM is 186 days. Let’s also assume that the standard deviation of the DOM is 53 days. Now comes the fun part! Add one standard deviation (53 days) to your average of 186, and you have 239 days. Add another standard deviation, and you have 292. Here’s what those numbers mean for your listing client. You have a 50% chance of selling his home in the average DOM. If you add one standard deviation, you take the probabilities to 84%, and if you add another standard deviation, it’s 93%. Another standard deviation would elevate the probabilities to 96%, then to 98%, and so on. Now let’s say that a competing REALTOR® tries to convince your client that his home can sell in a matter of days and that he should list for ninety days. You can tell your client with complete certainty that the statistical probability of selling his home in a few days is nil, and that in reality he should expect the pro-

cess to take the average amount of time plus at least one standard deviation. Using the illustration above, you should inform him that he has a 93% probability of selling his home in 292 days, using the typical approach. If that’s how long, statistically, it’ll take to sell his house, then listing it for ninety days will clearly be a waste of everyone’s time. Now, your immediate reaction may be that your clients will never go for this system – yet they will! In all but one of my listings I received one-year terms, and in the remaining listing I got a six-month term, knowing that I would sell the house even sooner. When you tell a client, with authority, how long it will take to sell his home, he’ll inevitably respect your honesty and the fact that you know exactly what it takes to sell a home in your market. You’re not guessing, like most agents; and, in fact, you’re speaking with the voice of authority. Knowing your market better than any other agent will impress your clients while also giving your own confidence level a boost. 3) Average Markdown (List-to-Sale Ratio). Now let’s go back to the statistics that we worked on ear-

lier. Remember my asking you to calculate the average for list price and sale price? Here’s the reason: you need to be able to advise your client as to the “typical” discount in your market. Let’s assume that the average listing price is $175,000, and the average sale price is $169,000. Now, subtract the average sale price from the average listing price, and then divide the difference by the average listing price.

$175,000 - $169,000 = $6000



$6000 ⁄ $175,000 = 0.034, or 3.4% markdown

In other words, your client should understand that it’s normal in your market to expect a markdown (or discount) of 3.4% from the listing price. Setting expectations shows him that you understand the market and that you’ll help prepare him for the offers that will be coming in. You’ll also have an advantage in negotiating with other agents when you know that the average markdown in a certain neighborhood is only 0.5%, while they’re offering 4% below the asking price! You can tell an agent that it’s unreasonable to expect your client to accept such a figure and that he should encour-

age his client to make a more reasonable offer. I can’t tell you how many times this simple formula has made thousands of dollars for my clients because I knew the market statistics, and the other agents didn’t. 4) Buyers in the Current Market (Buying Climate). Let's always remember what the seller is actually looking for: to net the most money at closing and to sell the home in the shortest possible time. As a result, sellers are acutely interested in how many buyers you’re in touch with. In fact, when I would tell a seller that I didn't personally work with buyers, there would be a perceivable concern in his mind until I’d quickly point out that I had a team of buyer’s agents who worked with all of my hundreds of buyer customers. Then I’d go on to demonstrate that I was very much in touch with the buying climate. Here’s how I’d do it. I kept statistical information on how many new buyer leads we generated each week. And since the average home search lasts eight weeks, according to the NAR, it was easy to tell approximately how many buyers we were working with at any given time. In fact, I would simply add up the number of buyers from the last eight

weeks, and that total would equal the number of buyers we were currently working with. I want you to imagine what the reaction of a seller would’ve been when I told him that my team was working with 462 homebuyers in our local market and that I had the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of all of them! But if I hadn’t had my lead-capture gateway technology in place, I would’ve had only a fraction of those customers, and there would have been no simple way to track my leads. Here’s one more little trick for preparing your listing arsenal: I recommend printing out each lead as it arrives by email and then adding it to a homebuyers’ notebook that you keep on hand. In an upcoming chapter I’ll show you how this notebook can become a very powerful listing tool and how you can use it to cinch the listing. Okay, let's talk about credibility.

Chapter 13 The Credibility Factor

Let me give you one example of how this statistical knowledge can influence your credibility. Imagine a client with a nice home worth roughly $500,000, and now imagine you going up against the top listing agent in your market. How do you feel? Are you nervous? This guy has lots of signs all over the area. Who are you? Just some new agent without many listings? Now imagine that this top dog is a typical agent who doesn’t know anything, really, about the local market. He’ll talk in generalities about how good he is at selling

homes and how quickly he expects to sell this one. But because you know the market data, you go into the listing presentation ready. For example, you may tell the seller that homes in his price tier have a DOM of 289 and that, with the standard deviation of 72, he has an 84% chance of selling the home within 361 days (basically a year). Furthermore, in order to have a 93% probability (9:1 odds in favor) of selling the home, he’ll need to wait 433 days – if he uses the traditional approach. So the agent promising to sell the house in only a few days is being dishonest or, at the least, confused (or overly optimistic!) because the probability of selling it in fewer than 145 days is under 7%. [If you’re having problems with the statistics, don’t hesitate to contact me, and I’ll be happy to help you. I can be reached at [email protected].] Then you begin to show this potential client a better way, a way that will more than double his chances of selling his home while netting him more money. Guess what? You’ve just landed a really nice listing. And why? Because you’re the best agent to sell it! And now that you’re the best, you can sell the listing with authority.

You’re the best, you know it, and now the client knows it too. Most importantly, you’ve got the listing!

Chapter 14 Summing It Up

I think you’ll agree that this is a lot of information to digest! So I recommend that you look through it a few more times until it makes perfect sense. It’s important that you master the basics before we build on them with the listing presentation. Why? Because the presentation requires that you be utterly confident in whatever approach you use. You need to become the best agent you can be. You owe this much to your clients, and you owe it to yourself. To summarize: we’ve learned that it’s ethical to list at a

premium (assuming that the listing will net your client more money while selling his home in less time), but we’ve also learned that it’s unethical not to use this approach if you know it’ll deliver better results (which it will). Your seller client is entitled to the best representation he can get. Let it be you! So how do you start off down the path toward becoming a great listing agent? First, you need to assemble the technology and the advertising to attract more inbound business than you can possibly handle. All that business will give you a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, which is a good thing because – believe me! – Customers know when you’re desperate. Next, you need to be the best agent for the job. You have to know your market numbers cold. Statistics can be mind-numbing, but the few simple statistics we’ve mentioned are absolutely worth learning. Again, imagine a bell curve. The center line of this curve is the average, or 50% probability. If you move to the right or left of the center line by one standard deviation, you cover the odds from 16% on the low end of

the center to 84% on the high end. A second standard deviation reveals a 7%-to-93% probability. The average markdown will assist you in building expectations for your client and for the other agents, and the process is much easier than it appears. In fact, it’s far easier than reading a HUD-1 or calculating interim interest! In the next chapter, we’ll discuss how to take this knowledge base and convert it into premium listings. You’ll be amazed when clients actually ask you to list their homes at 8% or even more! Not only can it happen; it will happen when you use this approach to selling houses. Do your homework! Learn your market numbers. In only a few hours you’ll have them nailed down. You can be the dominant listing agent in your market!

Section 5 "Building the Listing Presentation"

In the previous chapter, we talked about your becoming the best agent for the job. I mentioned the importance of learning your market statistics and told you exactly how to do that. I discussed how you could increase your credibility and power by arming yourself with some very specific knowledge. I’ll assume that you’re ready now to learn the actual listing presentation that made me one of the top listing agents in the country. I want you to notice that I haven’t referred to myself

as one of the smartest agents in the country because there are plenty of agents who are smarter than me. I haven’t claimed that I’m the hardest-working agent in the country because there are lots of hard-working agents. But I do maintain that I’m one of the top listing agents because there are very, very few agents who have listed as many homes in a single year as I have, and even fewer who have listed all of their homes for 8% or more. And there are fewer yet who have netted their clients 2.7% more money at closing while selling their homes twice as fast as most of the agents in their markets! So how do I do it? I use a unique system that I call “the traffic approach.” In a few minutes we’ll get into this approach to listing, but first we need to examine how I go about doing a CMA (comparative market analysis).

Chapter 15 The Ultimate CMA

Anyone who knows numbers can tell you that, as a listing agent using the traditional method of doing a CMA, you can make the numbers say anything you want. Here’s what I mean. With the traditional CMA method, the agent selects three recently-sold properties that closely represent the subject home (or the home being valued). In most markets, it’s easy to find three properties that sold high, three that sold average, and three that sold low and still have many other comparables from which to choose.

What many agents do (and what they teach) is to use the least expensive set of comps for the CMA. This method makes a case for listing the home as inexpensively as possible and allows it to sell quickly. However, there’s a fundamental problem with this method: as a seller’s agent, you should be getting your client the most money for his property, not co-conspiring in a giveaway. What I do in preparing a CMA is to take data from three sources: tax records (sale and assessment data), and both the closed and open comparable listings in the MLS. Let me explain. First I look at the tax records to determine what I feel to be the “adjusted” current value of the home. For example, if it sold three years ago for $150,000, and there’ been an appreciation rate in that area of 12%14% per year, I calculate the appreciation (3 x 13% = 39%, or $58,500), and then I add that figure to the original purchase price. If the home hasn’t been on the market for a long time, I’ll use the most recent assessment value and adjust it the same way. Certainly this particular method is rather subjective, but an experi-

enced agent who knows his market can get close to a realistic number by using it. However, this is only one part of my valuation. Next I pull up all the closed comparables in the area or subdivision, going back a reasonable period of time, and I can usually find between ten and twenty of these. (In extremely hot markets where homes appreciate at double-digit rates, you shouldn’t go back farther than a few months or so, in order to prevent the CMA from being skewed downward.) Don’t forget that the amenities and how nice a home looks will affect the curb appeal and saleability of the property but will have very little impact on appraised value, so it’s best to use as many comparables as possible. In selecting my comps, I use the subdivision, the square footage (with a range of plus or minus 10%), and the number of bedrooms and baths. I then calculate the average sale price of the group, eliminating any outliers up or down (e.g. homes that were foreclosures or distress sales). Finally, I pull up all the active comparable listings. Again, I use the subdivision, the square footage, and the number of bedrooms and baths, but your market

may be a little different in how the appraisers select comps. The point is to get as much data as possible! Now we put it all together. Take the adjusted value from the tax records, add the average price from the closed comps, and then add the average price from the active comps. Now take that number and divide by three, and you’ll have the true average value for the subject property. Write down this new number somewhere, add and subtract 5% from it, and you’ll have a “reasonable range” for the value of the home, which tends to be plus or minus 5% from the average. In most markets it’s reasonably easy to support a value within 5%; so, once the property sells, getting the appraisal shouldn’t be an issue. I know that this is an out-of-the-box way of doing a CMA, but it will absolutely stand any amount of scrutiny by clients, other agents, or – most importantly – appraisers. Moreover, using this method will protect you from accidentally over- or under-pricing a property. Most significantly, it will reinforce the fact that you’re a market authority and know what you’re talking about. If a seller client should be harboring a suspicion that

you’re trying to skew the numbers, his or her fears will quickly be allayed because you’ve considered every possible comparable in the current value of the home. Nothing except getting pre-appraisal could be fairer.

Chapter 16 Putting the pieces Together

Now let’s take the pieces and put them together into a “lethal” listing presentation. For quick review, what are the pieces? 1. Knowing your market statistics so that you’re truly the best person for the job. 2. Knowing the value of the subject property so that you can get the top dollar for your seller client. Beginning the process without laying this foundation simply won’t work. It’s absolutely critical that you go

through the first two steps before you learn the listing presentation, simply because the presentation builds on this foundation! Without a suitable foundation on solid ground, you’ll be building your presentation on quicksand and won’t be able to list properties using my unique method. Why? Because you won’t have the most important element of any sale: the believability factor. This approach is counter-intuitive, and, as such, it demands that you have credibility. If you don’t have credibility, the listing approach will never sell because you’re asking the client to place his faith in an approach that, in all likelihood, he’s never heard of before.

Chapter 17 Only Two Ways to Sell Any House There are more than 1.1 million REALTORS® in America, so I guess you could say that there are 1.1 million ways to sell a house. But the truth is that there are really only two ways to sell a house: you can sell it by price, or you can sell it by traffic. Every other sales method is a subsidiary of one of these two. Now we’ll explore the two different approaches at length and then discuss how they differ and how one of them will yield far better results for your client while making you more money. The Traditional, or Price, Approach. I’ve read dozens

of books – probably hundreds of books – on the subject of real estate. Many of these books speak of the importance of listing real estate, and all of them describe nearly identical listing approaches, with only slight differences. Now, the reason for all this sameness is obvious: it’s the way listings have been done since the beginning of real estate. It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” thing. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s broke! If you expect to make a lot of money in real estate, you need to determine what everybody else is doing and then do the opposite. Okay, here’s the basic formula for the “traditional” or “price” approach. As you’ll recall, we’ve already talked about building a CMA, or comparative market analysis, for your client. The traditional approach teaches us to find the “reasonable range” of value and then try to list the property on the low end of that range. If the home doesn’t sell within a month or so, we’re all taught to...what? You got it! To ask for a reduction in price. Then if the property still doesn’t sell, we lower the price again, and again, and again, until eventually we find a buyer for the place. Think about it: we’re

selling the house by price. We’re using the price as our marketing tool. That’s why we continue to lower the price, or wait for appreciation in the market to lower the price for us, until the house eventually sells. One of the reasons that this approach works well for the agent is that it places the entire burden of selling the home on the seller! Another reason for using the traditional approach is that the agent doesn’t have to spend a lot of money marketing the house. He doesn’t have to spend a lot of time or effort devising a marketing plan or promoting the property because the price is doing the selling for him. There’s no doubt that this approach will work, of course: it’s been working for decades with good and bad agents alike. However, there are a few drawbacks to the traditional approach that are seldom mentioned. First and foremost is the agency issue. It’s your job as the listing agent to represent the seller’s interests, which include getting the absolute top dollar for the property. However, most agents don’t get top dollar when they use this approach, and the reason is as simple as supply-and-demand. When there are fewer buy-

ers competing for a home, the sale price may need to be discounted substantially in order to attract interest. In economics-speak, “with a fixed supply and a scarce demand (i.e. fewer buyers), prices drop.” Another drawback to using this approach is lack of speed: several months may pass before the traditional approach begins to have an effect. In the process, the home often becomes stigmatized. After several reductions, it’s not even shown to potential buyers any more because it’s been on the market “too long” and is now assumed to have something wrong with it. And if the agent starts the process too high and then reduces the price too slowly, the home becomes difficult to sell at any price. Many times, listing agents unwittingly become de-facto buyer sub-agents; and even though I don’t know a single listing agent who would intentionally sell out his client, it’s far too easy, with the traditional listing approach, to help the buyer rather than the seller. And, yes, I realize that my judgment may sound harsh, but if you’ll honestly examine this method, you’ll have to agree that, very often, it doesn’t yield the best results

for the seller. The Traffic Approach. To understand the traffic approach, we need to turn our attention again to the “reasonable range.” Real estate is entirely different from liquid investments with absolute values. For instance, anybody can look up a share of stock and immediately see its current price. But because values are subjective in real estate, there tends to be about 10% flexibility in the price range. Consider a home that’s valued at $100,000. It’s not worth exactly $100,000! It’s really worth between $95,000 and $105,000. If the price drops below $95,000, nearly everyone will agree that the house is a good deal; and if the price goes above $105,000, nearly everyone will agree that the property is priced a little too high. However, within the “reasonable range” there’s little price resistance. So here’s how the traffic approach works. Instead of listing the home at the low end of the range, you raise its price to the high end. The problem? Now there’s no compelling reason for anyone to show it or buy it! Okay, here’s the secret weapon: you raise the commis-

sion by 2%! What you’re doing, effectively, is “bribing” agents to include your listing on their show lists. What I do is raise my commission from 6% to 8%, and then I raise the price about 10%. The client then nets about 8% more money before any negotiations! Sometimes, though not often, the appraisal knocks the price down a bit. When that happens, it’s usually a minor adjustment, and then the seller has the option of lowering the price to match the appraisal – or else the deal, as written, falls apart. The buyer also has the option of paying, out of pocket, the shortfall in the appraisal or of canceling the deal, if there’s an appraisal contingency. When that happens, the client knows that he got the absolute top dollar for his home. Now, I know that almost any REALTOR® will immediately say, “I never look at the commission when I’m working for a buyer.” But I don’t believe that noblesounding claim because statistics clearly indicate that it’s not true. I don’t know any agent who would willfully sell a buyer client a home that wasn’t right for him; but if there are sixty homes in the market that generally match the client’s criteria, and if three of those homes

pay higher commissions than the rest, it’s certainly not unethical to make sure that those three properties end up on every show list. In addition, there’s nothing wrong with hoping that your client chooses to buy one of the three. If he doesn’t, no big deal; but if he does, you just got a big bonus! One of the questions I’m often asked is why I don’t just offer a bonus to the selling agent. Once again, the answer is simple. Every buyer’s agent knows that, if he doesn’t present a full offer, the first money to come off the table will be the selling bonus. Since most homes don’t sell for full offers, of course, the selling bonus doesn’t happen very often, so the buyer’s agent can find himself torn between not getting the bonus and not representing his client. If he advises his client to offer less than the listing price, he knows that his bonus is most likely gone. On the other hand, if he encourages the buyer to pay the listing price, he’s probably not fully representing the buyer’s interests. For that reason, the selling bonus is often a disincentive rather than a legitimate incentive. And now you have the theory behind my listing approach!

So What’s Next? In the next section, we’ll be discussing the presentation itself, and I believe you’ll find it to be the most powerful listing presentation you’ve ever seen!

Section 6 "The Actual Listing Presentation"

In the previous chapters of this book we focused on how to gather an unending supply of listing leads. We discussed becoming the best agent for the job. We mentioned the necessity of learning market statistics, and how and where to find them. We discussed how you can increase your credibility and power by arming yourself with this basic and relevant knowledge. Then we determined the best way to build an accurate CMA, or comparative market analysis, and we touched on the theory behind my listing presentation. If you’ve been studying all this information, you know how and why

the presentation works. Now, in this sixth chapter, I‘ll show you how to present my listing plan to a seller client. I ask you to read it with pen or highlighter in hand, and to take notes. You should expect to review the material again and again until it has been fully absorbed. And if you do, I promise that you too will be listing properties at 8% or more – every time!

Chapter 18 What to Say and How to Say It I want you to pretend that you’re the listing agent in this story. It may not be a true story for you yet, but it could be. It’s worked for me countless times. Imagine that it’s a Thursday morning. You’ve just come into the office and noticed a CMA request that arrived from your website overnight. Along with it, so did eight buyer leads. If you’re like most agents, that kind of good news doesn’t happen often; but, in my case, not a day goes by that I don’t receive one or two CMA requests from potential sellers and fifteen to twenty buyer leads – and all because of the technology that I use to capture

traffic from my website. But once again I’m getting sidetracked. We’ve already talked about the lead capture gateway and how it’s a critical piece of your arsenal for generating an endless supply of listing and buyer leads. For now, let’s stick with the listing presentation.

Okay. So it’s Thursday morning, and you have a new CMA request in your inbox. The first things you do are to pull up the tax value and print out the tax sheet, which will tell you a lot about the subject property. Using the tax records and the appreciation rates for that area or subdivision, you determine the approximate value of the home. Next you log into your MLS database and pull up all the closed comparables for the seller’s subdivision, with the approximate size and number of bedrooms and baths. There are twenty-one comparables to use but only one obvious distressed sale, so you eliminate that one from the average. After finding an average for the other twenty, you print out the comps in a one-liner

format and then note the “average” price on the page. Next you pull up all the active comparables listed in the MLS (three, in this case), average them, print out the query, and write down the average price. Now add the three prices that you’ve written down, and divide by three. This is the mid-point of your “reasonable” range. Multiply it by 5%, and add that amount to the mid-point to determine the high end of your reasonable range. Then subtract 5% from the mid-point to give you the low end of the range. In a matter of minutes, you’ve completed a very thorough CMA that’s beyond scrutiny. That’s a good first step. So now you call the seller and thank him for visiting your website. You tell him that you’ve received his home-valuation request and that you’re in the process of compiling data to determine the home’s value. I generally tell the seller that I’ve seen nice homes and bad homes, as well as some in the middle, and I’d like to know what his home is really like. I ask him to pretend that I’m Stevie Wonder and to give me a verbal tour of the place, since I’m not actually there to view it.

I allow him to take me from room to room, all the while asking him for specifics about the home’s curb appeal and other possible attractions. After touring the house, we next “go” outside, where I have him talk me through the yard, the exterior paint, the roof, the overall condition, the immediate neighbors’ homes, and the landscaping.

Then I generally say something like, “Gosh, that sounds like a really nice house! Why on earth would you want to sell it?” The response I get is very important because it can provide me with the seller’s motivation and, often, his time frame. Trying to determine whether or not the seller has a realistic grasp of the value, I then ask him if he has any idea what price should go on the house. Sometimes sellers aren’t completely practical about these things (I bet you already knew that!), but generally they are. And if a seller isn’t a realist, he will likely believe that his home is worth much more than the initial CMA would indicate. So then I proceed with something like this: “Wow! You must have a really nice house. I’m looking

at every single home that’s been sold in your neighborhood during the past year, and I’m not seeing anything within $15,000 of that price. Can you help me understand what features your home has that make it stand out so much?” Many times he’ll tell me that the house down the street sold for that much even though it isn’t nearly so nice as his. Generally, however, the seller down the street just didn’t want anyone to know that he had to sell his house for much less than he’d been asking. But now that you have the comps in your hand, you can tell the seller exactly what a house sold for, and sometimes that fact is all you need to introduce some reality into the situation. On the other hand, sometimes your potential client’s home is actually worth more than you would’ve expected, so you also need to be open to what he tells you. On those rare occasions, you should be prepared to tweak your CMA a little bit. Now that you know the seller’s motivation, his time frame, and his opinion of the property’s value (it could even be that he’s had a recent appraisal, which he’s now using to test you), you can tell him that you’ll complete

your research and then call him back with your valuation. Simply set up an appointment, and either call or visit in person.

Chapter 19 Taking Listings Over the Phone

Yes, you read it right! In fact, I’ve taken roughly 85% of all my listings over the phone! And you can do the same thing with this approach. Okay, so you have the listing appointment and the information you need going in: the value of the home, the seller’s motivation, his time frame, and his expectations. And besides having the CMA and the market data close at hand, you also have the home-buyer notebook we talked about in a previous chapter. (More on this in a moment.) Now it’s time to nail the presenta-

tion. Before we get into the actual interchange, though, let’s talk about what the seller is expecting – and what virtually every other agent is gearing up to give him. The seller’s expecting you to come in and tell him how great his house looks. He’s expecting you to tell him how terrific your company is (and it may be!). He’s expecting you to tell him how great an agent you are and how many zillion dollars’ worth of property you’ve sold. He’s expecting you to tell him his kids are cute. He’s expecting you to tell him he needs to fix this and that. He’s probably sold a house before, he’s already spoken with a REALTOR®, and/or he’s talked to friends who’ve been through the process. So let’s assume that he plans to interview several agents, as many sellers are doing nowadays. The single most powerful thing you can do is surprise him. Remember: you want to look at what everyone else is doing, and then do the exact opposite. What do I mean? Other agents will talk about themselves. You need to talk about the seller. Other agents will extol the virtues of their companies, and in nebulous terms they’ll explain how they plan to sell the house. You need

to talk about different strategies for selling the house and then show the seller exactly what the process will mean to him in terms of DOM and selling price. But back to the listing presentation. When you arrive at the home, quickly introduce yourself, and then tell the seller that you’re very sorry, but you don’t have a lot of time, and you want to make the most of what you do have. (He’ll be thrilled because he’s been expecting this ordeal to go on for hours!) Now, let’s hope you get lucky, and he says, “I’m talking to ‘Agent X,’ and he says he’ll list the house for 5%. How much do you charge?” At this point I’d tell the seller, without hesitation, “I try to get 100%” – and then I wouldn’t say a word. After about ten seconds (which feels like an eternity!) he’ll usually start laughing. Then I’ll politely say, “Regardless of what anyone may tell you, there are two parts of selling your home that are completely under your control: the commission and the selling price. And what price and what commission you choose will largely depend on the type of strategy you decide to use. Do you know what I mean by that?” (Invariably he’ll say no, which is perfect. What he’s just now done is set me up!)

“Mr. Seller, here’s what I mean. There are 1100 REALTORS in our market, and I guess what that translates to is that there are 1100 different ways to sell your house. But the truth is that all those different approaches really boil down to just two different strategies: you can sell your house by price, or you can sell it by traffic. Does that make sense?” (At this point, either he’ll say no, or he’ll guess wrong.) “Well, here’s what I mean. If you were to go to [name the biggest local bookstore] and find the real estate section, you could see lots of different books on how to be a top agent. And each of those books would teach you one single way of selling houses. It’s the ‘traditional’ approach, and nearly all the agents have used it for years. I call it ‘the price approach’ because it uses the price to sell your house. “And here’s what I mean by that. A house isn’t like a loaf of bread or a share of stock. You can’t go to the computer or call someone on the phone and get a price for it. The price on a house is much more subjective, and it’s somewhere within a ‘reasonable range.’ Let’s

say, for example, that some imaginary house is worth $100,000. It’s not actually worth $100,000, though; it’s worth between $95,000 and $105,000, depending on the motivations of the buyer and the seller. Now, if you attempt to sell for much over $105,000, everyone will agree that it’s too high. And, by the same token, if you drop the price below $95,000, everyone will agree that it’s a great deal. “The way we’ve all been taught – what all of us real estate agents have been taught – is to convince you, the seller, to list your house at the low end of that ‘reasonable range.’ That way, the price can be used to motivate a buyer to write an offer. If the home doesn’t sell in a month or so, we’re supposed to go back to you and ask you to reduce the price, telling you that the market has spoken and that your house must not be worth the original price. Then you agree to reduce the price, and we wait. In another month, if the house still doesn’t sell, we reduce the price again. Eventually, we’ll suck in some bottom-feeder who’ll be happy to ‘steal’ your house. “Now, there’s nothing wrong with this approach. It will

definitely sell your house, but it’s an expensive way to go about it.” This is when I generally pause for effect. Then I say, “But what I’d do if I were you is use another approach, or what I call ‘the traffic approach.’ If it were my house, we’d raise the price about 10%, to $105,000! And then we’d set aside about 2% to use as a ‘bribe.’ In other words, I’d raise the price 10% and the commission 2%. “But let me explain. If we were to look in the MLS right now, you’d find about 300 or so homes with more or less the same size, features, etc., as your house. Now, when an agent has a buyer customer who’s looking for that type of house, he’s not going to show all 300 of them. Instead, to keep his broker happy, he’ll probably show the client any homes listed by his company that happen to meet the criteria, but after that he’ll probably choose to show only a few others. “What this strategy will do is ensure that your home gets put on the show list. That’s all it’ll do…but it’s enough, and here’s why. I don’t know of any agent who’d try to talk his customer into buying a house that wasn’t right for him, simply to make a higher com-

mission. On the other hand, I also don’t know of any agent who wouldn’t hope for his client to choose the home that paid the best! REALTORS® are just regular people, and if they can make more money representing their clients without doing any extra work, you can bet they will. “Do you remember Field of Dreams? The famous line from that movie was, ‘If you build it, they will come.’ Well, in real estate, if you bribe them, they will come! The fact is that, in order for your home to stand out in a sea of other homes for sale, there must be something ‘outstanding’ about it. With the traditional approach, it’s the price that makes the house stand out – if not immediately, then eventually. But with the traffic approach, it’s the abnormally high commission. It’s really very simple.” Then I’d tell the seller that I’m equally comfortable using either approach (which I am), but I’d be less than honest if I claimed that the two methods had similar results. The fact is that, while using the traffic approach, we have historically sold our clients’ homes in about half the time and netted them more money in the process!

Chapter 20 Pulling Out the Secret Weapon

Next I tell the seller that, if he’s like most of my clients, he’ll want to know how I intend to market his property and what the current market conditions look like. I’ve had sellers tell me that they wanted to wait until spring (or some other time) to put their homes on the market because they’d been told that the market was slow at the moment, and few buyers were out shopping. I love it when this happens. I ask my seller if he has a computer handy. We go to

his computer, and we log onto the Internet. I then take him to my LCM (Lead Capture Module) gateway, and we go through the process of registering to see properties online. We receive our user name and password and log into the website to view the MLS, and then, just about the time we open the MLS (IDX link), I get a text message on my cell phone. I show the seller that my registration has come in within the past couple of seconds and explain that, if this were an ordinary inquiry, I would immediately call the shopper back and introduce myself, see if I could help him find what he was looking for, and offer to send him new listings by email. Next I would tell my seller that Internet customers want instant information, and, because of the technology I use, I can actually provide that help when the homeshopper needs it – right now! Then I pull out my secret weapon: my home-buyer notebook. In it I have the names of all the Internet customers who’ve come through my lead capture gateway in the past three months. Each customer’s name is neatly printed on a page by itself, complete with his email address, two phone numbers, price range and credit rating, the

amount of down payment he has available, and the amount of mortgage he’ll need. Each page is literally a resume for that buyer. It’s very impressive. Imagine the reaction of your listing client when you show him – when you actually put into his hands – the names and phone numbers of hundreds, maybe thousands, of home-buyers with whom your team is currently working. Your notebook is four inches thick, with page after page of real people who are actually looking for homes in your market! It’s easy to convince the seller that, while the process may be slow for some agents, it’s anything but slow for your team! How do you think your customer will react? I'll tell you how: he’ll stand there looking at your home-buyer notebook in disbelief, except for the fact that he just saw your system work! In his heart he knows it works, and he knows, instantly, that nobody can do a better job selling his home than you. All he says is, “Where do I sign?”

Chapter 21 Real-Life Examples

Finally, I’d tell the seller about some cases where I’ve used the traffic approach and gotten great results. Remember: Jesus taught in parables. Why? Because people love stories. A story can take the vaguest idea and make it imaginable by making it real. Here are a few of my favorite stories that I’ve used countless times in the past. Through my website, a client who was a licensed broker in Boone, North Carolina, approached me one day last year. His parents had passed away, and because of

his real estate experience, his siblings had chosen him to help sell the family home. So he called the largest company in the market, which happened to be Coldwell Banker, and listed the home for $64,900. Over the course of two years, Coldwell systematically reduced the price to $59,900. But even though it was a very nice little house, the seller hadn’t received a single offer on it during the course of the listing contracts. When I explained my idea to the broker, I could see the lights come on in his mind! As an agent, he intuitively knew that this approach would work, so at my suggestion we raised the price to $70,000 and the commission from 6% to 8%. (The co-op was half.) Well, within a month we’d received three offers! The first two we turned down, but the third was a full offer, and we accepted it. Still, we had one more hurdle to get past: the appraisal had to support the sale price. As it turned out, the appraisal came in short, and my client had to sell the home for $69,500 and do some minor repairs that amounted to less than $600 (and probably would’ve had to be done with any sale at any price). So after raising the price $10,100 and then paying an

extra $1390 (the 2% extra commission), my client netted $8210 more money and got the absolute top dollar for his childhood home. Even more importantly, we accomplished in under ninety days what he’d failed to do in two full years: we got offers and were able to command the maximum price because of the traffic generated by the higher commission. Was he happy? He was ecstatic! And so was I. Here’s another story you’ll love. Again, I had a client approach me through my website. (Are you noticing a trend here?) This fellow was very frustrated because he’d bought a brand new home, closed on it, and was having to make two house payments every month. He’d tried to sell the home FSBO; and although he’d shown it many times, no offers had materialized. Then he listed it with a local brokerage, but the home received no offers and had very few showings. After the listing expired, I went to see him and showed him my approach, and he decided to try it. We raised the price from $79,900 to $86,000, immediately had a surge of showing traffic, and, in exactly seven days, sold the home for the full price of $86,000. As in the previous example, we then anxiously waited for the appraisal,

but this time it went through without a hitch. To this day, my client thinks that I’m a genius and sends me business every chance he gets. So let’s do the math on this one: the additional commission cost him $1720, the additional price he was able to command was $6100, and his net benefit was $4380, or more than 5% extra money. Best of all, the house sold almost immediately! I could go on and on with these stories, but I’ll share just one more. This client was one of those know-itall people, but I approached him with both options, as I always do. His initial reaction was that he’d never heard of the traffic approach and was skeptical because he had a problem with the high commission. So we initially listed the home at 7% (let me remind you that we’re in a 6%-or-less market), and we waited. We had a slightly-better-than-average number of showings, but nothing outstanding and no offers for about four months. Eventually, though, the client became frustrated (not a new thing to many of you listing agents, I’m sure!) and called me to ask what I thought he should do. He was in a hurry to sell the home and had a lot of

equity in it, so he’d listed it for $146,000. I asked him if he remembered what I’d suggested when he’d first listed the house, and he said, “Not really.” Then I suggested that we raise the price to $156,000 and the commission to 8%. He’d been considering reducing the price and was naturally stunned when I told him to raise it. Well, we closed not long afterward! He was very thankful for my getting him top dollar, and I can promise you that he’ll never sell another home the same old way. Quickly looking at the math, you can see that we raised the commission 1%, or $1560, and we commanded $10,000 more for the home and sold it almost immediately. Now, did I do anything differently in any of those cases? Absolutely not! I advertise all of my listings exactly the same ways and show no preferential treatment, regardless of price, commission rate, or pressure from the client. What sold those homes and many more just like them was the commission. But it gets even better! What’s the first thing we’re all taught to do when a home doesn’t sell? That’s right:

lower the price. But what I generally do is convince my client to raise the commission. We’ve raised the commission as high as 12% (!) to sell a home that otherwise would’ve sat vacant forever. It’s amazing what a lot of showing traffic will do for even the worst dog of a house. So there you have the listing presentation that’s made me one of the top listing agents in the country and earned my clients and me lots of money. And now that you have the “ammo,” in my next chapter I’m going to give you the “gun.” So What’s Next? In the next section, we’ll help you pull it all together so that you can become the dominant listing agent in your market! We’ll give you the strategy to assemble the technology component, the advertising and marketing component, the preparation component, and the listing presentation in such a powerful way that you’ll be virtually impossible to beat."Putting the Pieces Together”

Section Seven Putting the Pieces Together

In the previous chapters we’ve discussed all the various elements or components of what I believe to be the best listing presentation you’ll find anywhere. I had determined to give you, not just the listing “pitch,” but rather the entire presentation – from the initial preparations you must make, to the underlying theory, to the preparation required to become the top listing agent, to my actual presentation itself: the actual what-to-say and how-to-say-it. In this chapter I’ll help you assemble all the pieces. I

admit that I’ve given you a lot of information to chew on already, but don’t feel overwhelmed. Not a day goes by that we don't receive at least three or four emails from agents asking us to explain some of the math or to discuss how my approach might work in their markets. In fact, I hear those questions a lot! Just remember: nothing worth having is easy to get. Now, if this listing approach were really easy to learn, everyone would be doing it. However, it’s not. While the concept itself is the very picture of simplicity, pulling it all together takes a commitment from you the agent – a commitment that’s probably unlike anything you’ve ever been taught. But again I promise you that, if you’ll take the time to do it right, you’ll be listing at a premium every time. And you'll be the top listing agent in your market – maybe even in your state! My approach really comes down to two parts: the technology element (assembling the right tools) and the human element (having the knowledge and the philosophical base). If you’ve got the technology element, yet lack the knowledge and underlying values, you won’t become a master listing agent. By the same

token, if you have all the education in the world, yet fail to acquire the technology tools critical to compete in this new age of real estate, you’ll never become the dominant agent in your market, and you even may find yourself struggling to survive. Becoming a master listing agent requires balance.

Chapter 22 The Technology Element

In the first two chapters of this book, we discussed how the Internet is rapidly becoming the predominant method for home searches today. Beginning with only a small percentage just a few years ago, today’s Internet is the primary source for as many as 92% of all real estate searches. Now more than ever, it’s critical for any agent to develop a comprehensive web-marketing strategy. After all, if the Internet is where customers are looking for real estate, then the web should be where you focus your marketing efforts.

To develop a comprehensive Internet marketing strategy, it’s not necessary for you to spend a lot of money. Instead, you need to invest in the proper pieces. Many agents adopt a marketing policy of “ready, fire, aim,” rather than “ready, aim, fire,” and the result is complete frustration. Frustration from spending too much money and receiving little, if any, return on your investment. Frustration from wasting time trying to do what all the “experts” advise, only to realize too late that those so-called experts haven't got a clue about online marketing. Frustration from making a goodfaith investment of time and money, only to be disappointed yet again. For less than the cost of running an ad in a homes magazine for a single month, you can create a marketing solution that will return as many as 100 new inbound real estate customers! (For most agents, that same money spent on a magazine ad will return 8-10 leads.) Even better – by using technology to capture the leads, not only do you get more information, but also that information is inserted into your database, and follow-up is a snap.

Using our LCM™ Gateway, our typical agent partner spends only about $120 per month for his technology. That small amount buys him his lead-capture gateway technology, and we give him a website and an integrated customer database (the very same ones that my own real estate team uses), at no additional cost. Once the technology’s in place, our average agent spends roughly $250 for advertising. That's all! The result is an average of 92 leads, nationwide, for a marketing cost of only $2.71 per lead. And for that tiny investment, not only do our agent partners spend less money on marketing than their competition does, but also they generate more leads than they can personally respond to, allowing them the freedom to grow their businesses like never before. Imagine how it would be for your own business to gain twenty new leads every week – and each for less than the cost of a cup of Starbucks® coffee! Would that advantage change your business? Would it take the pressure off? Would it allow you to be a little choosier about which customers you’d work with? Would it give you enough breathing room to begin expanding your business? Could you see how the addition of a steady

inbound stream of customers would allow you to run your practice more like a business? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, you truly owe it to yourself to look into getting the right technology. State-of-the-art lead capture doesn’t have to cost a fortune. And good lead capture will set you up for being the top listing agent in your market because you’ll have more opportunities than anyone else. And that’s what it really comes down to: more opportunities.

Chapter 23 The Human Element

As I mentioned earlier, having the best technology in the world – having an endless supply of new inbound customers – won't help you at all if you don't have the basic skills needed to turn those opportunities into closed transactions. That's where the human element comes in. I believe that there are several fundamental things that a REALTOR® must have if he’s to become a master listing agent. Just as technology is crucial to success, so are these basic “human” factors. First let's talk about education. In this book I’ve given

you some very specific concepts to learn so that you can become the best agent for the job. Let's be honest here: most of us haven't done a lot of studying since we left school, and the temptation is to try to get by without having to do the work. I know that. But that’s all the more reason to make yourself do it. Average agents won't do it – and you want to be a top agent! I'm going to make a confession: I don't really like to study either, but that’s what gives me an advantage. My peers never crack a book, while I read about two books a week. Do I do it because I like to read? No! I do it because I need to continue to push myself to become all that I can become. If I’m to be the top listing agent in my market – if I really want to be the best – then I have to make myself follow through with those things that I don't necessarily want to do. Remember how your mom used to make you eat spinach? Well, I say eat your spinach! It’s a hassle to do the market research required to become a top agent, but this is your career that we’re talking about. I promise you that there are agents calling me every day asking for help because they really

want to go to the next level. Those who put in the work will invariably succeed. Those who don’t, won’t. They won't become top agents. It's as simple as that. Winners make it happen, and losers make excuses. Do you really want this? If you do, I’m absolutely convinced that you can achieve it. The other key human factor is your personal philosophy, or governing values. It’s not my desire to be preachy here, but I believe that out of our inner selves flow the issues of life. We influence our successes or failures by how we bring ourselves to the process. And I believe that the value systems we use to govern our businesses have a direct impact on the outcomes of our lives. And I believe that there are a number of principles we can follow in order to ensure success. 1) The Principle of Vision. The most important principle, in my opinion, is vision – the ability to see that which is not, as if it were. I believe that we’re made in the image of a creative God and, as such, are inherently creative by nature. And it’s that creativity which gives us the opportunity to build something truly phenomenal. Most of us don't take the time to allow a clear vi-

sion to be formed in our hearts. But the more detailed our vision, the greater our chances of achieving it. The Scriptures teach us that, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Allow yourself to develop a vision for what could be, and take the time to see it clearly in your mind's eye. 2) The Principle of Confession. Taking a vision and beginning to articulate it is the key to bringing it to reality. Just as God's instrument of action in creating the world was “speaking” (i.e. God said, “Let there be light”), the way that we transfer vision to reality is by speaking it. I never miss an opportunity to share my vision with the people around me. Every time I get a chance, I articulate it to employees, agents, recruiting prospects, and peers. Why is confession so important? Because our subconscious minds believe what they hear. That’s another reason to be careful what you’re listening to: if there are negative people around you – people who tell you that you can't do something – you need to let them know that you don't want to hear their negativity. If you must, find someone else to spend time with! You alone control what your subconscious mind listens to, so make sure the message is good.

3) The Principle of Reciprocity, or Sowing and Reaping. We’ve all heard the old adage that “what goes around comes around.” It's true. Scripture teaches us that “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” In other words, give, and it will be given to you. This principle has two aspects: a) Quantity. To the degree that you give, you’ll also receive. In other words, “he that soweth sparingly will reap sparingly." The more you do to help others, though, the more your kindness and generosity will come back to you. Giving abundantly is the key to success. I know lots of agents who never volunteer at their local Association, who never take the time to help a new agent, who never help those in need. What a shame. b) Kind. You’ll reap in kind with your sowing. If you plant apples, don't expect to grow bananas. If you want to reap success, you need to sow success for those around you. If you’d like to receive happiness, then make sure that you don't sow seeds of “ugliness” for others. Whatever seeds you plant will ultimately come up, so make sure you’re planting the right seeds.

4) The Principle of Greatness. If we want to be great, we must be servants. The way up is down. Of course, this notion is contrary to traditional wisdom, which teaches us that, if we want to get ahead, we must disparage our competition. I marvel at the crab-bucket mentality that so many agents have. Many would rather pull someone else down than learn from their competitors. How tragic! If you want to be great, serve those around you. 5) The Principle of Leverage. Two heads are better than one. You can create leverage through synergy, and team building is a fine example of this principle. By enlisting others, we can build something much grander than ourselves – a whole that’s bigger than the sum of our parts. Don't be afraid to work with other people: often they’re the key to going to the next level. 6) The Principle of Stewardship. If we’re faithful in the little things, we’ll be entrusted with bigger things. However, if we waste the resources that we’ve been given, we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves lacking the resources that we need when opportunities come our way. I know many agents who have all the “toys,” own huge houses, drive the most prestigious cars, yet

live from deal to deal. Again, what a tragedy! 7) The Principle of Responsibility. From those to whom much has been given, much will be required. God holds us accountable for that which He has entrusted to us. If you’ve been given success, you have the responsibility to use it wisely. This principle is related to the Principle of Stewardship, but different: one is the flip side of the other. Stewardship is the key to getting success; responsibility is the burden of that success. 8) The Principle of Perseverance. We must endure trials and hardships in order to succeed. Like it or not, there’s a refinement of character that comes from perseverance. Show me someone successful, and I’ll show you someone who’s gone through many personal trials. And when those trials come your way, learn to see them as opportunities to persevere. I know that, in my life, nearly every time I’ve decided a situation was so bad that I couldn’t possibly endure it, I’ve held on anyway. And invariably the solution to my problem has appeared immediately after I was the most tempted to give up.

9) The Principle of Thankfulness. Nothing is less attractive than a whiner and a griper. Nobody wants to be around that kind of person. Well, thankfulness is attractive. Of course, when everything is going well for you, being thankful is easy! But if you should find yourself in a tight spot (and you will), determine to be thankful anyway. Lack + thankfulness = sufficiency. I believe this mechanism demonstrates to God that we truly trust Him. If we’re thankful, regardless of the situation, we attract other people to come along and help us. 10) The Principle of Rest. The more talented you are, the more you’ll be tempted to force things. And while forcing an issue often provides a solution, it’s rarely the best solution. If you feel pressured to make a decision, don't make one. Bite your tongue and say, “No, thanks.” Often the best action is no action: just wait patiently for the right solution to emerge from the quietness. So there you have the entire listing presentation that made me one of the top listing agents in the country and earned my clients and me lots of money. Now you have the big picture, from the technology tools to the

actual presentation to the underlying philosophy that’s been responsible for my success. I hope you can see that this presentation isn’t simply a sales tool to memorize. I hope you can see that it’s a way of doing business – and of improving business. And I hope that you’ll try it. Over the last few years, we’ve had hundreds of agent partners who’ve decided that my approach could provide a missing ingredient in their practices. Many have gone on to grow as fast as I did – even faster! Some of them have grown so fast, in fact, that they’ve had to recruit additional agents for their teams. Some have managed to grow their businesses even while taking time for other activities. But one thing is certain: every single agent who has tried to grow with what we’ve taught him or her has experienced some degree of success. This approach works everywhere. So What’s Next? Well, now you have the secrets that allowed me to list 114 homes in a single year, all at 8% or more. Now you know exactly how I’ve grown from a single-agent practice to the owner of the largest brokerage in our market

– in under four years! It wasn't magic. It wasn't luck. I didn't do anything that you can't do if you decide you want to do it. The ball’s in your court. Will you decide to go for it? I hope you will.

THE ULTIMATE LISTING PRESENTATION: Part 2

Chapter 24 Transcript of the Listing Interview

Before you read this, let me warn you: Chapter 24 is a raw transcript of an interview I did with Gary Elwood of Proquest Technologies and a panel of industry leaders from across the country. This panel discussion, which was recorded in December 2003 at a technology leadership summit hosted in St. Louis by Proquest, is an uncensored, detailed look into my listing presentation. The format is live and unrehearsed (and unpolished), but it will help you learn how to list for a premium every time.

First let me set the stage. Imagine that you’re a relatively new agent who’s been invited to take part in a technology leadership summit. When you arrive at the conference room, there are four long tables set up in a big square. On each side of the square are four or five industry names -- owners of large brokerages, mortgage companies, multiple franchises or mortgage companies, or major real estate top producers. (One topproducing agent had done fifty-five million dollars in production that year with a team of only three agents!) Now imagine that you’ve been in real estate a total of one and a half years, while most of the other attendees have been in the business for more than ten years -some, more than twenty. Would you be intimidated? I can assure you that I was. Now imagine that the first session opens with a few preliminary remarks, and then the host, Gary Elwood, begins going around the tables, asking each person, in succession, to introduce himself and tell the group a bit about his business and experience. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, the introductions were directed in such a way as to leave me the last to speak. Well, obviously, there were several tough acts to follow, and I felt

absolutely insignificant! For a half hour the introductions continued around the room, each person speaking for about two or three minutes. Finally, though, it was my turn. And then, much to my amazement, it happened... Gary pointed to me and said, “This is Matt Jones, and he has been in real estate for only about a year and a half. But I was very impressed with him because in the last year he’s listed 114 homes.” (At this point the room became deathly quiet.) “And what makes it more interesting is that on every single listing he took, he managed to get 8% commission or more.” (Everyone in the room was wide-eyed.) “But what I thought was really amazing,” Gary continued, “was that Matt took over ninety of those listings over the phone!” (There was a giant sucking sound in the room while everyone gasped for breath.) “So I thought it would be a good idea if I asked him to share with us his listing presentation -you know, if we ‘role-played’ the listing presentation right here in front of everyone and let all of you see exactly how he does it.” I was terrified. I’d had no idea that he was planning

this! (With friends like Gary, who needs enemies?) So what could I do? Well, I just went for it. And what you’re about to read is the actual transcript, recorded on a pocket memo recorder and then transcribed by an employee of Proquest Technologies and sent to me in extremely rough form, to be edited prior to release in the Proquest newsletter, In the Zone, in February 2004. I hope you like it.

The Interview My Listing Presentation

Gary Elwood: What do you say, Matt? Let’s role-play your listing presentation. Matt Jones: Okay, but first let me give you guys some background. I’ve been in real estate only about seventeen months, but, if you think about it, I must’ve done a few things right when I started. I had a business plan. While I was in licensing school, I read every book that I could find about how to sell houses, how to build a real estate practice, and all the ones that you guys have seen. So I had a business plan because it seemed to me

that it would make a lot more sense to “own the car lot than to sell the cars.” So I knew I wanted to list. Plus, I don’t have the patience to deal with buyers. So I really wanted – and let’s heavily emphasize that! – I really wanted to be the top listing agent in town. I had all these goals when I started, and I did all the normal stuff. I started with my circle of influence. The first thing I did was to build a database with it. And I worked that system and did consistent prospecting within my circle of influence. Then the experts say that you should work a farm of about 500 homes. I said, well, then – I’ll find 1500. So I found the area I wanted to list in town, and I basically staked that out. I got the tax records and put them all in my database and did mailings to them. I was doing all the stuff you’re supposed to do and handing out business cards by the truckload. I was volunteering for all the [floor] duty I could get. And everything was great about the business plan except for one

problem: I didn’t have any leads. Of course, something like that kind of shoots a business plan in the foot. So I got really desperate about four months into it because I’d set aside about six months of income. I said that I was going to make it, or not, in six months. I had started in June, so basically in June, July, August, and September, I worked nonstop and had essentially nothing to show for it. And I said, “I've got one huge problem, and it’s that I have no leads.” So I went on the Internet, and there were a thousand snake oil salesmen trying to sell me their systems: “This is going to give you leads” and “This is going to do that” and… Well, ultimately I decided to get a call-capture system and focus on that and on Internet lead capture. I found companies doing phone lead capture, but I couldn't find anyone who was doing Internet lead capture, so I ultimately developed my own. And when I focused on technology-based lead capture, it completely turned my business around. Soon I had more leads than I could handle, and I had to start recruiting a team to keep up. Since then it has never slowed down. I’ve done

the listings, and my buyer's agents have done the buyer-side business. Gary: Okay, Matt, how many houses have you listed this year? Matt: I’ve listed 114. Gary: 114 in one year! How many of those houses have you gone out to? Matt Jones: I probably went out to about twenty. Gary: So over ninety of them you’ve listed over the phone? Matt: Right. Gary [To the panel]: The first time he told me that, I was pretty astounded by the whole thing. I hadn’t really heard of anybody listing houses, let alone ninety houses, over the phone. [To Matt]: I’d like to dig into this and have you tell us how it all works. I mean, when you make your listing presentation, is it a one-call close?

When you get the lead on the phone, is it a done deal? Matt: No, not necessarily. There’s not any one magical way to do it because every customer is different. Gary: Okay. Matt: But there are some things that never change. Now, what I’m going to say may sound arrogant, and I don’t want it to – but I was talking to somebody, and he asked, “How can you charge 8%? How can you do it?” And I thought to myself, “If you can’t come to a place in your own mind where you’re the best person, if you can’t come to that place where you know you’re the best person to list a house, forget about the commission. If you‘re not there yet, you’ve got nothing to sell. Why should anybody list with you? I mean, if you don’t have the best thing to offer, how can you pitch it? And how can you pitch it with confidence?” So, you know, you need to get to that place first. I felt as if I had to get to a place where I would have something to offer that nobody else could offer. And I had to get there before I started anything else. So that’s fundamental, I think,

before you do anything. Gary: What would you peg as your greatest competitive advantage? Matt: Hmmm…my greatest competitive advantage? Gary: Why are you the best person to list a house? Matt: Because I’m going to get the owners more money, net, and I’m going to sell their house in less time. Really, sellers care about three things: first, they care about selling their houses in the least amount of time; second, they care about getting the most money; and third, they care about having the least amount of hassle. Maybe there’s some other new needs out there that I haven’t run across yet, but those are the ones I hear about every time. And with the traditional model, let’s assume that the first two are a given. It’s still going to lose on that third point, regardless, because it’s going to be a hassle. I mean, has anybody every gone to a listing appointment at 6:00 at night? You go there, and they all come storm-

ing through the door, and you’ve got an appointment, so you’re sitting there ready to do your presentation, and the kids are bouncing off the walls, they’ve not eaten, they’re screaming and fighting, the dog is barking, the TV’s blaring, the phone’s ringing, the house is a pigsty, and they’re embarrassed about the house and kind of a little bit ticked that you’re there because they’d really rather be doing anything else. Nobody’s had any dinner, and you’re supposed to come invade the house and spend an hour and a half going through your stupid little flip charts or your Power-Point presentation while telling the family how great you are and how many gazillion dollars you’ve done and why they need to list with you. That is not hassle-free. I mean, you start off on the wrong foot! So after a few of those sessions, I said, “There’s got to be a better way!” Gary: Okay. Well, take us through a typical dialogue with a seller. Matt: Well…. Gary: Let’s say I’m a seller, and you just got me as a lead, okay? Let’s say you just got the lead. What’s the

next step? Matt: Let’s say I’m doing an initial CMA. Gary: Okay. Do you do that before you even call the lead? Matt: Okay, the usual seller lead is going to come to me as a “what’s my house worth?” lead. That’s how a seller lead comes to me, almost without fail, unless it’s just saying, “I need to sell my house. Can you help me?” Gary: But what’s the first step you take with that lead? Matt: I’ll pull up the market data on the house. I’ll pull up the tax record, and I’ll basically get an idea of what the range is for that particular subdivision. Gary: Before you call the owners? Matt: Before I call them. Yeah. Absolutely. And then generally what I do is call them up and introduce myself. I introduce myself just by my name. I don’t introduce myself with a company name because I’ve found

that it comes off more as a pitch if you say, “I’m So and So with Such and Such Company.” I don’t need that “with Such and Such” to feel comfortable. I feel comfortable anyway. Gary: Okay. So you leave the company name out. “Hey, this is Matt Jones.” Matt: So I just say, “This is Matt Jones. You contacted me through my web site,” or “You called our hotline about the value of your house, and I was trying to touch base with you. Did I catch you at a bad time?” Okay. And most people are like… [To the panel members]: Has anybody read The Secret of QuestionBased Selling? Gary: Oh, they say, “No, no, it’s a fine time.” (Great book, by the way!) Matt: Right. Thanks. So I always ask the owner that, and then he usually gives me permission. But if he says, “Yeah, it’s a bad time,” then I say, “Well, what would be a good time? I certainly don’t want to interrupt you.” And then the next time I call, I’m invited.

Gary: But if he says, “No, it’s a fine time…” Matt: Well, then, the first thing I want to find out is if the information I’ve got is right. So I say, “Pretend I’m Stevie Wonder, and I can’t see your house. Give me an idea of what your house is like.” (Owners usually don’t remember what information they filled in anyway.) “Tell me about your house.” (Meanwhile, I have the MLS and their CMA open in front of me, and if I’ve got to tweak it or something, I can.) So the owner is telling me about his house, and I basically let him talk. And I let him give it to me for five minutes. I’m just kind of going, “Uh huh. Okay, yeah, okay.” At some point he starts feeling that – he begins to feel self-conscious because he’s doing all the talking. I want him to feel that way. And so then I ask him another open-ended question, something about the house, and let him do it again. At some point I want him to run out of gas. And then I say, “From what you’re telling me about the house, it sounds like a great property. Why in the world would

you want to sell it?” Gary: So you say, “Why in the world would you want to sell it? It sounds like a great house!” Okay? Matt: “Why would you want to sell?” Basically, my idea is to use open-ended questions because I want the owner to info-dump while I’m filling in blanks on my database. Again, I get all the information I can because, most of the time, if you let a person talk (which we salesmen don’t like to do because we’ve got to be in control), he’s going to tell you exactly what his hot buttons are. He’s going to tell you exactly how to sell him. He really is. And so he’s going to tell you, “Yeah, well, we listed it with it So and So,” or, “Well, the last agent we had – blah, blah, blah…” Just let your customers tell you everything. Gary: Okay, so keep drawing it out of him until he’s out of gas. Matt: Out of gas. Until he’s truly out of gas.

Gary: Okay. Matt: Okay, then I say, “Well, listen, I’ve got a lot of information about the house here on the computer…” And I maybe read back a couple of things to him to make sure I’ve got it right, and I’m starting to get into a dialogue with him. We’re both talking. Now, what I do for a CMA is – within a subdivision, there’ll be some relatively tight restrictive covenants, so unless it’s an old neighborhood (like sixty years old, back from when people just built whatever they wanted to build), pretty much all the houses are going to be more or less the same quality and basic construction type, with the same amenities and stuff. So I’ll find out what the square footage of the house is, and I’ll basically pull up everything that’s recently sold in the subdivision and everything that’s active in that subdivision in that same square footage range. Generally, I’ll have ten or fifteen properties or more, and then I’ll do a subtotal. (In my MLS you can choose a display and have it subtotal at the bottom.)

So that will give me an average number, and I’ll take the average and go up five percent and down five percent off that average, and then that’s my CMA range. You know, I found out early on that I could make a CMA say whatever I wanted, but if you’re going to be honest in the process, you really need to find out what the market’s saying about that area. Get the average, and then set a range – five percent up or down, or maybe less, depending on the price range of the house. So I get my range, and generally I ask the customer, “Just out of curiosity, what are you thinking in terms of the value of the house?” – because I want to find out beforehand if I’m going to be blowing him out of the water with my numbers. But most of the time he’s got a fairly good idea of what the house is worth. If he comes in a lot higher, though, I say, “Well, that’s interesting. Now let me bring up something else. I’m looking at all the homes that have sold recently in your area. You’re wanting $138,000.00 for your house, and I’m showing that nothing in your square footage, in the last five years anyway, has ever sold within

$10,000.00 of that amount. Help me understand what it is about your house that brings its value up because I need to find similar properties.” And we look for comps together. Ultimately, then, I say, “Well, it really comes down to a range of X dollars to Y dollars.” I don’t like to use round numbers because they don’t look as official. Even if the house’s value comes out to $120,000, I’m going to do $119,800. Okay? You don’t want a round number because it won’t seem legitimate. Then I say, “At what point within that range you can actually sell your house will depend largely on the approach you use. Does that make sense?” I want to get the customer’s head shaking, as in, “No, it doesn’t make sense.” “Well, you know, there are 1100 real estate agents in our market, so I guess you could say that there are 1100 different approaches to selling a house, right?” Now the customer’s head is nodding. “But when you boil it all down, there are really only two ways to sell a house, and everything falls into one of these two categories: you can sell a house by price, or you can sell it by traffic. Now, does that make sense?” Usually the answer is

no. I want the customer to ask me questions, though. I want to involve him so that he feels he’s taking part in a dialogue. I don’t want to be doing just an info dump on any of my prospects. So when I ask, “Does that make sense?” they usually say, “Well, no, not exactly.” Or I let them guess. And then whatever they guess, I say, “Well, that’s pretty much it, except…” because they’re generally wrong. I say, “You know, the bottom line is that house prices aren’t like stock prices. You can’t go on the computer and learn that a house is worth $43.38 today.” A house’s value is subjective. So it’s going to be worth somewhere in the range of, say, $110,000 to $120,000. Now, where are you going to price it? Basically, the traditional approach says that we go to the low end of the range; we go to $110,000, and we sell it by price. If it doesn’t sell in a month, though, we go back to the owner and ask him or her to reduce the price. So then the agent says, “We’re going to drop it to $109,000.” And the owner is saying, “Yeah...” And he may be reliving history. “And if that doesn’t work for you in another month, I’m going to come back to see

you, and guess what we’re going to do?” I want him involved. “Guess what we’re going to do?” “Uh…lower the price?” “Yeah, exactly! And so on and so on. We’re going to cut off your arm an inch at a time until eventually we suck in some bottom feeder.” And I’m using this kind of language to make the approach seem very unattractive. You know, “suck in some bottom feeder”… I’ve tested certain sound bites, and they work, so I use them. And “suck in some bottom feeder” translates to “Now, the traditional approach will sell your house, but, to be honest with you, I have to say that it’s a very expensive way to go.” “So what I’d recommend, and what I’ve been doing very successfully, would be to use a completely different approach. Basically what I would do, instead of pricing at $110,000, would be to go to the other end of the range and raise the price 10%. And then what I’d do would be to build into that price with a ‘bribe.’ We’d build into that price with an incentive to pay out to the

other agents.” (The bottom line is that price doesn’t sell houses: REALTORS® sell houses.) “So what we’re going to do is raise the price to the high end of that range, and we’re going to build into it an additional commission for the real estate agents. We’re going to give them an incentive to show your house! What we’re going to do is sell it by traffic.” Now, as you’ll notice, somewhere along the line I’ve started shifting into assumptive language. “We’re going to sell your house, and what we’re going to do is such-and-such because now we’re a partnership…” And what I’m saying is “This is what we’re going to do,” not “Will you please, maybe, if I cut my commission enough, let me interview for the job of possibly, please, maybe listing your house?” Gary: The best agent for the job doesn’t communicate that. Matt: Right. And then I do a classic take-away close. I say, “But the bottom line is that this approach may not be for you. I’m equally comfortable with either ap-

proach. We can use the traditional approach” – I’ve already handed the customer the number we’re going to use with the traditional approach – “or we could use the traffic approach. Whichever way is better for you.” I’ve also given him a choice of two yeses, not a choice between a yes and a no. This is my basic listing presentation. I have several sound bites that I weave into it, and one that really works well is “Have you ever seen that movie with Kevin Costner and the baseball game out in a corn field?” And my customer will say, “Oh, yeah. Field of Dreams. Everybody’s seen that movie.” “Well, do you remember the famous line in it? ‘If you build it, they will come.’” And he does remember it. They all remember that line. So I say, “Well, in real estate it works like this: if you bribe them, they will come!” And the customer always laughs. Another one I use is this: “Listen, some people have an ethical problem with the idea of ‘bribing’ agents. And I certainly don’t want to push something on you. I just know that, statistically speaking, this approach will sell

your home in half the time and net you more money. I’m equally comfortable with either, but the bottom line is that the two approaches don’t get the same results. So I can tell you that, if you use the traffic approach, your house is going to sell in 55% of the usual time on market, and it’s going to net you 2.7% more money after the additional bonus. It’s going to net you 2.7% more money! But remember, I’m comfortable with either method – whichever is best for you.” Gary: To derive your stats, did you use homes in the same zip code and with the same floor plan and same square footage? Matt: No, our broad market versus my personal stats. Panel member: So do you usually pull the MLS? Matt: Absolutely. Gary: Just for that specific area? This may be a little bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but… Matt: Okay, I’m going to give you a prime example

of how, if they’re not buying it, you can tell. Anyway – I had a client who was an “expert” in every field, including real estate. So I gave him the two different approaches. He had this dog of a house out in the middle of a bad subdivision. He’d bought it back when he was a lieutenant in the Army and hadn’t put a dime in it since. He’d been a slumlord for the past twenty years, though, and the house was about to fall down. It needed everything! And the owner asked me what we should do, and I told him that we should price it at $66,000.00 if we planned to use the traffic approach. But if we were to go with the traditional approach, we should price it at $60,000.00. And he decided to go with the traditional approach. No problem. So about four months went past, and the buyers stayed away in droves. I showed it every chance I got, but there aren’t a lot of buyers for a house like that. Anyway, he eventually called me up and asked me, “Listen, what do we need to do to sell the house?” I said, “Well, do you remember what I told you when we listed it?” He said, “Well, no. Refresh my memory.”

“I told you that I thought we should price it higher and that we should build in a bribe.” And people don’t mind my saying it that way because they like the fact that I’m actually straightforward about it. It’s not just “an additional incentive for the selling agent”; it’s a bribe! And we’re going to bribe agents to drag people to these houses. Panel member: Question. I’ve been sitting here thinking on this. So what I’m hearing, then, is that, maybe – on houses I’m having an especially hard time selling – I should go back to my customers and say, “Let’s bump up your house!” If we bumped up a house from, say, $200,000 to $202 or $203, we could increase the commission. Matt: Yes. I guarantee that we would sell the house. And here’s that perfect example. So my landlord customer asked me, “Should we re-carpet it? Should we repaint it?” And I said, “Well, you’ve already mentioned in the list-

ing that the price includes new carpet and new paint; buyer to choose colors. I mean, you’ve already painted it; you just haven’t spent the money yet!” And then I said, “Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we raise the price and the commission?” “Well, what do you think we should raise it to?” “I think we should raise it to $66,000.” So we raised the price to $66,000.00 and upped the commission to 8%. That first day, it showed twice. The next day I got an offer on the house, and we sold it for $66,000. Now, did it close for that much? Well, that’s where the offer came in, but the appraisal caught us, and we had to sell the place for only $64,500. But that’s not too bad. Here’s what we did: we added $1200 to the commission, and, instead of selling it for $60,000, we sold it for $64,500. Do the math. Everybody’s better off. Gary: You said you have three stories? Matt: I have several stories.

Gary: Give me two or three more. I want to get them on the tape. These are good! Matt: Great. Well, I had a house that was an expired. We have a subdivision in our town that’s really just a terrible place. In fact, it’s adjacent to another subdivision where drive-by shootings and drug deals are almost routine. Anyway, the first neighborhood, where this expired was located, is a difficult sell at any time. So I’ve got this house, and it’s already been listed by two other companies, each time for a six-month listing. (By the way, I don’t do anything less than a one-year listing.) And the house has had almost no showings. Now, interestingly, the guy trying to sell it is a broker himself, in another town, and he’s pretty frustrated. So he finds me on the Internet, and he’s interviewing me, and I basically go through the same pitch with him. Well, he instinctively knows that this is what needs to be done. Now, the house had already been on the market for a year, with no offers, and it had been shown maybe once or twice. So I listed it and raised the price. Inci-

dentally, it had started somewhere around $68,000 or something, and because the price had been incrementally reduced every few months, it had eventually gotten down to $59,900. But it hadn’t sold. So I raised the price to $70,000, and I raised the commission. And we sold the house – twice. So how did we sell it twice? Well, the first deal fell through at the last minute, so we did it again. We sold that house twice in less than ninety days! We raised the price, we changed the sign in the yard, and the house sold twice. So does bribery work? Absolutely! The bottom line is that, if you’re a REALTOR® out there trying to feed your family, what you care about is making sure you can pay your bills. I mean, you’re not trying to make a fortune off some guy. Besides, there’s no fortune to be made on a $70,000 house! Gary: How do you get a twelve-month listing? Do you present that, or is it an assumed part of the presentation? Matt: If somebody asks me, “How long are you going to list it for? I don’t want to list over ninety days,” I

say, “Well, actually, you’re not going to like my answer – because I don’t list for less than a year. But I’ll do you one better than that! You can list it today; and if, tomorrow, you want to fire me, you’re welcome to fire me.” I’ve had two takers. Two people have wanted out. I have a cancellation clause in every one of my listings. Why make it an issue if it’s not one? But the bottom line is that we’ve got an average of 310 days on market in our town. Why in the world would I take a listing agreement for a shorter term than our average DOM? That would be stupid. What am I going to do: get a six-month contract, and we’re in escrow, and I’ve got to stop everything and re-list the house? That’s not too smart. Panel member: Do you use the seller pledge agreement from Century 21? Matt: I’ve never even seen one. Sorry. I use this presentation. That’s all I use. Panel member: Now, when you’re dealing with people, as you said earlier, you give your name, but you

don’t push the company at all? Are you concentrating on the price, the emotional factor… Matt: The reason I don’t sell the company up front is that I don’t need to hide behind it. Most people do it to seem more confident: “My company is the biggest company in town, and we’ve sold more houses, blah, blah, blah, and I’m a gazillion-dollar producer.” Sellers don’t care about any of that junk, in my opinion. They care about what you’re going to do to sell their house quickly, and for the most money, with the least amount of hassle. Panel member: What if there are some state laws or board regulations that require you to introduce yourself as a REALTOR®? Panel member: I think that's generally more with print advertising. Matt: Certainly you should abide by all the laws and board rules. I’m just not aware of anything like that in my market.

Panel member: Matt, do you have a cancellation fee? Matt: Well, I have one, but I’ve never charged it. As you know, I’ve had only two people back out. One person was getting a divorce (that’s why the home was being sold), but she reconciled with her husband, and I could hardly hold her feet to the fire. Panel member: What about if it’s just a withdrawal? If someone just says, “I’ve decided not to sell the house after all!”? And what if you’ve spent $500.00 in marketing? Matt: Yeah, but you know – and let’s be honest with ourselves – the reason we advertise houses is not to sell those houses, but to attract buyer leads. That’s why we do it. So do I have a built-in cancellation clause? Yes. Would I enforce it? Probably not. Panel member (To the panel at large): I think the important thing with this cancellation-fee question is that, from a legal standpoint, it’s been tested. You must have a disclosure up front if there’s a cancellation policy in your contract. You cannot go after your clients

later on, saying, “Hey, I just spent $800 in advertising, and you’re going to pay it!” Because if you force the situation, you’ll be taken to the state or to the board, and they’re going to wax you. You’re better off, ultimately, just saying to those folks, “Hey, thanks anyway for your business. I appreciate it. Send me a referral.” In our Tennessee contracts, the whole process is built in. I always ask our agents, “What do you want me to do?” And then I’ll call the people and say, “Look, you know it’s built in. This is what you owe us.” Or if the agent says, “No, I don’t care,” then I’ll just call and say, “Thank you for allowing us to list your house.” Matt: That’s right – we don’t want to go negative with these people. I’m getting a whole lot more out of my $500 in advertising than they are. Truthfully, that advertising is for me; it’s not to sell their house. What’s going to sell the house is bribing other agents. Gary: Okay, I wanted you to share with us some examples of any objections, issues, or hurdles you may have had to overcome while giving presentations – but

then I realized that you’re so good at your presentation that you probably get to the end of it most of the time without any problems! So what about those people who choose the traffic approach? What happens when they say yes to it? Do you drive them to the website? Matt: I say, “Listen, do you have access to the Internet while we talk on the phone? Yes? Okay, well, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I hold, and you go get logged on and let me give you a web site. When you’re ready for the URL, I’ll give that to you.” And then I walk them through the online listing while they’re hot. They’re ready to list, so let’s list – because they’ll be done in five minutes! Gary: So what if your customer says, “Matt, shouldn’t you come out and look at my house?” Matt: “Well, everything you told me was accurate, wasn’t it? Well, then, we’ve really nailed down the range of value for your house. Now, if it will make you feel better, I can come out and look at your place, but the value isn’t going to change. The value is whatever the computer says it is, and that’s why I asked you all those questions.”

Gary: Do they come to your office and get the sign and put it up? Matt [laughing]: No. I hire a company to go put it up. A third party handles the sign and the lock box. I kid you not: I’ve double-ended a transaction and never seen the house. Panel member: How did you get your buyer, then? Matt: I actually talked the tenant into buying it and got him qualified for a mortgage. Good question, though. Panel member: I thought that maybe your sellers were holding their own open houses or something. Matt: No, I don’t do open houses. I have plenty of buyers. Panel member: How many of these sellers actually ask you to come over and look at their property? Matt: That happens occasionally – generally with old-

er people. Panel member: Do you list room sizes? Matt: No, room sizes don’t sell houses. Panel member: No, but in our area you have to list them. Matt: Well, then, I’d hire a third party to go measure the house in question because I wouldn’t do that. Panel member: Couldn’t you work out a deal with the appraiser to go out? Matt: We’re getting a lot of bad VA appraisals, so I’m trying to pre-appraise properties. It’s the old half-full glass now, instead of coming back after the sale and getting the half-empty glass. You know what I mean? Panel member: Do you do virtual tours on your houses? Matt:

Not yet. I’m trying to do that, but it’s one of

those things that hasn’t become as high a priority as I’d like. I’m trying to find somebody to do it. Panel member: So if somebody wanted a virtual tour, you’d have your marketing coordinator go out and shoot the house? Matt: Actually, I’m starting to do that. One of my buyer’s agents is charging me $30.00 per house to go out and take photos. We’re not doing the virtual tours; we’re just doing multiple pictures. Panel member: Right, but pictures of the interior of the house? Matt: Some of them you really don’t want pictures of, realistically speaking. Maybe all of your listings are “cream puff” houses, but all of mine aren’t! Panel member: Are you looking to work your prices up? Matt: I initially thought I was going to be high-end, but after a while I decided that high-end wasn’t really

where I wanted to be. However, I don’t take anything lower than one standard deviation below the average. Do you guys know what I mean by that? Gary: Explain. Matt: Okay, you take everything that sold last year in your MLS, and you copy and paste the one-liners onto an Excel spreadsheet. Get rid of all the columns except for the prices, so that all you’ve got is this big long list of 4000 prices in ascending order. At the bottom of that, you can do a statistical function called “average” on your spreadsheet [=average(A1:A4000)]. You can also do standard deviation [=stdev(A1:A4000)], which is another statistical function. Those two are really the only functions you’ll need. So here’s what you’ll do. Let’s say the average house is $110,000, and let’s say the standard deviation is $40,000. Now picture a big bell curve. The center line of the bell curve is the average. One standard deviation up and down is going to give you about the middle 70% of the market – the sweet spot, if you will. Do you see what I’m saying? Basically, I concentrate on one

standard deviation either way from the average and if I happen to get something above that on the high end great, I’m not going to turn it down, but I’m not going to waste my time on junk. That would mean anything below $70,000 in the previous illustration. Gary: In your phone dialogue, when you’re going through this presentation, do you get any objections? For instance, “Don’t you need to come out and see my house?” Matt: If that’s going to be a deal breaker, guess what? I’ll go see the house – not because I need to, but because my going there will make the seller happy. Gary: I understand that. But I want to know what types of barriers you encounter. Or is your whole presentation lined up so well that you don’t wind up with any resistance at the end of it? Matt: Well, here’s the thing. This is my philosophy of selling, anyway. Remember that I came up through the old school. You remember old-school sales? Well, some of the principles of old-school sales still work, but

some definitely don’t. In the old days, they would throw you an objection, and you would give the rebuttal, and then you’d try hard to close them. And when they said no and threw up another objection, you’d overcome it, and then you’d slam them again. That’s old-school. It’s fun sometimes, but it’s not very productive. But to answer your question, sometimes a customer will lead off with (and I love this) – sometimes he’ll lead off with, “Well, how much is your commission?” Because he’ll assume that all REALTORS® are the same. Now, the worst thing you can do is to be evasive because buyers will sense it. Buyers can smell evasiveness. And with a listing, your buyer is the person with the house. He’s buying your listing presentation. So when the buyer asks me about my commission, I’ll say, “Well, actually, I try to get 100%.” And after a stunned silence, he’ll realize it’s a joke, and he’ll laugh. And then I’ll say, “But I’m negotiable. You know, how much you ask and the commission you pay really depend on the strategy you choose.” In other words, I basically just stop everything dead in its tracks.

But I think that, if you set expectations – if you let your customers know what to expect so that there are no surprises – you won’t get any objections. And if you really do take the time to find out what all their needs are, and you make sure you cover all of those, then everything else is just a formality. And then you give your people a reason to act now. I’ll say, “Hey, I don’t know if you did this on purpose or not, but you chose a perfect time to sell.” “Really? Why is that?” “Because our ad cut-off for Homes and Land magazine is next Thursday. And if we get on this right now, we can probably just barely catch that cut-off date.” There needs to be a reason – everybody will procrastinate! – there needs to be a reason to act now. “Well, I was thinking about listing in the spring.” I’ll say, “That’s a great idea.” And then I’ll say, “But let me throw another idea at you while we’re talking about great ideas. As you probably know, the springtime is

the most popular time to put your house on the market. That’s when everybody puts his house on the market. Now, I used to trade the stock market. Have you ever traded the stock market?” And he or she will say, “I’ve got a 401-K.” “Great! Perfect. Now let me ask you something. When everybody else is buying stock, what should you be doing? Selling. You should sell your stock because there isn’t anybody left to buy. And when everybody’s selling, what should you be doing? That’s right: you should be buying – you know, the contrarian investment strategy. And it works! Right now, inventories are at an all-time low. Why? Because we had one heck of a buying season this past summer. Our inventory levels are really low right now. So guess what? If you put your house on the market now, you’re going to have very little competition. Last spring, inventories were 29% higher than they are right now. Would you rather have your house listed side by side with an extra 200 houses, or would you rather compete against very few? It doesn’t matter to me. It’s up to you. But if it were my house, I’m going to tell you, I’d want to be up against as few people as

possible because I’d want to get the top dollar for my house. What about you?” Panel member: Yeah, but you’re dealing with military people. Matt: I’m dealing with every kind of people. Panel member: They [the military] have specific time frames when they have to transfer schools and what not. What’s the rationale for them to do it today versus in the spring, when they know they’ll be transferred? If they sell now, where are they going to go? Matt: That’s a good question! Now let’s run the clock on this, okay? This is December, and you need to move in March – right? Okay, now, what’s the normal escrow process on a VA loan? Forty-five to sixty days? So go back sixty days from March, and we’re in January. Now, how long is it going to take me to get the marketing actually ramped up on your house? It’s going to take me a good two weeks, depending on where we are in the ad cycles of the magazines, and it may take three or four weeks before we’re really at 100%. We can get

the house into the websites immediately, but we’ll have less than a month to get a buyer. So we don’t have a lot of time! But if I do my job flawlessly, and we get your house on the market today, we might have you out of there by March. Anyway, we certainly don’t want to wait until everybody else and his brother come into the market. Gary: Okay, so in the spring, when there are more houses on the market, you don’t have the same sense of urgency. Matt: So that’s when I’ll say, “Guess when most of the buyers come on the market? You got it – spring!” Gary: The other side of the same coin. Panel member: Are you finding that your competition is adapting to you? Or are you getting objections thrown up by competing REALTORS®? Matt: No, the truth is that there aren’t any competing REALTORS®. I mean, there really aren’t.

Panel member: So you’ve got about seventy active listings right now? Where is your nearest competitor right now in terms of listings? Matt: Twelve or fifteen. Some of them may occasionally go as high as the mid-twenties. Panel member: Yeah, you’ve got no competition! Matt: No, I don’t. I’m in an office of thirty-something agents, and we have very few sellers calling us to gripe to my broker. Actually, I’ve had only two complaints to the broker in the last year, and I managed those. You see, if you’re looking for a friend, you’ve got the wrong guy. I figure that the best thing for us is if I sell your house fast, without any hassles, and get you a lot of money for it. My business isn’t designed around a relational model of real estate; mine is strictly business. It’s just inventory, and it could just as easily be widgets. My business is built around that kind of model. Gary: In your presentation, your phone dialogue, is there any other scenario or challenge or anything

you’ve ever encountered that you can sort of draw out as another example? I know I’m kind of reaching because you’ve covered a lot of ground already, but your presentation is unique to me. I’ve never heard of a listing being approached this way – and the ability to list ninety-plus houses over the phone! If I were in real estate, I’d much rather sit in my shorts at home at the kitchen table and be doing that than running around to my customers’ houses. But have there been any other challenges or scenarios that come to mind? Matt: I think that one of the biggest challenges is the impression (which the industry has created) that the seller wants us to call him every week or two weeks and tell him all about his house and what we’ve done with it and blah, blah, blah. Well, I’m a little bit different when it comes to setting expectations. So I’m not trying to be everybody’s friend, and I’m also not going to call you every week and tell you everything about your house. Now, if all you’ve got is three listings, you can do that. That’s three phone calls a week. Sure, you can put that in your schedule. But if you’ve got seventy active listings, there’s no way! The bottom

line is that my job is to sell your house, and if I’m busy calling every one of those seventy people, I won’t have time to sell it. So what I do is, I post a private web site, called http:// IsItSoldYet.com. Every week I update all of what I’ve done to sell the houses that I’m marketing. If anybody has a question, I try to talk with him right then unless I’m on the line, and then I’ll return the call. I always return my calls. I prefer email because I generally do that before other people get up in the morning. But email me, call me, and I’ll be happy to update you. Basically, though, I let it be known that I’m not going to be calling up my customers and asking them how their kids did in soccer this week because I don’t have time for that. The most important thing I do is prospect. That’s the most important thing. It’s the only thing I do that makes me $1000 an hour, and because it does that, prospecting needs to be the highest priority in my day. Panel member: I’m curious. How do you actually… besides your home listings, how do you incorporate

your website and your hotline? In your telephone listing presentation, do you tell your leads anything about the number of buyers you get from the website and hotline? Matt: I’ll tell them if they ask me. If they don’t raise that as a concern, though, I don’t bother with it. I mean, why go there? But if they say, “Well, what are you going to do to sell my house?” – I’ll say, “Great question. And here’s what I’m going to do. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, the average agent, through all of his marketing, gets twenty-three inbound customer contacts every month.” And then I’ll click to http://IsItSoldYet.com and say, “Last week I got 341 inquiries.” [Or whatever.] “So I guess that, with all my marketing, I’m generating about twenty or twenty-five times the average number of customer calls. And that’s what’s going to sell your house.” Of course, we’re using the commission “bribe” to drive the traffic. Panel member: How physically involved are you? And by that I mean going out to see your clients at the negotiation of the contract. Do you actually go to the house at the negotiation, or do you do everything over

the phone? Matt: Why go? The phone works fine. I mean, why do I need to go there to negotiate? In fact, I’d prefer that they came to me. Panel member: So then you’ve never met most of your clients face-to-face? Matt: Oh, I’ve met some of them, although a lot of them are out of state or whatever. But it’s not as if I’m afraid of them or reluctant to see them. It’s just that I’m serious about making the highest and best use of my time. Panel member: Well, it’s evident that you’ve done a good job of it! I mean, it’s a different business model from any that I’ve ever heard of. For nine years I’ve done all the traditional going out and seeing the clients. That’s why it’s blowing me out of the water here that you’ve been able to do what you’ve done. Matt: Well, when I get back home on Thursday night, I’ll know that on Friday I’ll probably be listing six

houses because I’m going to have to make up for lost time. I’m going to have to hit the phone real hard. I had someone call me today at lunch, and then a prospect I’d talked to earlier left a message asking me to call him back, which means that we’re going to close that one. And then I’ve got an investor who had me do a CMA for one house, and he decided to sell five. And I’ll sell them all over the phone. But I always let everybody know up front that we’re going to talk about which approach may be better to use. I set expectations. And I’m expecting that we’re going to get the house on the market the next time we talk. Why wouldn’t we? “You really want to sell it, right?” “You’ve got zero risk, though; I’ve got all the risk.” “Until it sells, it costs you not one dime.” “Well, you’re charging me 8%!” “Let me ask you this: if the house doesn’t sell, how

much is 8% of zero? And if I don’t sell it, guess who gets to spend the money for advertising? I do. So, obviously, if I didn’t think it would sell, I wouldn’t waste my time or my money. Actually, you’ve got zero risk here!” Gary: Where do most of your listing leads come from? Give me a rundown. Matt: Well, I get most of my listing leads from the Internet. But I also get some from referrals and from my call-capture hotline calls from the magazine ads. Gary: Okay, so of the homes magazine ad calls, you’re still coming up with a lot of them that are sellers? Matt: Right. And when you’re getting 1100 calls a month, a lot of the buyers are also seller leads. Gary: So, even at this point, your listing leads are predominantly coming from the two sources? Matt: Yes, from my website and my hotline. I have a great website, and I get a lot of seller leads from it. And because of the way I have my hotline set up, it’s get-

ting me about 30% of my web business too – because callers are going to hear a commercial for my website when they come to my hotline. Gary [To the panel at large]: That’s another whole subject that we probably could’ve gotten into that you guys would’ve liked. Matt’s web marketing is really phenomenal! He generated 292 leads last month off his website, a large percentage of them coming from pay-per-click advertising. He’s become very masterful at pay-perclick. What’s your average lead cost, Matt? Matt: I typically spend about three dollars or less for a website lead and five to seven dollars for a hotline lead. Gary: He’s marketing through multiple channels. He’s converging the two. Matt: They say that you need to touch somebody six times to brand yourself in his mind. He sees my ad in a book: that’s once. He calls the hotline and gets the commercials and everything: that’s twice, because he’s

hearing a voice. It’s a different medium. Okay? Now, maybe he’ll hit multiple extensions, but when he goes to my hotline, he’s going to get an incoming commercial that really pushes my website. Now, when somebody calls my hotline, it answers, “Thank you for calling FavoriteAgent.com. In a second I’m going to ask you to enter your four-digit code, but first I want to tell you about our award-winning website,” etc. And that’s what I do for fifteen seconds. So he’s a captive audience for fifteen seconds, and then I say, “Okay. Please enter your four-digit code now.” He enters it, and the hotline says, “Hey, great choice! This home has three bedrooms and two baths. It’s located in the western part of Fayetteville in a subdivision called Remington and is only about seven minutes from Fort Bragg. If you’d like pricing or more detailed information, press 5, and enter extension 4000. Panel member: No address, right? Matt: Heck, no! No price, either. My extension 4000 says, “Because market conditions are changing rapidly,

I have omitted pricing information from this recording so that I won’t have to re-record this message every few days. But I do have two ways that you can get pricing information: first, you can log onto my website at www. FavoriteAgent.com and check all the up-to-the-minute pricing information on any house in our market, not just my listings; or you can press zero now, and my assistant will be happy to get that information for you.” Panel member: So within the property description, you have another diversion to another extension which tells the customer that the price – you don’t record price changes on the listing extension? You divert it from there to extension 4000? Matt: I don’t put any prices on the listing extensions. Panel member: I mean, because the price is changing…extension 4000, and from there, if the person chooses to call you directly, he pushes zero? Matt: He’s got two ways he can get a price: he can zero through, or he can go to my website. If he doesn’t have a computer, he’s going to have to push zero!

Gary: So you’re not putting pricing anywhere. You’re putting extension 4000, and that guides your lead to zero transfer. Matt: But that part really doesn’t matter. I’ve already got his phone number, and we’re going to call him back. So my ad has done its job. Gary: You’re going to get your six points of touch by the time the guy hits your web site, and you call him! Matt: Then he hits my web site, and we touch him again. Then my buyer’s agent is going to give him a call back, and that’s also a touch. Panel member: So on your recordings you never, ever – well, you say you don’t put the price? Matt: I wouldn’t say “never, ever.” I used to, but then you get price changes. Panel member: Well, but you aren’t doing the address anywhere on them either?

Matt: No. Gary: For detailed information, go to the web site, or press zero. Matt: Here’s the deal. Here’s my philosophy. It may be wrong – okay? – but I’m not a charity. I’m a business. If you want information from me, you’re going to have to give me information. It’s a trade. It’s that simple. Bottom line is, if you want to know anything about this house other than just enough to get you interested, you’re going to have to contact me through my website and give up information, or else you’re going to have to talk to one of my buyer’s agents. Panel member: Now, on your website, are you linked to IDX? Or do you put your listings on there? Matt: Both. [Since the time of this interview, Matt has begun using only IDX on his website.] Panel member: Okay, so how does someone get to a specific listing?

Matt: He doesn’t. By the time he gets there, he’s really not interested in that house. He’ll search through everything. Gary: That’s another unique thing about this step. When you hit Matt’s site, if you click anything on the main page [of the LCM Lead Capture Gateway], all it does is say, “Please fill out this quick one-minute form,” and it’s all required fields. To get anywhere else, you get nothing unless you fill out the fields, and Matt’s getting nearly 25% of the people to fill out that form. So does it work? You bet it works. It works like crazy! Don’t give people IDX freely. Don’t let them just go there and search and get the info. Panel member: So if somebody wants the price, he can press zero, or he can go to the MLS. And if he’s going to the MLS, he really doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Matt: Sure he does: a house. Panel member: But he’ll forget about that house be-

fore he gets there. Gary: And then Matt’s job is done. What he’s trying to accomplish – touching the lead six times, capturing the lead, getting him to take the next step and the next step…he’s been pushed to a recording, then to another recording where either he hits zero, or he’s going to Matt’s website. If he goes to the website, he’s got to take another action. He’s leading himself through multiple steps of action. Meanwhile, Matt’s team is getting more and more and more involved. But the key to every single step is that Matt is still making it incredibly easy. There are no significant barriers in any part of the process. The lead simply has to be divulging a little bit more information. Matt: We’re just cutting off his arm an inch at a time! [Laughter.] Gary: And at the form page on his website, Matt’s leads have to type in their names, addresses, and everything – it’s all required fields – to go to the next step, to find the detailed property information, and Matt’s getting a quarter of them to do it! 25% of them are doing it!

So what happens to the other 75%? Do they just disappear? Matt: No. Many come back later and fill out the form. Many are captured through other means, such as our hotline. But the bottom line is that we do capture over 1100 leads every month, and that’s a lot. If we miss some people, so be it. Gary: We call that peeling the onion. Sometimes you have to peel the onion to get down to the meat. And the more skin you take off, the closer you are to making your transaction. Matt: And before I got the buyer’s agents and everybody doing it, I was using voice broadcast exclusively to touch my leads again and again and again. I had a series of six different broadcast messages, and every Thursday, mysteriously, the lead would get a voicemail message from voice broadcast, and it would be a different one from the time before, saying, “Hey, Matt Jones calling. Sorry I missed you. Just wanted to let you know that we’ve got some new [whatever],” or, “Hey,

there’ve been some great new changes to the website that you need to check out...” Everything would always send the lead to the website and give him my phone number each time, but there would also be some other, different reason to do it. And I’d hit him every week, every Thursday, so that, as he was starting to get into the mindset of looking at houses on Friday, he’d get in touch with us. Gary: What happens in this process with your buyer’s agent now? You’ve kind of put the buyer’s agent in place, but I’m wondering…when you get a lead, how many times do you hit him before you let go of that lead? Matt: I use a three-strikes-and-you're-out philosophy. Gary: The reason I’m asking how many times your buyer’s agents are touching the lead is that, if they’re calling him once or twice, you ought to kick in the voicebroadcast routine after the fact, after they’ve dropped the lead, for those unconverted leads. I mean, you’ve got a good system for doing it, you’ve had people walk-

ing in asking for you, and you haven’t got a clue who they were. Matt: I had somebody call me up one time at lunch, and she said, “Hi, my name is Mary Smith [or whatever her name was]. I don’t know if you remember me or not [now, bear in mind that this is somebody I’ve never seen or talked to], but I called on one of your ads in a magazine to check on a house, and I’ve visited your website. You’ve called me back several times, and I’ve always missed you. Anyway, I was working with an agent, but I can’t get him to return my calls. I was wondering if you could help me find a house.” I’d never talked to her, but she felt as if we were old friends. Gary: I’m wondering if, after your buyer’s agents have made that point of contact, and it’s an unconverted lead…I’m wondering if you couldn’t just plug him into that back-end voice-broadcast system again – make it appear as if it’s coming back from you again, like a follow-up after the buyer’s agents have basically canned the lead. Because with a fire hydrant you’ve got to can the leads relatively fast! I mean, one or two calls, and that’s about it with, you know, five hundred leads, or

whatever it is that you have. Matt: Yeah, that’s good. Right now I’ve got a real hungry mortgage loan officer doing all the first calls back, which is nice. And then I’ve got the buyer’s agents. Their first move is to grab the website leads because they have multiple phone numbers, as well as their names, their time frames, their price ranges…they’ve got all that information. So that essentially leaves my hotline leads, who are kind of a second priority to the buyer’s agents. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’ve actually been toying with the idea – and I was hoping that maybe somebody had done this already – of actually getting a real honest-to-goodness sales guy to do nothing but telemarketing all day long, setting the initial hook, setting the appointments, and basically feeding them to buyer’s agents. Panel member: That person most likely needs to be licensed. Matt: No, not really. I’ve already been to our Real Es-

tate Commission about this. What’s odd is that the person who takes a lead to the house has to be licensed, but the person selling him on the phone doesn’t have to have a license at all. Isn’t that amazing? That’s the law in North Carolina. Panel member: Have you been able to determine which lead is a higher-quality lead for you – off the web, or from the hotline? Matt: I’m just going to give you a gut feeling on this. I look at it this way: the quality of any lead has a lot to do with timing, and there’s a definite buying cycle in real estate. First, there’s the information-gathering phase, which takes place, obviously, while the lead is gathering information. From there he moves into a search phase, during which he’s at the point of actually finding or selling a home. This is typically where he starts working with an agent. Eventually, though, he moves into the escrow phase, which carries him from contract to closing. The typical duty call comes in late, late, late in the searching phase, whereas hotline calls and website

leads almost always come in early. Occasionally, you get that one lead who’s ready to do something right now, but that’s not typical. Most agents are used to the duty-call time frame, which seems to be a lot shorter. But I believe that website and hotline leads come earlier in the buying cycle. We’ve captured them earlier. Now, statistically, 74% of sellers and 76% of buyers are going to work with the first agent they talk with, so it’s a numbers game. If you’re the first agent, and unless you just really mess up, they’re going to work with you. All you have to do is stay in touch. So you just put them in a follow-up campaign and stay in touch. Panel member: Proquest is kind of like the search engines. As you said, you aren’t going to have somebody call you up and say, “I want to buy a house,” but it gets you to him first. Matt: If he zeroes through, chances are that he’s further along in that cycle. Most of the time, when he wants to remain anonymous, it’s just like the web site. So I see that the bulk of the hotline calls are just like web leads – early in the cycle. They’re still in the infor-

mation-gathering phase. Panel member: So, really, you don’t differentiate, quality-wise, among leads? You know that a lead is a lead is a lead, regardless of where it comes from. Matt: I know that, according to the NAR, the average home search is eight weeks, from start to finish. That means that the vast majority will take fewer than ninety days, statistically speaking. So, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as a bad lead. Panel member: I’m just curious: what’s the difference in compensations on your buyer’s agents? Matt: I’m on a 50% split with mine. I do all the listing for our team. If anyone gets a listing lead, it comes to me. By the same token, I get buyer leads all the time, and they go to my buyer’s agents. What’s fair is fair. But I’ve worked my way up to a 90% split, and the broker pays half of my ad bill, which is significant. [Since this summit took place, Matt has founded his own company, FavoriteAgent.com, and there’s now a different split arrangement from when he had a team inside a

company.] So I’m basically like a RE/MAX split. I’m in pretty good shape with regard to that, so my buyer’s agents are netting about 43% because they have no ad costs. In fact, they have no costs, period, except for their own lock box key and their Association dues, so they get 43%. They could go to work in a traditional agency, and they’d get a 50% split, but they’d have to pay for their own lead generation, which in turn would cost them 20% of their GCI. With me, though, they’re on a 43% deal with no expenses, which is pretty good. I’m looking at some tiers, but I don’t have any real superstars yet, so I’m not real excited about that concept. Panel member: Don’t you think it’s important that your agents understand the big picture? A lot of times they see a perceived benefit, but it isn’t reality. They don’t have a clue about what goes into creating the lead-generation engine, the expenses – any of it; then they go out on their own. I’ve had several leave. They’ve gone out on their own, and they’ve basically floundered. Matt: What I’ve done, and it seems to be working – of

course, I have all this vast seventeen months of experience! – but what seems to be working is that I make sure they know up front the “value add” that I’m bringing and what’s involved in it. And I make sure they understand what the average REALTOR® out there is getting in terms of leads. I make sure they see how many leads come through the duty desk, which is zero. Each of my buyer’s agents probably has three times the number of leads to work with on a single duty day than our entire duty desk gets in the course of a month. I think that, if we prevent them from seeing the whole picture, they’ll just see the part they want to see, and it will look a lot sweeter than it is. They don’t realize that I’m dropping five grand a month to advertise. Panel member: Do you share those numbers with them? Matt: Absolutely! I’ll say, “Listen, you can do this too if you’ve got about an extra five grand a month! By all means! Of course, it will take you a few months of not doing anything while you ramp up and get the systems working and stuff, but, hey, it’ll be great!” So, yes, I

think that it’s important to make sure your agents see the whole picture. ....... At this point in the interview, the conversation turned to other topics, so we’re ending the presentation here.

A Final Note From the Author Our company receives several emails every day from agents around the country -- agents just like you who are looking for ways to improve their businesses -- and after reading several hundred letters, we began to notice a trend. My listing approach always seems to inspire one of two basic responses. The large majority of agents writing in to us say that they’ve tried the approach and are using it with great success. However, we also hear from agents who give us a litany of reasons why “The Ultimate List-

ing Presentation” won't work in their markets, which are somehow different from my market. What’s truly amazing to me is that we have agents succeeding with my approach in nearly every market where we also have nay-sayers! Well, this apparent contradiction confirms to me that, if an agent believes a system won't work, it won't work. And why not? Because you as an agent must believe in yourself and in this approach if you expect it to work for you. So before you dismiss it as something that succeeds only in certain markets, you need to know that it’s working right now in buyer's markets and seller's markets, high-priced markets and low-priced markets, with younger demographics and older demographics. In fact, it works the same in every situation, just like gravity! And it’s rooted in the basic economic principle of supply and demand, so it works universally. So as I leave you with all these ideas to consider, let me challenge you. Don't you believe that you deserve to become a dominant listing agent? Someone has to be the market leader, and it may as well be you. In fact, why shouldn't it be you? I say it should be you! And it

can be you! If you have questions or problems as you try “The Ultimate Listing Presentation,” please call us. We spend considerable time helping agents from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand. (Remember my “Principle of Reciprocity”?) Let us help you become the dominant agent in your area. Let us help you become a master listing agent. It can happen! You can reach that goal. Finally, I can't begin to tell you how much time and effort went into the writing, editing, typesetting, proofing, and publishing of this e-book. I trust that you enjoyed it, and that you might even want to share it with fellow agents or friends. Please encourage them to buy their own copy -- let's face it: the price is very low considering the information found inside. If they don't buy it, they won't value it anyway, so please encourage them to make the tiny investment themselves. It will help us to continue to produce valuable training at affordable prices. If you received this publication from anyone other than

a licensed reseller, or directly from me, you've received a pirated copy. Please do the right thing and notify me via e-mail or phone. My email address is Matt.Jones@ FavoriteAgent.com and my direct phone number is 910-808-1212. Okay, here is my "official legal notice": This publication, in its entirety, is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved. Thank you so much for reading. May you have much success in your practice of this the greatest business in the world -- real estate! Matt Jones President/CEO FavoriteAgent.com

Testimonials “I like the 8% commission strategy. I hated to put it down once I started reading it. The information is beyond belief. Fantastic! How you got your sellers to list for 8% is a great idea, one that I’d never heard of in my ten years in the business. I’m looking forward to much success and doing a complete turnaround with my business. Thanks for sharing.” Dan Cassidy Dan Cassidy Real Estate Indianapolis, Indiana

“I just wanted to say how much I appreciate someone willing to share his knowledge/ expertise. I’ve just started to read about your listing presentation, and I have already changed the commission on the one listing I have today (a Sunday) to 7%, and for a year! Is that awesome, or what? The seller thought it was a great idea too. Who would have thought it? This is a new way of thinking, and I’m going all out with your theory. Thanks for sharing your listing data and presentation.” Kerry R. Leitch Century 21 Woodhaven, Michigan

“Great! I read the listing presentation ten times over. The next day I listed a house for 8%. Thank you.” Scott Jackson Exit Real Estate Professional Orlando, Florida

“I congratulate you! I have taken no less than 8% for many years now. It is so nice to see someone else so passionate about doing right by the seller. Thank you for sharing.” Margaret Rome An Allen Hainge CyberStar® Coldwell Banker Baltimore, Maryland

“I read your stuff and was pleased with the simple application of a different idea. I’ve already made my first presentation, and the results were excellent. We have traditionally been a 7% company, but this past year, low inventory and discount companies have put tremendous pressure on agents getting listings. So now is a good time to change the batting order.” Paul MacLeod Michael Saunders & Company Venice, Florida

“I am learning a lot from your presentation, and I have received ideas that are foreign to me. I do believe that this information will make a difference in my business. I have been considering leaving real estate, but I will stay another year with your new ideas to implement. Your presentation is a blessing.” Cindy Merz Medina, Ohio

“Of all the courses I have attended and books that I have read, this is by far the most sensible, different, and hands-on information that I have received. I’ve already mentioned it to several persons that I know, as it’s truly creative and gives information that no one else is using. It’s amazing!” Janet Beddoe Cape Coral, Florida

“I’ve been reading the presentation, and it’s great! I’m

a listing agent too. I listed 100 properties from September 30, 2004, up to September 30, 2005. I think your techniques are great. I’m going to start using them because one of the biggest challenges here in Miami is the low commissions. Congratulations, and keep up the great work.” Edwin Roman First2Sell Realty Miami, Florida

“Absolutely awesome! Very practical advice that I am already implementing. Thank you!” Kathy Koutsobinas Coldwell Banker St. Charles, Missouri

“Great stuff! Thank you.” Emily Dawson, Broker REALTOR®, CBR, CRS, CSP, GRI, Columbia, South Carolina

“Your 8% listing presentation was exactly what I needed to learn! I now can give my real estate clients the information they deserve! Prior to being a REALTOR® I was an insurance broker. I was able to calculate trends, etc., for my insurance clients so that they could see where they were headed with their claims. Having the know-how to forecast trends made me a professional in the industry. Thanks to you, I now have the tools I need to give my real estate clients the same service and, most importantly, accurate information – not rumor or best guesses.” Wendy Trager House Mart Realtors, Inc. Jackson, New Jersey

“Awesome! Finally, a new approach to listing houses! Long overdue. This is a must-read for any listing agent or broker!” David Evans, Broker Fayetteville, North Carolina

“Thank you for offering your book online. I really impressed a customer when I told him what the market was doing in a certain area. Because of your book, I’ll check the market here once a week and do the other things you suggested as well.” Charissa Cherry Soldotna Realty Soldotna, Alaska

“I'm really enjoying your article on listing at 8%. I have been using the same logic for a little while now; however, you have obviously added a whole other department with your ‘math show’ and your Internet savvy. Oddly enough, I still do not have a personal web site yet, but your approach has definitely convinced me!” Pierre Chicoine Agent Immobilier Affilie, Quebec, Canada

“Awesome program!” Gloria St. Clair, St. Clair Team Greg Garrett Realty Hampton Roads, Virginia

“I am so glad I stumbled across your presentation. I will definitely give the 8% a try.” Doris Parreno Sales Representative Toronto, Canada

“Matt, I just finished reading your book (in two days) and loved it! It was right to the point, and I found it very informative. The Internet is definitely the way of the future for the real estate industry, and your company is very well positioned to benefit from that.” Peyman Aleagha, Managing Director BeyondMLS.com Toronto, Canada

“I took my first 8% listing over the weekend using Matt’s approach, and the seller told me it was a ‘nobrainer’ when he looked at the net potential. Thanks for the help!” Kyle Wilson Silverhawk Realty Boise, Idaho

“I am so excited about the 8% listing! That’s the minimum that I will charge on any of my listings now. It’s so easy! I never get a commission objection – it just doesn’t come up. The key is the money in the clients’ pockets, just like Matt teaches. Amazing! I’ll be listing a $1,000,000 farm tomorrow, at 8%. Thanks for all the help.” Brian Bell Vernon, British Columbia

“The more I talk about the new approach, the more mentally prepared I’m becoming about the higher rate.

After all, I’m here to sell houses at the best possible rate – right? On Monday I’ll re-address the commission structure and implement your listing strategy on a 500k home. So an increase in commission will be quite substantial. In fact, I don’t see a down side because the new approach is a win-win for everyone! Thank you. This may be what I have needed to give my business a boost to the next level. And I do believe in your system. It all makes sense to me!” Donna Hines, REALTOR®, CRS ERA Whitaker Realty, Houston, Texas

“Someone once said, ‘Why re-invent the wheel?’ Well, that someone should see the wheels that Matt Jones has come up with!” Christian J. Schlueter e-PROEALTOR® RE/MAX at Barnegat Bay Toms River, New Jersey “Fantastic series on the 8% listing! I have read and be-

gun to utilize your methods, and they are tremendously accurate. In fact, I used them for a listing presentation on Wednesday, and the sellers were sitting with their mouths open while I explained the data. They were very interested and blown away by my knowledge of the real estate activity in their area. This is the best information I've ever read. Thanks for your help.” Jeff Huss, REALTOR® Coldwell Banker Preferred 327 East Gay Street West Chester, Pennsylvania

“Here's a good example. In June a property sold for 410k, netting the owner $389,500 (a 5% deal). There was an identical property a dozen houses down the street. Another one nearby sold around the corner for 430K shortly after, netting the owner $408,500 (another 5% deal): same house, a little better condition than the one at 410k, but not much. Both properties sold on the MLS, offering 2.5 to the co-op. ”Fifteen days ago I listed the same property, exactly

the same as the one that sold at 410k, two blocks away on the same street (a long winding street with about a hundred houses on it -- a feeder street in a big subdivision of executive homes). We listed it at 497k. (A true price based on comps should have been listed about 479k, with a suspected sale price at about 473k, but, still, look at how much better this would have been than prior area sales. Of course, these were my CMA results.) ”But the owner wanted to test the waters, so I said that, if the house wasn’t sold in three weeks, we’d need to drop 30k from the asking price because that would mean that we were out in left field with the price and that even the CMA results were too high. So we did a test case, but we listed it at 7% -- 3% to the co-op. ”Yesterday we had three offers on the house. We sold it over list. Ta da! So it cost the seller an extra 10k in commission, you could say, and the house netted $75,500 above the one that sold at $410,000 and $56,500 higher net than the one at 430k had netted! ”Go figure! And agents wonder why this works? They

just can't get it in their heads that they are the problem. Whatever they are doing, it is obvious that they are not able to ‘sell the seller.’ And if they cannot even ‘sell the seller,’ how can they sell to a buyer or to another agent? ”Just thought I would share this situation with you because I know you understand it. Yes!” Carolyne Lederer CarolyneRealtyCorporation Brampton, Ontario, Canada

“I just wanted to let you guys know how the LCM is working. I literally turned on my advertising only 36 hours ago. While I slept last night, I had four contacts fill out the registration form! That was all while I was sleeping! I am absolutely astounded with the effectiveness of your services and thrilled about how well your suggested ads and keywords work. “I want to tell everyone how much better an approach this is in comparison to the ‘traditional’ way, yet I want keep it to myself at the same time because I feel as if I

am holding the golden key to real estate success! The very first time I tried the 8% listing approach using traffic versus price, I got the 8% in a market where 5% is typical, and I did it over the phone! Wow! “Thank you for the new-found wind in my sails. I will definitely keep you all posted as time progresses. I can't thank you enough for sharing your insights with me.” Stacy H. La Mar, owner The MD REALTOR® Group Crofton, Maryland

“Ten days of leads: got my first listing (and sale) over the phone! Yay!” Kate Rose Right Home Realty Phoenix REALTOR® of the Year Arizona Regional MLS Director NAR Committee Member Gilbert, Arizona

About the Author Author, speaker, syndicated columnist, local brokerowner, and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com, Matt Jones is not your typical real estate guru. Unlike many of today’s “experts” he is actually personally involved in the real estate business on a daily basis. In 2002 Matt listed 114 homes during his first year in the business and did $7 million in production in a market where the average sale price was only $100,000. By his third year, his single-agent practice had grown to become the largest brokerage in his market of Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Jones’ company has been profiled by numerous major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN’s Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is “changing the way real estate is done in America.” Over 20,000 agents throughout the US, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand have licensed his virtual office technology, and over 100,000 agents worldwide have taken his real estate training. Although Matt keeps an incredibly busy schedule, he invites his readers to contact him online or by phone with any questions or comments. His phone number is (910) 808-1212, and his email address is Matt.Jones@ FavoriteAgent.com.

Books By This Author LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate

The Ultimate Listing Presentation Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More

Becoming a Mega-Producer The Science of Online Marketing Ten Steps to Real Estate Success 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate... but Were Afraid to Ask

The Virtual Office Model

The Ultimate Listing Presentation Spinnaker Publishing 2915 Raeford Road, Suite 103 Fayetteville, NC 28303 Copyright ©2010 Matt Jones Interior text design and cover design by Janet Cherry ISBN: 0-9770438-1-9 All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts used in reviews, no portion of this work may be reproduced or published without express written permission from the author or the author’s agent. Second Edition