Useful And Interesting Presentation

To increase the interest in your presentation, follow this advice:

• Share market knowledge. Become a student of the local marketplace and share meaningful statistics. Also track trends in the national marketplace, both to enlighten your prospects and also to distinguish yourself as a well-read, well-connected, and well-informed agent.

• Ask questions. Listen in on typical listing presentations, and you'll hear the agent talking 80% of the time, with the prospect hardly getting a word in edgewise. I guarantee you that the seller finds that monologue uninteresting.

• Watch the clock. Don't let your presentation run too long and don't save the information the seller most wants to receive until the very end. If you put your price recommendation at the very end of a 90-minute presentation during which you did 80% of the talking, you can pretty well predict that your seller will be tuned out.

• What the prospect has to say is more important than what you have to say. Great salespeople do less than 25% of the talking. You already know all that you need to know about what you're thinking. You need to learn what your prospects think and know and desire, so you can match your service to their wants and needs.

Keep it short and sweet. Let's get right to the point . . . a 90-minute presentation is neither short nor sweet. What in the world an agent finds to talk about for 90 minutes I have no idea, but I do know, for sure, that sellers don't want to sit through a 90-minute appointment, and they most certainly don't want to listen to an agent for that long.

Within the first few minutes of the appointment, inform your sellers that your listing presentation will take no more than 45 minutes. Based on my own experience, I can tell you that more than half of the sellers will thank you when you tell them that your presentation will be brief. Many times, I've had clients thank me again when I was walking out the door with the signed contract, sharing their appreciation that I wasn't there all night!