I believe all superior pre-listing packages have two essential qualities:

- Personal Branding
- The “Less Is More” Philosophy

Personal Branding

In times past, it used to be all about the real estate company you work for.  The company would promote and brand you and they were continually promoting the company name.  People would list their home mainly based on company brand name.

Today is very different: it’s all about the sales person.  Sellers now pick a sales person, not a company name.  Consequently, you need to brand yourself and establish your own reputation for quality and professionalism.

A big step toward personal branding is hiring a professional graphic designer for handling all your marketing materials.  Your investment in hiring a graphic designer will reward you for life in the real estate business.  When you have a skilled designer, you can simply give them a few words scrawled on a page with some basic instructions and ideas.  They will be able to take that info and produce truly professional and impressive fliers.

I strongly believe you should not design your presentation package yourself.  Most real estate professionals are not graphic designers, yet their materials should look great, so they should have a professional graphic designer handle their fliers and any other graphic work they need done.

Remember: you always need to justify your commission to sellers.  When you give someone a handmade, homemade presentation, it’ll be obvious you didn’t have it professionally done.  Doing that simply detracts from your own professionalism in their eyes.  Remember: you are the brand!

The “Less Is More” Philosophy

I also want to stress my philosophy with pre-listing presentation packages: less is more.  When you present your pre-listing package to a seller, it shouldn’t have a lot of writing.  Just give them a snapshot of the topics you present.  Don’t present the past 5 years of interest rates, average selling time, or any other areas.  When presenting to a seller I believe in presenting pages with nice, clear headings and bullet points.  It’s easy for the seller to digest information presented this way while you’re presenting it.

My course Advanced Listing In A High Tech World gives you plenty of ways for improving your listing presentation and closing more listings using the above principles and many more.  This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 and qualifies for 12 Credits.