Dear Friend,

This week we’re going to talk about how to sell any listing in less than 30 days.

Now if you listened last week we talked about bankable results and we talked about if I were consulting with you one on one the very first thing I would do is look at where are you absolutely closest to making money now. And for most people if you’ve got a listing the very fastest way for you to get the bankable result of a commission cheque is to get one of your listings sold. And so what we’re going to talk about today is some strategies to get any listing sold in less than 30 days.

Now there’s a baseline for participating in this experience and that baseline is that you’ve got to be sure that you have a five star seller, and what that means is that they meet these five requirements.

Number 1: they’re motivated to sell, meaning that they’ve got a reason to move, they preferably have to be somewhere but they’re motivated to sell their house.

Number2: they’re willing to price the house at market value, not above market value, not at what they need, not at what the neighbours sold 18 months ago but at what today’s market value indicates.

Number 3: they’re willing to stage the property so it shows it’s very best. You can’t sell a house that does not show great in a competitive market like today’s market.

Number 4: there are no marketing obstacles in the way. We talked about several episodes ago about this concept of marketing obstacles, things like people saying ‘well we don’t want a sign’ or ‘we don’t want our neighbours to know’ or ‘we don’t want a locked box’ or ‘we have to be here when people show it’ or ‘the dogs are dangerous, we need to have lots of notice, we need 48 hours notice to show’ all those kinds of things are marketing obstacles, they’re things that are not making it as easy as it possibly could be to sell the house. And

Number 5: the sellers are willing to help find a buyer, if they meet all five of those things you’ve got a five star seller. If you don’t, no matter what you do it’s going to be very difficult to sell that listing until you make sure that your sellers meet these five requirements.

So pick the listing that you’ve got right now where the sellers absolutely meet those five or maybe have a conversation with some of your sellers to make sure that they meet those five. And if they’re not a five star seller you’ve got to have a serious conversation about are they going to become five star sellers, what would have to happen to remove the blocks from them being a five star seller and really get on with it?

Now if you’ve got a five star seller one of the next things that I would coach you on is probably one of the most important things that happen when a new house comes on the market. And when a new listing comes on the market there’s a lot of buzz that surrounds it and everybody wants to know what the story is, and that story will end up spreading, it’s the first thing the buyers want to know. The buyers will say ‘well what’s the story? What’s happening? Why are they moving?’ And it’s what the other realtors are going to tell their clients about that new listing that just came on the market so your job is to make sure that the right story is getting spread. So often sellers don’t want to reveal their cards so people are left to make up their own story and often the most important thing you can do is really embrace the story and make sure that all the details about the story get spread.

So here’s some of these story lines that… what I call the difference between winning story lines and losing story lines, so here are some winning story lines.

Number 1: ‘we need to be in Tampa on the 12th of February for Bob’s new job’ that is a winning story because the sellers are in a hurry, they’ve got to get to Tampa for that new job on the 12th, they’ve got a deadline. What’s your seller’s deadline? Do they have a story like that?

Number 2: ‘we found our dream home but we need to sell our house quickly to get it’ that’s a winning story, that’s a story that you can spread that will have positive ramifications, makes your sellers look like they’re motivated, they’ve got a reason to sell, they want to get into that new house.

Number 3: ‘the second or the third or the fourth baby is due in three months and we need more room’ see there’s nothing quite a powerful and I think you’re kind of noticing it here with at least these first three stories that there’s nothing as powerful as a ticking timeline. There’s nothing as powerful as a deadline, ‘we need to get this going here, we’re in a hurry’.

Number 4: ‘we already moved and we need to sell our extra house’ often this is a great positive winning story if we’re talking about an empty house. That’s the creditability of it, the sellers are already gone, they really need to sell this house.

Number 5: ‘we had a great life in this house but it’s just too big without all the kids now’ so there’s a winning reason for somebody selling their house, it’s a big house you could tell people have raised a family there, it’s a single couple now living in the house, the kids are gone, we’re downsizing. That is a legitimate reason for selling a house, it probably is backed up by the fact that they’ve lived in the house for ten or 20 years, it’s a winning story.

Number 6: ‘mum just can’t keep up with the house now that dad’s gone’ that’s a winning story line. If somebody has been left now, they’re getting older, they had a spouse that recently died or they’re in a situation where they just can’t keep up with the yard work, it’s a great story, that is a positive winning story.

Number 7: ‘we’re getting divorced and the court ordered us to sell the house’ now that is a great story, often this is the kind of story that people do not like to tell. See often what happens is people end up sort of wanting to hide their motivation, they look at motivation as a bad thing, they don’t want people to know that they’re motivated to sell the house. But I’m going to show you in just a few minutes that that’s a wonderful thing for you.

Number 8: ‘we can’t afford this house anymore’ again it’s the truth and it’s a great story and a lot of times people don’t want to tell that story because we always want to look good. Number nine, ‘the bank owns this property, it must be sold’ or ‘it’s in foreclosure’ those are great winning stories. We know that that’s what people are really looking for, people look for a deal. Now if you notice the common elements in those stories you notice that they’re mostly about a timeline, they’re mostly about a definite reason why we need to sell this house, why we’re motivated to sell the house. And if you can adapt your situation to one of those winning stories it’s a great opportunity for you.

Now here are some losing story lines, this is often the stories that get told that are unintentionally being told about your listing.

Number 1: ‘we’re not going to give the house away, if it sells it sells’ that’s a story line that your sellers may be trying to sell you on. ‘we’re not going to give the house away’.

Number 2: ‘the house down the street sold for this price 18 months ago and ours is nicer’ well that may be true but we’re not in the market 18 months ago and just because something happened 18 months ago doesn’t mean that that’s true today. So that’s not a winning story, that’s a losing story line.

Number 3: ‘we need to get this price because that’s what we’ve got in it, we’re not trying to make a killing we just want to get our money back’. See ‘we need to get this price because that’s what we’ve got in it’ has nothing to do with what market value is, it has nothing to do with what the reality of today’s market is.

Number 4: ‘we need to get this price or we can’t buy the bigger house we want’ well that’s interesting it’s along that same lines right, the market does not care what your sellers need to get to buy the bigger house that they want, the only thing that matters is what’s the market value of the property today.

Number 5: ‘we don’t have to sell, we can wait’ that maybe true, that’s a losing story line, if that’s the attitude that the sellers have, if that’s the attitude that is driving them then that’s probably exactly what’s going to happen and maybe they should wait if the situation is that they can wait. But a lot of these times these stories are used to mask and to hide the reality of the real story, whether it’s a financial need, whether they have to sell the property, whether they have to sell the property because they’re moving. The very best thing you can do is embrace the true story of exactly what’s happening.

Let me give you an example of how we can do that. I had clients one time who had some a house or bought a house conditional on them selling their townhouse, they’d always wanted to live in the country and they had found the perfect house for them, they hadn’t put their house on the market, it hadn’t even entered their mind, it just all of a sudden this house as an opportunity came and we took advantage of it, they put in a conditional offer but the house they were buying was very popular and they were going to have to sell their house pretty quickly. So we ended up instead of trying to hide that story, instead of trying to play the cards close to the vest we let that story come out.

Now take a look at the sample ad above here where we had a picture of the townhouse and the headline was ‘we need to sell our Kingsmill townhouse this weekend and we’re willing to sell it for $5,000 below current market value’. And then we had a little dateline, this looks just like a newspaper article. ‘My name is Tim Alberts, my wife and I have lived in Georgetown for three years now, it’s always been our dream to get a house in the country. Well last weekend we found the house of our dreams and we made an offer to buy it. Here’s our dilemma, we had to make our offer conditional on selling our Kingsmill townhouse and we only have two weeks to get it sold. We have a beautiful holly model with a finished walk out basement, a big deck off the kitchen where we sit and watch the sunset over the escarpment. My wife is a bit of a perfectionist and our townhouse is immaculate, if we had more time we’d be asking 147,900 and it would probably sell for 145,000. I know this because the last two holly models sold for 142,500 and 142,000 but they didn’t have a finished basement or a deck. Anyway that’s what we’d do if we had more time but we don’t, we need to sell our house this weekend, that’s why we’ve decided to sell it for $139,900 so we can be sure to sell it in time to get the house we really want. We’re having a open house this Sunday at 2pm sharp and will be accepting offers on Sunday night after the open house. Our real estate agent has set up a recorded message with all the details about our house and directions on how to get here, you just need to call in 1800555 or if you’d like to see it after the open house you can call our real estate agent, his name is Dean Jackson and he’s with Royal and Page at 905. To be fair to everyone though we’ve agreed not to show the townhouse before Sunday.’

Now we ran that ad one time in the local real estate publication, we had that open house that one day on the weekend, we ended up having multiple offers and selling the house ultimately for I believe 145,000, exactly what the real market value was, more that the 139,900 that we were asking for. And that is a winning story, that’s the kind of situation that we’ve been able to use again and again and again by embracing the reality of what the story is, getting the story out there in a truthful and honest way and doing something that makes it beneficial for the buyer to buy that house and gives them a winning story to tell about the great deal that they got on this house because the sellers had found a house that they really wanted. That’s all people really want, is they don’t want to look stupid, buyers I’m talking about, they don’t want to look like they got taken, they want to have a good story to tell their friends and their family about the house that they just bought.

So think about your listing right now, what’s the best listing you have that fits in one of those winning story lines that has an opportunity to tell a story that you can craft using this Tim and Darlene story as an example, and I’ve posted it up there on Marketing Monday for you to take a look at. But write one for yourself, send it to me at MarketingMonday@gmail.com, I’d love to see the stories that you’re working on. And tune in next week and we’ll talk about even more ways that you can use some wonderful strategies to get any listing sold in the next 30 days. So that’s it for this week, have a great week and I will talk to you next time.