11 May Conversion – appraisals to presentation to listing

Getting the appraisal then the listing is a great thrill.  But nothing happens for you until you sell the property.  The conversion ratios along the way can have the potential to double your income.

Topic – Exist to list

Mentor – Aaron Shiner

• Discipline and consistency
• Don’t look for the quick result
• What does your battle plan look like?
• Know you, like you and then they trust you

Transcript:

Kevin Turner: Good morning and welcome to the show. I’m Kevin Turner. Today’s show produced in association with Property Tree from Rock End, Print Force, Locked On and View. If there’s someone you’d like us to interview, just send me a message. You can do it through the website or email me direct at kevin@realestatetalk.com.au, and of course, your questions and comments are always welcome. And as I said, we present the show each and every day with the compliments of View. You’ll get the complete View there. Locked On, why don’t you trial at Locked On? Use the link right here at REM [Cado 00:00:34] Print Force for all of your marketing solutions, and also Property Tree from Rock End. They present our show each and every day.

Announcer: More thoughts now from this week’s mentor.

Kevin Turner: Like with anything, there are various stages on your success journey. Your conversion from appraisals to presentations to listings and then onto sales, but today we’re gonna focus with our guest mentor Aaron Shiner on the conversion between appraisal to presentation to listing. They’re three distinct areas, Aaron, aren’t they? And they require some manipulation and monitoring along the way.

Aaron Shiner: Yeah, I think what they all require, more than anything else, is two things: discipline and consistency. And consistency comes through discipline.

Let me explain what I mean. So many listings are won and lost in the appraisal followup. Yeah, I’d love to sit here on this call as how I … you know, you win all those listings cold. You’ve never met them before. You meet them for the first time. You do this world class presentation, and then they just sign. That’s great if that’s happened for you, but my experience is that’s actually happening less and less now. One of the favourite sayings in real estate is it’s not about who you know, it’s about who knows you, and it’s about the consistency, the followup.

Here’s an interesting stat. From the time somebody first gets an appraisal to the time that they actually go on and list their property, it’s normally about over 11 months. It’s actually close to 11 1/2 months. So what’s my point? So many times we’re gonna go and do this excellent presentation and then we’re just gonna sign it up. Well, the reality is let’s make sure we didn’t mix our words. Not the first appraisal I did, you know, it’s not first, some 11 1/2 months from the first appraisal, so it’s not from the last appraisal you did, it’s from the first appraisal. You may do three or four appraisals over that time period, and now I’ve sort of lost track a bit, but here’s my point. What does your battle plan look like for the next 11 months? What does your strategy entail so you can build a relationship, nurture that contact, and move them from an appraisal to a future listing.

Now, there’s really three phases everybody has to go through before they sign with you. The first phase is they need to like you. Well, first they need to know you I guess. That’s first phase, they need to know who you are. Then they need to like you, and then after they like you then they need to trust you.

So I guess my question is moving forward in this process is after you’ve done an appraisal, how are you moving them from know you, like you, to trust you? Because it’s great, we can talk about scripts and dialogues around closing, fantastic. We can talk about [inaudible 00:03:23] to get marketing, like giving them really good resources after the appraisal so you … So they’re okay from hearing from you, because there’s only so many times you can ring somebody, and say, “Hey are you ready to sell?” I’ve done that before, and people will say, “Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”

So your next strategy is to step one basically got world class closing techniques at the property. Step two make sure you are constantly building rapport. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds, said you gotta build that emotional bank account, you gotta keep putting deposits in so you can make the withdrawal. What does your eleven and a half months worth of follow up look like? And for me it’s around really good resources. Some really good, first class documentation, selling [inaudible 00:04:07], the ultimate home seller checklist, the ultimate home seller [inaudible 00:04:10]. All the different resources that I can go back with and give them to keep adding value to the transaction so every time they hear from me I’m giving them something.

People have said to me in the past “Why don’t you just give it to them at the leasing kit?” Well that’s not what it’s about. You need to leave an ace up your sleeve occasionally, you gotta have reasons to go back. For me, part of that closing process, so even just at the closing of the listing it’s about closing a week from now, three weeks from now, five weeks from now. A lot of agents treat the presentation as a sprint, I look at it as a marathon. Typically, the guys and girls that will win, will win not because we’re better but because I’m the last person, or the only person, at the chequered line, because everybody else sort of loses interest, loses consistency, loses focus and moves on chasing the next immediate listing, immediate gratification, where you have to have that long game focus and plan as well.

Kevin Turner: I’m constantly amazed by how many people in our industry, and I’m not just talking about sales people, but I’m talking about principals, I’m talking about property managers, who just don’t seem to follow up. Which you said, don’t expect to go to the appraisal and get the listing all the time, it just doesn’t happen all the time. It’s always staggering whenever I hear about a secret shopper, where people don’t follow up after an appraisal or they don’t follow up after an initial call. It just does not make sense to me Aaron.

Aaron Shiner: Here’s the reality: you put so much time and effort into finding this person, acquiring this lead, putting them in your database. The next step is follow them up. It’s a lot more effective to talk to somebody that you’ve already got their first name, last name, mobile, address, e-mail, then try to go out and create a new client. I think it’s that constant immediate gratification versus, whatever it is, gratification in the future.

I think the bulk of listings is won and lost, not in the [inaudible 00:06:24], it’s one and lost in the [inaudible 00:06:23]. I get it, there are people that do list very shortly after they find something. But the bulk of listings today, well the average across Australia and New Zealand is over eleven months. All I’m gonna say is, in that appraisal follow up process, if you want to engage your market, you want to increase your market share, you want to get high conversions from your appraisal to list ratio, just really focus on adding value, giving to the process as opposed to being obnoxious, calling them and just trying to chase all the time. And if you do want to chase, make sure you’ve got some good lines.

One of my favourite closes is from Andrew [inaudible 00:07:06], always pronounce his name wrong and I shouldn’t, he’s Greek and I’m Greek, so I should get it right. But Andrew’s one of the very best real estate agents in Australia, he’s based in Blacktown and one of the closes I learned from Andrew, he says “Mr. and Mrs. Seller how’ve you been going, fantastic, look I know we spoke a little while ago and you’re thinking about doing something, can I have your permission to start telling buyers about your property?” I think that’s a great close. When I heard him say it I thought, how about this I’m gonna start using that.

It doesn’t always have to be about can you give me the work, are you ready to hire me, we always make it about us and them. There’s a problem, they don’t want to own the house anymore. The solution is that we find a buyer to take it off their hands. He focuses exactly on the problem and the solution. Do I have permission to start telling buyers about your property? Okay. Every state’s gonna be different, so please don’t mistrue me, I’m saying make sure when they say yes that’s the step to be able to get your paperwork signed. I’m not saying you around and you buy, you do it legally, but that’s the whole point leading into getting your paper signed. Fantastic close. Can I start telling buyers about your property? Oh yeah, I’d love to. What we need to do is, dot dot dot. And do it. Make sure you’ve got some great closes, some great follow up strategies, that’s probably the two things to summarise in a nutshell.

Kevin Turner: Absolutely brilliant, been a wonderful week mate, talking to you about your…I know we could go on for a long time and we do inside [inaudible 00:08:39] of course [inaudible 00:08:42] and you can hear a lot more from Aaron and our great selection of mentors inside the programme. All of the little bits and pieces, videos, audios, and downloads are always categorised so you can go straight to, if you wanna know more about listings, you wanna know about presentations, wanna know about VPA, it’s all in there and individual listed. That’s a long winded way of saying thank you Aaron, but thanks for a great week and look forward to talking to you again soon.

Aaron Shiner: No problems KT, it was my pleasure.

Announcer: Helen Keller says when one door of happiness closes, another opens. But often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. I’m Jet Xavier, have a great day.

Aaron Shiner: Thanks once again Jet, that’s it for today and for this week. Thanks to our contributors this week, thanks to you for your company. Have a great weekend, we’ll catch you again on Monday morning.