Real Estate Agent Live Call: Step by Step Listing Presentation 101

It's not so much about even the marketing, but also the agent and how motivated they are to sell it. You can explain to her, if she says how many other homes would be sold, how long have you been doing this, stuff like that. You could just be honest there and be like, you know what, I'm not the most experienced agent. I have not sold the most homes in this area, but there's not going to be anyone who's more motivated than me to make this happen. This is a big listing, you say that. I mean, this is a big listing for me. It's a big opportunity for me, and I do not want to let you down.

This is a huge reflection of what I can do, not only as a person but as a real estate agent. I have a lot riding on this, and this is really what's going to help my career out in the long term. I'm gonna make sure I don't do anything to mess that up. I'm gonna go above and beyond what any other agent is going to do, just because this means so much to me. I've said that to clients before, and it's the truth. They love the realness of it, and they know that sure, there are always going to be other agents who do more sales than you and who have more experience than you.

So that's never a game that you can win, unless you're like 80 years old and have been doing this since you're like five. It's never a game that you can win, so you have to play to your strengths. If your strength is this is your only listing, you're going to give it a hundred percent of your energy. You're going to give it a hundred percent of everything you have, and you have a lot riding on it. You've never been more motivated to sell a house before. That's it. I mean, there's no way they would turn that down.

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here. So some of you know when I hit a hundred thousand subscribers, I gave someone free real estate coaching for life. Eric was the winner of that, and shortly after we spoke, Eric ended up getting his first listing appointment as a real estate agent. He then just reached out to me asking if we can go over what he has prepared already and what I recommend to actually get the listing.

Then I asked if he's cool if I record it for YouTube, and Eric was so kind to say yes, I can record it because there's no sense in me doing this if it just benefits one person. If I could just record it and then the whole internet could see it, and YouTube could see it. So, thank Eric for allowing me to record this. We haven't spoken yet, so I'm gonna give him a call and see exactly how he got the listing. Hopefully, you guys can benefit a lot from this, and then I'll give my thoughts on what you can do while you're in a listing to make sure you have the best chance at getting that listing.

So let's call Eric.

Well, what's up, dude? So first off, if you wouldn't mind starting from the very beginning how you got the listing appointment, because I'm sure a lot of people just want to know how that even came up. That's exciting, dude, congratulations! And I'm telling you and everyone else watching, cold-calling expireds like you just did is a goldmine for anybody with even zero experience.

Never done it before? Experience is just like the best thing ever! Think of it this way, if you got it that quickly, imagine what is gonna happen when you start doing this every single day. Then you get more people in the pipeline, and then you get better at doing this, and then you start setting up like one of these a week. As you get more comfortable, you start setting up like two a week, and then all of a sudden you've built your entire business off of cold-calling expired listings.

Yeah, so here's what I recommend. What do you have prepared right now? Let's start there. Work, you have a listing agreement and then a comparative market analysis? No? You know for marketing and what I'm gonna do to sell the home? I was going to explain her verbally just because I don't have any materials at all.

Okay, so let's start right there. In the future, I would like to see something prepared. Now, I know it's hard to prepare something before you actually have a listing. Prior to that, you don't really have any examples with your name on it. I just, in the future, recommend finding something similar to what you're gonna be doing, just to give as examples. Whether it's going to be postcards, brochures, you know, setup sheets, just really anything that you have. I recommend at least getting that prepared ahead of time – right now I mean it's too late, but just in the future, you're gonna get many more listing appointments, so this is just gonna be something that you're gonna learn as you go along.

One other thing I want to mention, that even with my help on this, I'll give you my thoughts. The thing that I've noticed is that you generally will end up messing up the first few times. Even though you know all the right information, you can have everything set up; it's just a matter of getting used to it and becoming more comfortable with it over time. So I don't want to say a hundred percent because you know you're gonna do a great job at this, but a lot of it is a learning experience that you're just gonna get better with over time.

You're gonna be so much better than next time this happens, than the next time, the next. So by the time you get to the tenth one, you're gonna be a pro at this. When it comes to these little things, like what's happening right now, it's just a little learning experience, and then you improve and make sure it doesn't happen the next time.

Pretty much, I agree with you. I agree with you 100% on that.

So let's start at the very beginning. You're gonna show up with those two. I like having the CMA available. I don't usually go right into that. Here's what I do. I'll give you my thoughts about what I do, and I don't use any sort of script or anything like that. I really kind of play it out by ear.

But the first thing that I will do is, first of all, research the background of the home. You want to know everything about the home. How big it is, what the lot size is, if it were ever last listed, they purchased it, and for how much, and also how much they own the home. Did you do that?

Okay, and do you know when she last bought the property and for how much? Oh, that's so important! That’s probably one of the most important things you can do. You want to figure out if she just bought it a year ago, ten years ago, or thirty years ago, if it's paid off, how much, and what type of loan did she take out when she bought it?

All of these things! Normally I'd recommend taking samples of your marketing materials. What I would do is just bring samples of any brochures that I send out, any postcards I've sent out to neighbors when you launch a listing, any setup sheets that we do. I show them the quality of the materials that we use, a little bit about myself, and some of the listings that I've sold. If you're just starting, if you're, you know, just starting out, it's a little bit less important. I would like to see in the future, you have some sort of samples of marketing materials.

But again, at this point, it's better I think we just go in there with as much information as possible in terms of your knowledge of the property. But like I said, cold calling just to practice. There you go, it's gonna happen! The more you practice with these expired listings, the more listings you're gonna end up getting.

So here's what I would do. I would go in and show up, maybe like a few minutes early. I never like to show up too early; I absolutely never show up. If your appointment is at, like, you know, 2 p.m. show up at like 1:55 or something, just like a little bit early.

Ask the seller to give you a tour of the home. Always do this! Never get into the listing right away. You always want to build as much of a connection with the seller as possible. So, always go in and say something like, “Would you mind giving me a tour around the home?”

Throughout the tour, honestly just ask any questions you have. Ask what they've done to the home, ask what upgrades they've done to the home. Ask best little questions just about it. If you don't know what sort of material something is, just ask and get them talking about their house.

Also, get them talking about why they bought the house in the first place and talk about why they're considering selling and where they're gonna be going from there. Just really any question to build a personal connection. I would never go in straight to the sale. Very few people ever really want that.

There are some people, by the way, they just want to sit down and be like, “How much is my home worth? What can you do?” That's a small minority of people from my experience. They really like to be warmed up. Just, I think you just want to get to know you and see what you're about.

At the same time, it's important you get familiar with the home! No, I think one of the most important things in real estate, just because they don't know this business, is a lot of trust. Trust is pretty much a main factor to this. So building rapport, I think I always do with any of my clients, buyers or sellers.

Perfect! So that's how I usually like to start out. Again, like I was saying, why are you considering selling? Perfect! The reason why she ended up buying another house? Cool!

Once she gives you the tour of the home, I recommend sitting down, and that's where you can start to get into more of these specifics about it. Again, any time you're in a listing, I really like to make it more about what they want than about what I necessarily offer and do. I make it all about them.

In terms of this, a question I would like to ask, because my standing is that this is expired, it was on the market. It's finding out why they think it didn't sell and what they thought could have been done better. Basically, you can take all of these things that they say and just improve on it. They will basically tell you how to get the listing!

They will tell you, the reason we didn't sell is because we didn't have good pictures, or the reason we didn't sell was because we came on too high and then we lowered our price too much. But now it's a really good price, but by that time we had a stale listing. You know, the agent wasn't available to pick up their phone, or the agent wasn't showing it on weekends. They will tell you every single shortcoming of their listing in a way that basically it just serves it to you on a platter because you just do those things. You do whatever they feel like was lacking.

Agent—huge one! Perfect, any time they say seasonality, unless you're listing it like the week before Christmas, homes sell year-round. It really doesn't matter; seasonality is just a thing that is really an excuse for, you know, maybe this is why we didn't sell. It's never a reason for not selling.

That's my thought in terms of price. Where do you think they were priced at? Because you did the market analysis on the property! And like I mentioned to everybody watching, you should be very familiar with every home that comes in the market. If you're farming an area, you're looking at expires, you should know everything else that's on the market and have a basic understanding of what it's worth.

What is your thought on the home's value from when it was listed? What I saw from the scene is it's overpriced by about $30,000. It was listed at 625, they lowered it to 610, where they should have placed it at 599 to begin with because it's worth $600,000. So they overpriced it in our market where every other home is listed under values. You create competition, so the previous listing pretty much ruined the whole sale by overpricing it and leading buyers away from the home. I don't think it got a single offer.

Crazy. Okay, so here's where I would stand in terms of price. I never like going in and just saying to them, this is what I think it's worth, and this is what I would like to price it at. Usually, what I will do is ask where they want to price it, and I'll see where they're at first. If they say no, you say a number first, and I usually counter back with, I'd like to hear where you're at.

I'm not gonna change my number whatsoever, but I'd like to hear where you're at first, and most of the time they'll tell you what they think it's worth and where they want to price it. You don’t want to offend them. I mean, let's say the property is worth, you know, 599, but they're just like, we want 699.

At that point, you know, ease into it a little bit more than just saying it's worth 599 and then killing it altogether. You just want to be a little bit more delicate, you know the further you are away from the priced from your opinion to theirs. Just be a little bit more careful about what you say and just really ease into it in a way that's easy for them to understand.

So that way, it's just not like these polar opposite views that they really know to rationalize why you came up with this number. Show them the comps first and then ease into it. It sounds like if they're at like a 610, it really does sound like anything with a five in front of it would be a little bit more enticing. So once you ask them, let's say they do say it's worth like 610.

Let's say they say it's worth 600. Say something like, “You know, if this is the truth, which it sounds like it is,” say that was exactly what I was thinking. Then, it’s important that we go in at a price that entices buyers, that gets buyers willing to write an offer.

I would never like pricing something within like a round number! So if you're gonna price it like 610, it's almost always better to come in at $599. There are like no points for like 605, 610 – those just seem like way higher numbers than just a $599.

The same thing with anything—like I've seen some priced it like a million twenty-five. I'm like, why would you price a million twenty-five when you can price it at $999, which is psychologically so much better than every other listing out there, and just sounds better? You're gonna get more activity!

The more activity alone will generally drive the price up higher than if you just ask a stupid number to begin with, like a million twenty-five or something like that. So I always recommend, come in whatever number you know it’s worth, but come in just a few grand below that. That really ends up getting the most activity.

I had another listing, by the way—here's just to give you an example. I had this house priced—the house was worth two million dollars. Ever like day-in, day-out, 3 million dollars, the seller wanted to ask. I think it was 2.1 because it was worth two. They figured, okay, 2.1, and we'll be able to negotiate down.

A lot of sellers say this, I don't want to price when the property is worth because we’ve got to have some room for negotiating. I explained to them the downsides of that and how that would greatly limit the activity that we get and we're gonna end up negotiating anyway. So I explained it's better to come in at a really competitive price, and instead of coming in at what it was worth at two, we came in just under that at like 1.975.

We ended up getting so much activity that we got more—we got $150,000 more than what the home is worth because we underpriced it. We created a ton of activity, we had hundreds of people in that open house, and we ended up selling it within the first few days.

So it's those pricing strategies that really end up benefiting the sellers more! You could explain to her all of this if she wants to come in at a higher price to leave room to negotiate. You can tell her realistically what's going to end up happening is that it's not going to be a very desirable listing, and we're gonna lose a lot of the leverage.

The truth is the first few weeks of a listing are the most well. That's your chance to get the highest price possible, so always within a few weeks—after a few weeks, let's say let's call it 30 days—after about 30 days, the seller generally loses all of their leverage.

But because you were priced like that, then I think—$599 or $575. The thing is, this—you don't want to tell her $575 and for her to get offended by it. The whole point of the $575 is to get a higher price, but you just have to be very confident that the home is worth the $600 and that you're not going to price it at $575 and then it just sits there.

One thing I always tell sellers is this. Sometimes sellers are worried about underpricing something, and my thought and from my experience is always this. A home will generally sell for what it's worth, pending you do what you can as an agent in terms of marketing and showings.

The home is generally, assuming you do all of those things correctly, is going to sell for what it's worth. The market will always—the market always speaks for itself! Again, unless you kill the listing by really bad pictures, not picking up your phone, making it impossible for people to see it and write offers, or there's something pending on the property, like a really bad tenant, or the seller just not wanting to show it.

Aside from anything like that, a property will sell for market value, provided you give it the exposure. I always recommend staging. Generally speaking, the seller is going to be paying for staging. Generally speaking, sometimes they might want to split it with you, and here this is usually something where I'll say it depending on the listing and the client.

I usually ask this—at most, in situations the seller won't pay for staging. I'll say if you pay, I don’t call it $6,000 for staging. You're generally going to recoup this cost because buyers are going to end up paying more and offering faster than a vacant house. A home just always looks better staged.

Some buyers—even the best buyers—just don't have the imagination to see a home that's empty. They just can't vision themselves in the home. I would say that's a lot of buyers. They just don't have the imagination to figure out what goes where and to really imagine living in an empty house.

I always recommend staging. What I like to do is if you can get them quotes for stagers. If you don't know any stagers, ask a few people in your office who you recommend and say this is something I would like to set up for you. I don't know exactly how much it's gonna cost, but what I would like to do is recommend that you stage this property. What I can do is I'll set you up or I'll give you a few recommendations for stagers, I can meet them here, I can get you some bids, and you could decide at that time if it's something you want to do.

I highly recommend you do it because I think it's one of the best ROIs that you can get on this listing. Sometimes you can agree, listen, you know, I'll pay for half of it if that's something you want to do. I don't recommend just offering that from the very beginning. If it's something you want, again, go for it!

Sometimes I've seen that you pay upfront and that you get recompensated back when the home sells. You can work out a lot of these little things with the seller. I generally recommend that the seller pays for it, so that's my recommendation when it comes to staging.

One other thing that you can do that I forgot to mention in the very beginning when they're giving a tour throughout the home, if you see any upgrades that you think they should do, recommend them. So one of the things I often see, especially with a vacant home, the walls just might be like really scuffie or dirty. I explain to them that listen, if you spend a few grand in painting, it's gonna look so much better than if you have a wall that's like scuffed up or walls that are like really weird colors—especially if you get there like kids' bedrooms.

So it's always the kids' bedrooms that are like neon green and pink and blue. I always recommend the seller paint these rooms. Sometimes little things like that will make a big difference. Also, landscape clearance. Sometimes they have overgrown bushes and trees and grass and things like this. I always recommend, listen, just pay a gardener a few hundred bucks to clean all of this up.

It's gonna really help our listing out. Things like this really do make a huge difference! Sometimes it's impossible for me to go through and just name everything off over the phone because a lot of it is just noticing in person. And it gets easier too when you've done your own renovations if it was like, oh you should do this or you should replace that fixture, and like this how much it's gonna cost.

So, it's hard for me to think of anything.

Pressure's on! I'm gonna make a follow-up video on this. If so, I'm gonna share it with everyone on YouTube, that you got this listing, because I want you to get this listing! Now you say you have to get this listing; there's no excuse not to get this listing. I'm gonna put you on the spot because now you have no choice but to get this listing.

I'm gonna say probably five to fifteen thousand people are probably gonna see this, and you got to get the listing! You have all the subscribers! Comment down below and wish them luck in getting this listing. Now you're gonna have all of these people commenting good luck; better get this listing!

I never said you're gonna fail; the person is your gonna get better as you do this over time. You're gonna mess some stuff up; it's just part of the learning process. But now I want to make sure you get this listing, 'cause it's a cool house!

I did not—I don't know. I imagine $600,000 in LA and I'm like, Adam, you know whatever, but this looks—it’s pretty amazing! This video can get a thousand likes; he's going to get the listing! So make sure to smash that like button as well! 2,000 likes, and also Kevin gets to fix his drone if we hit 2,000 likes!

Okay, and then you need to be doing open houses on this every Sunday. Explain the importance of doing that; explain the importance of pricing you're right from the very beginning; explain the importance of getting really good pictures on something like this.

The pictures they did are nice! I would do two things: say you're not only going to do daytime photography but evening photography! It's just going to set a different vibe because the front of the house in the daytime looks good. Promise if this same picture were at sunset, it would look 20% better!

So you're gonna do daytime and evening photography. I also recommend that you tell her to do open houses every single Sunday. I also recommend for both you and the listing that you send out postcards to all the nearby homes.

I don't care if it's a few hundred homes! Get a list from the title company of the nearby few hundred homes, maybe in a quarter mile, or maybe half a mile, or a mile radius. I don't know how many homes around here, a few hundred homes. Send an invitation to the first open house to every single one of the neighbors.

It's going to cost you a few hundred bucks; it's not only marketing for the house, but it's marketing for you as well as your real estate agent. Do both of that and tell her you're doing that. Very few other agents will do that; it's amazing!

But the home, yeah, I mean, just here's the thing—I would just tell her that's what you're going to be doing, and make some postcards. Send, make them as high-quality as you can because this is just a reflection of you and what you offer.

So I would just go all out with this one, and it's just good marketing. All the neighbors are going to know about you now; they're gonna know about the listing. You sell this listing; it pays for itself and you got marketing from it.

Do that! It's not so much about even the marketing, but also the agent and how motivated they are to sell it. You can explain to her, if she says how many other homes you'd be sold, how long have you been doing this, stuff like that.

You could just be honest with her and be like, you know what, I'm not the most experienced agent. I have not sold the most homes in this area, but there's not going to be anyone who's more motivated than me to make this happen!

This is a big listing! You say that, I mean, this is a big listing for me. It's a big opportunity for me, and I do not want to let you down. This is a huge reflection of what I can do, not only as a person but a real estate agent.

I have a lot riding on this, and this is really what's going to help my career out in the long term. I'm gonna make sure I don't do anything to mess that up. I'm gonna go above and beyond what any other agent is going to do just because this means so much to me, and I've said that to clients before, and it's the truth.

They love the realness of it, and they know that sure, there are always going to be other agents who do more sales than you and who have more experience than you. So that's never a game that you can win unless you're like 80 years old and have been doing this since you're like five!

It's never a game that you can win, so you have to play to your strengths. If your strength is, this is your only listing, you're going to give it a hundred percent of your energy. You're going to give it a hundred percent of everything you have, and you have a lot riding on it. You've never been more motivated to sell a house before. That's it!

I mean, there's no way they would turn that down. I wouldn't necessarily, if they don't bring it up, I wouldn't say there have been eight more experienced agents, blah, blah, blah. I would just go into, I’m the most motivated; this means a lot to me.

I want to do my best to prove myself; this is an area I want to break into. This would be a big opportunity for me, stuff like that! Well, if it goes there, you know what the same—when it comes to actually then closing the deal, what I usually like to say is something like, well, I’m ready when you are! I can have this, you know, photographed next week. I can bring them some stagers, you know, this weekend, stuff like that.

But in order to do that, I'll need the listing signed, and then you go over the listing contract that you have printed out. You better get this listing! There’s a lot riding on this, and I want to see you get this listing, really!

Yeah, good luck! Alright, you guys, he better get this! I really want him to get it because now I feel like I'm personally responsible for him getting this listing, and if he doesn't get it, you know, I don't know, I feel like now that’s on me too!

So fingers crossed he gets it! I hope this video is helpful; I hope you guys enjoyed this totally last-minute video. So anyway, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it! If you haven't subscribed already, make sure to smash that subscribe button.

Also, feel free to add me on Snapchat and Instagram; posts are pretty much daily. Feel free to add me there. Then also, I hate being this guy, and I'm not like the sales dude; he's always pitching stuff, but I just do want to mention if you're interested, I do have a course that covers all of these topics and like a hundred other topics about becoming a real estate agent, getting leads, calling expired listings, getting listings like this, going through the listing appointment—everything.

The link is in the description; it's called the Real Estate Agent Academy. It covers a ton of topics—basically everything I know about being a real estate agent and almost now ten years in the business, condensed into eight hours straight of content. If you guys are interested in that, the link is in the description. If you're not, that’s cool too; I'm still making, you know, tons of videos on here, and nothing is changing.

But anyway, if your interest in that, the link is in the description. Thank you again for watching, and until next time!