Dear Friend,

This week we’re going to continue our bankable results series and our conversation on how to sell any listing in less than thirty days.

Now if you missed last week or you’re just catching up, you want to go back and listen to that. We talked about finding and making sure you’ve got a five star seller, making sure that you’ve got a winning storyline that’s going to create the drama and emotion that we need to drive people and attract people to your listing. So now once you’ve got a five star seller, you’ve got your winning storyline, you’ve crafted your story, you’re able to tell it in a way that is going to compel people to want to visit your listing, we’re going to launch a three step process now.

Step One: find the very best financing package that you can for your particular listing.

Now if it’s possible, if there’s a zero down program available for your listing, nothing will attract more interest than being able to use the words “zero down”. So in most areas of the country, zero down is readily available. Right now in some areas of the country it may take a little bit of effort to uncover a zero down program. But even if it’s an eighty twenty program or some way that you can make the statement that somebody can buy this home with zero down payment, that’s going to be what we’re looking for here. That’s going to be the very best thing that you can do.

Now when we’re wrapping our financing around this listing, what we want to do is find the very best loan program that will allow us to advertise the lowest monthly payment. Now here’s the truth about advertising with zero down payment. Not everybody who calls or who is interested in this house will ultimately end up buying with zero down. But there’s nothing as powerful as being able to advertise your listing with zero down and a low monthly payment, a specific low monthly payment number. You know car manufacturers have figured this out for years, especially luxury car manufacturers. You never see a BMW X5 advertised for $59,000. You see it advertised for $599 a month, or $499 a month. Even though in order to get that loan it’s not the very most prudent financial decision. But it does allow you to advertise zero down.

What we’re looking for here is a specific number. So if you can say zero down payment and a specific low monthly payment that would be very, very good in this situation. So zero down, $987 a month.

One thing that you need to be absolutely crystal clear about when you are advertising in this way with zero down payment and a monthly payment is that you are in every way complying with Regulation Z. If you don’t know what Regulation Z is you need to ask your lender specifically what they need to include in the information that you are using to display your monthly payment. Regulation Z is basically a truth in advertising model where you have to if you use a monthly payment disclose the calculations that you use to get to that monthly payment, including the APR, the loan amount and the term of the loan. Your lender will be able to direct you in exactly the way that you need to disclose all of the pertinent information about this zero down. It’s something that I cannot stress enough. It’s a very powerful strategy but you have got to be crystal clear on the fact that you have to disclose everything about that loan. So ask your lender and make sure that everything you do is in compliance with Regulation Z.

Once you’ve got this very best financing package available for your particular listing, zero down payment, whether a seller is willing to take back some financing or whether they’re willing to buy down some interest rate, or whatever it is that you can brainstorm, and figure out the very best and most affordable monthly payment plan for this particular listing. We’re going to take that and use that as the nucleus of building our promotional plan.

Step two: we’re going to set a date for an open showing.

Now if you are not familiar with that term, an open showing is different than an open house. An open showing is getting everybody who is interested in coming and seeing the home to arrive at the house at the same time. So instead of saying, “Open house Sunday from 2.00 to 4.00,” we would say, “Open Sunday at 2.00 pm sharp”. Very different dynamic than saying from 2.00 to 4.00, or from 2.00 to 5.00. If we can do that, if you can get everybody who’s interested in that house to arrive at the same time, a very, very special dynamic happens. And that is something called the auction effect. It’s something where Robert Cialdini, if you remember me talking about this great book Influence, would call social proof, where everybody together all around is seeing that everybody else is very interested in this house and all of a sudden it becomes very scarce. It becomes that something that is desirable yet could potentially be diminishing in supply. So it’s very, very powerful to arrange for everybody to show up at the house at the same time.

So we’re armed with our winning storyline. We’re armed with a financing package that’s very affordable, that’s the very best financing we can arrange, that we’re going to integrate into this story that we’re spreading. And we’ve got our open showing set for Sunday or Saturday at 2.00 pm sharp, or Saturday and Sunday at 2.00 pm sharp, whatever is going to work for you.

Step three: spread the word.

And there are some very simple strategies that we can use that will get the word out about your listing and about the fact that there’s an urgency to this and that we really want to get this listing sold. I’m going to share some of them with you.

Number one: use infobox flyers. If we can put an infobox flyer right out in front of the property, that’s going to let everybody who drives by or who is interested in that property to come up and get information that will let them know the story and will let them know that there’s the open showing, along with any additional information that you want to tell them about the house.

The easiest thing to do is if you look in last week’s Marketing Monday, you’ll see the sample of the layout for the ad that I used to share the story of Tim and Darlene and their townhouse. That would be something that you could put inside the infobox flyer. So it’s a great strategy, very low cost, very effective. Make sure that you’ve got one.

Number two: use craigslist.com. Now craigslist is a great place to spread the word. Craigslist is a free classified service where you can put information about your potential seller, that you can put the story, you can tell the whole story about your seller’s situation, let people know about zero down financing, and let them know that there will be an open showing on Saturday or Sunday at 2.00 pm sharp.

Number three: let the neighbours know. If you haven’t already sent out a just listed card or something that’s going to alert the neighbours that the house is for sale, using that format of the story ad that I showed you last week, we can tell the story about your listing by getting that story to the neighbours. So maybe it’s sending it as a letter if you want to take the time to do that. You can send it in your seller’s voice to the immediate neighbours. If you’re going to send a letter you might send it to the fifty homes right around that listing, maybe just the ones that have a sense of where that house is and might actually know who those neighbours are.

Number four: letting all the realtors in your area know, people who have other homes listed in that price range, people who have shown the house in the past if it’s been listed for a while and you’ve just now sort of adapted this strategy to your listing. Letting the realtors know what the story is, letting them know that there’s an urgency, letting them know that there will be an open showing on Saturday or Sunday is a great opportunity to find buyers who are working with realtors, to get out and come and see your property.

Number five: put flyers everywhere. Another great format that you can use is a half page flyer, where you’re printing on yellow paper. If you go to Kinko’s you can get them printed up for five cents a page, have them cut, very inexpensive, leave them everywhere around in the neighbourhood, just like the format that I showed you last week.

Number six: advertise in a homes magazine, where if you’ve got in your area a weekly home finder publication. I live in Winterhaven and here we’ve got something called the Home Finder. And it’s a weekly newsprint publication that comes with the newspaper and goes into drop boxes all over the town. If you can advertise a quarter page or a half page in there for less than $100, that would be a fantastic place to put this kind of a story. When we were doing the Tim and Darlene ad, we did that in Georgetown, in the weekly newspaper supplement that was all about real estate. We did it on Wednesday in anticipation for the Saturday and Sunday open house. Now if your main publications in your area are things like the big glossy monthly publication, this is probably not going to be the right place for that. We need something where you can have a shorter window or a shorter timeframe, so that people can see that wow, this is happening this weekend, so you’ve got some sort of flexibility in setting everything up that way for yourself.

Next is using lead generation business cards. This is a great little strategy. If you were put together little business card size lead generators that you can give to your sellers to give to people you can leave them all over town as you’re going along on your day. It’s got a picture of the house, and you’re able to put just your headline, “Lovely home for sale. Zero down payment. Free recorded message.” And we’re able to drive people to the information about that property. All of these things cumulatively are really going to help get the word out about your open showing. Another great strategy is if you’re using realtor.com to use some of the enhancement features where if you can put on your banner, you can put information about your open showing. You can change the comments to be in the seller’s voice, telling your story just like we’ve laid it out, letting people know that this one needs to be sold.

If we’re using signs, using a sign in front of your property, it might be a good idea to have a sign writer or an additional sign that says, “For sale. Zero down payment.” Letting people know that this is a special situation, that they can call and get information about this property or they’ll see the infobox flyer, that they can take all that information.

The key to getting your listing sold in less than thirty days is doing a good job of getting the word out about the urgency of this situation. You’ve done everything you possibly can to make sure that you’ve got your five star seller. You’ve got the property priced at exactly the right price or less. You’ve got the very best and most attractive financing package available and you’re creating that sense of urgency by having everybody show up at the same time at your open house.

So give it a shot, let me know how everything is going on the message board if you need any help with this. Check in and let me know how it’s coming along with crafting your story. Let me know if it’s coming along with crafting your pieces to get the word out and I’ll help you in any way that I can. That’s it for this week. Tune in next time and we’ll continue our series on bankable results.