The very best pre-listing packages have two things in common.  First, they should exude your own personal branding.  Second, they should use the “less is more” approach.  Here’s what I mean by that.

Personal Branding

It’s no longer the real estate company you work for that’s foremost in most prospect’s minds.  Today, people work with a real estate professional who has won them over with their own ability and professionalism, not their company’s.  Therefore, you are the brand they’re assessing, so you must do much more nowadays to establish and build that branding.

One of the foundations of your branding is having a visual image people recognize.  So you should hire a professional graphic designer and have them design and unify all your marketing materials with a consistent and professional image.  Hiring one of these people is one of the very best investments you can ever make in this business.  It will pay for itself many times over.  One of the key things to look for in a designer is someone who can readily understand who you are and what you’re trying to achieve in general and can translate that into marketing materials without a lot of iterations back and forth.  You should be able to give them a thumbnail sketch of whatever you want to create and they should be able to quickly manifest just what you’re looking for.

I want to stress the importance of hiring a professional to do this.  If you try to do it yourself, even with today’s advanced technology and software, it’ll be obvious to your prospects that you did it yourself and didn’t hire a professional.  If you haven’t had a professional do your marketing materials, your prospects will be less inclined to view you as a professional too.  Don’t forget: you are the brand, and if your brand isn’t professional looking, neither are you.  Moreover, if you cheap out on a graphic designer for your own marketing, why would a home seller believe you’ll do anything different when marketing their home?

Less Is More

Adopt the “less is more” strategy with your presentation materials.  You can’t do an effective presentation if your presentation materials have lots of writing.  Your presentation materials should be as brief as a PowerPoint presentation done on an overhead projector to an audience.  Bullet points should be the rule here, and verbally elaborate upon each point to your prospects.

You should also employ “less is more” with the amount of material you cover in any given area.  The sellers really just want an overview of each area.  They don’t need to know detailed data on the past few years of interest rates or market analysis.  An overview style of presenting makes it easy for the recipients to digest.  Of course, the sellers may want more information on a particular area, so be prepared to follow up with this information if you don’t have it on hand.

Learn more in my Advanced Listing In A High Tech World course about how to close more listing presentations. This course has been approved by the Registrar, REBBA 2002 and qualifies for 12 Credits.