Episode 34 - Five things every successful listing agent must have in their business!

**Episode 34: The Five Must-Haves for Successful Listing Agents**

**Welcome Message**
- Host: Bob Mangold, The Listing Coach
- Podcast: If You List, You Last
- Episode: 34
- Highlights: Gratitude for listening, sharing, and downloading

**Main Topic**
- Focus: Five essential components every successful listing agent must have

**Join the Community**
- Facebook Group: Real Estate Asset Advisor
- Engage: Share thoughts, comments, questions, and topics

**Market Update**
- Importance: Understanding employment numbers and their impact on real estate
- Details: Employment trends, government statistics, and real-life implications for agents

**Key Discussion Points**
1. **Employment Numbers Analysis**
   - Importance of job market understanding for real estate
   - Discrepancies in government reports vs. private sector data
   - Economic implications for real estate agents and clients

2. **Five Must-Haves for Listing Agents**
   - **1. Database of Likely-to-Sell Homeowners**
     - Focus on demographics likely to sell in the next 6-36 months
     - Examples: Divorce leads, home flippers

   - **2. Unique Selling Proposition**
     - Crafting a compelling elevator pitch
     - Emphasizing results and proof of delivery

   - **3. Effective Sales and Marketing Process**
     - Creating competition for listings
     - Detailed marketing strategies and client communication

   - **4. Conversion Conversations**
     - Moving beyond scripts to conversational selling
     - Role-playing and practice for better client interactions

   - **5. Comprehensive Listing Presentation**
     - Outlining systems and processes in writing
     - Providing proof of past results and clear schedules

**Closing Thoughts**
- Encouragement: Implement the five components for success
- Resources: Join the Real Estate Asset Advisor Network for further guidance
- Weekly Classes: Overview of services offered every Thursday at noon Eastern

**Call to Action**
- Website: www.creaoverview.com
- Join the Facebook group and engage with the community

**Final Note**
- Reminder: "If you list, you last."

Join our Facebook Group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestateassetadvisors

Visit our website to watch replays of our Wednesday "Elevate Business Briefings" at: www.RealEstateAssetAdvisors.org

Download a copy of my book, "If you list, you last!" at www.IfYouListYouLast.com

Transcript

 Hey, welcome fellow listing agents, Bob Mangold, the listing coach here with episode number 34 of the, If You List You Last podcast. As always, hey, thanks for listening, sharing and downloading. Now today we're going to have a pretty cool topic and be pretty concise but it's going to give you the five things every successful listing agent must have in their business.

And the good news is if you don't have it now. It'll tell you what it is that you need to go out and find. So make sure you join our Real Estate Asset Advisor Facebook group so you can join in on the conversation, share your thoughts, post comments, questions, or any of the topics that I discuss right here on the podcast.

So let's get into it. So our market update for this week. I want to reiterate for you again why it's important to understand some of the things that I cover here, right? So today we're going to talk about the employment numbers that were released last week And how does that impact you as a real estate agent?

Number one is it gives you an idea of what's going to be happening in the future, right? Right now not too many people worry about losing their jobs, but they're going to need to start Paying attention to it because it is getting worse. How does that affect us in real estate? Guess what guys they're not buying houses if they're worried about losing their job and they may be looking to sell, cash out on some of that equity in case they do. 

But what is important is I share this information with you, not because I want to turn you into an expert or they have to understand every single piece of it, but it does provide you the ability to take and do some research, right? You can go into chat GPT and say, Hey, is why is the business establishment survey important? 

It'll give you the answer. So it'll certainly make you sound much more of an ex or sound much more like an expert in the real estate field if you do this, but it's also important because it does help you guide your clients  who may have some of these concerns. And then it also allows you to have an intelligent conversation with people about it.

So last week, basically the jobs number came out. from the Business and Establishment Survey, right? So that's your BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics, who are giving this information out. Now it's important to understand, folks,  These are government bureaucrats releasing information  that may or may not be true or even accurate.

So the number that came out was 206, 000 versus 200, 000. You go, Oh, that's not bad. But remember, I've talked to you many times now about these numbers and the revisions. So over one month, they've revised 111, 000 jobs down.  So they come out with this big number of, in this scenario, 206, 000. But in reality, It's missed by 111, 000.

And so at the end of the day, you've got to ask yourself, why are they doing this? Why would you say that, Hey, you're adding all these jobs when you're really not. And again, remember 2023, 1. 1 million jobs were reportedly added  and then they were revised away. So their numbers were off by 1. 1 million jobs.

Like how do you miss that folks? And so the question becomes why would they do that? And in my opinion, now we're at election interference at this point. You're releasing these numbers to make the economy sound like it's better than it is when it's not. Then we have the birth death rate, and if you haven't listened before, it's not of people, this is of businesses.

How many businesses were born, how many started, how many went out of business, so they call it the birth death rate. This month the government said that we added 59, 000 new businesses. ADP, who actually does payroll for 25 million people,  their numbers only showed we added 5, 000 jobs. 

Who's right and who's wrong? ADP does payroll for 25 million dollars, or 25 million people. I feel a hell of a lot more comfortable with their numbers, to be quite honest with you. And then of those 206, 000 jobs, folks, this isn't spread out across the economy. 70, 000 were in government. 49, 000 were in healthcare, which the government runs healthcare at this point.

And 33, 000 were in education. And again, who runs education? Government. So what that means is about 150 of the 206, 000 I'm rounding, new jobs that they're reporting came because the government is adding them. The private sector economy is not  adding these jobs into the marketplace. So it's a misnomer to think that the economy is just humming along so nicely here.

That we're adding these jobs. And in reality, it's not even close.  Another thing that's extremely disturbing in the month of June,  just June, we had 28, 000 full time jobs lost and 50, 000 part time jobs added. So is that a net? Increase? Of course it is. But what happens is the full time people are losing their jobs, so they're going out and taking part time jobs, or people can't afford to live on the full time jobs, so they have to go get a part time job.

For the quarter, the second quarter of 2024, we lost 296,  000 full time jobs, but added 336, 000 part time jobs. Folks, what's a better sign of the economy? Adding full time jobs or part time jobs? And then our labor participation rate went from 62. 5 percent to 62. 6%.  Not a huge increase, but all that really says, folks, is we have more and more people coming back into the market who maybe thought they could retire, but really couldn't.

And then there's a number called the U6, which is how the Household Survey rates it. And what it really means, if you cut away all the BS, it really means that unemployment is 7. 4%. Now, the U3 number, again, I won't get crazy on this for you, it increased from 4 to 4. 1.  And there's something on the economic side called the SOM rule, S A H M rule.

And what that means is if you have six months where you increased the number of the unemployment rate from, let's say three and a half, which is what it was in July of 2023 to now being at 4. 1. Once you do that, you've got some economic headaches.  So I share all that with you, not to scare you, but to give you an idea of what your clients, your database, what they're really feeling at home.

And that's assuming we even believe these economic numbers, which I don't. The numbers I look at are the ADPs.  where these are people doing the payroll.  And at the end of the day, those are the ones who actually show what's really happening. I want you to understand that because it does impact the real estate market.

Make sense? So with that, let's talk about some listings, a more positive topic. What I titled this as, is if you want to be a successful listing agent. Successful means, Not just today, but it's next year, next, next month, next year, three years from now, five years from now. What do you actually have to have built into your business, integrated into your business?

And so I broke it down into pretty much five simple things for you. The first thing, number one is a 2, person database of likely to sell homeowners. Now what does that mean, likely to sell? That means in the next 6 to 36 months,  the people contained in that database have a high likelihood of selling.  Now we know that based on some different parameters.

So if you've attended any of my Elevate Business briefings, like on who's selling and how to find them before other agents, one simple demographic of that is people getting divorced. We know that 67. 5 percent of every homeowner that gets divorced, 67. 5 percent of them will sell their home in the next 24 months.

Imagine having a database like that full of people and then those leads coming in over and over again now if you Want to learn how you can get access to those divorce leads? Go ahead and schedule a call with me. You can just go to www. brainstormwithbob. com And I can walk you through how you can access those so that every month you have a new list of people coming in that Just filed for divorce that own a home I've had some people say, Oh, that's tacky.

Folks, they're going to sell their home anyway. And if you understand that you're the best agent for them and that you can help that family through that process and that time  and help them get as much money as possible from their home, I would suggest to you that you're doing them a great service.

But in order to take and have that database, you're going to need to take and structure those people, right? Another demographic would be flippers, home flippers. Let's say that you could get a list of every home flipper that sold five or more properties this year.  And you could start working with them and all you had to get was ten of those flippers doing five homes a year.

That's fifty homes a year. What does your database look like? And so I do a whole Elevate Business Briefing class on who those people are and we can help you find that at the Real Estate Asset Advisor Network.  So it's critical, I always tell people, if you want to be successful, you have to talk to 10 people a day. 

Hey, sounds great in theory, but there's only so many FSBOs and cancels. Where do you go from there? And the answer is you go to your database of people that are likely to sell. And there's different strategies that we have for accessing that database. It could be a cold database. How do you warm them up and things like that.

And we have a process for how we do that so that they begin to recognize your name.  And that's really what it is. And then at that point you can start reaching out. But if you don't have somebody to talk to every single day, folks, you're not consistently going to make money. That's all it is. And if you don't talk to those people every day, then you're consistently going to have an issue.

Number two is a unique selling proposition. Maybe you've heard it called your elevator speech or 15 second speech or stadium pitch, whatever you want to call it. But a unique selling proposition simply outlines the results that you're going to achieve for your seller, along with proof  that you can deliver those results as you promise.

So it's got to be done in about 15 seconds, 20 seconds is fine. But if somebody says why would I hire you to list my house? Say, hey, that's a great question. Is part of my goal to help every single client I work with build their personal net worth and personal wealth.  My number one objective when I list a home is to protect your equity, to put as much money in your pocket as possible.

And I can do that through a process that I have that takes me 14 days, eliminates all the hassles and headaches, and I can get you the highest market value guaranteed in those 14 days. The best news of all my fee. is half of what a traditional or an old fashioned agent would charge you. Would that get your attention, if you could say that to people?

Gosh, imagine that like on a postcard that you would farm a neighborhood, or you had that at an open house when people came in, or you were making social media posts like that. So when you have a unique selling proposition like that, you can build your whole business around it. Make sense?  Number three, an effective sales and marketing process designed to create competition for your listings.

Folks, what we know with 100 percent certainty,  when buyers compete, sellers win. Now, we don't have to convince the consumer of that. They know what's happened to their real estate since 2020 and that the results are just, through the roof about what homes are worth.  The question for you though is what is your sales and marketing process look like  and what do you tell them you're going to do to create competition? So the, one of the slides in our listing presentation, teaches people think think about selling your home like fishing. What the average seller does and the average agent does is they put it into MLS and they may run a few Facebook ads and throw it in the 300, websites that nobody's ever heard of. 

At the end of the day, folks, that's not enough to create competition. Then you just sit and wait. So think of Hey, I'm out on a pier and I'm fishing and I throw my line into the water.  I can only catch one fish, right? That line is your MLS. When  all you can catch is one fish, who has the leverage in the negotiations?

When you have one fish on the line, the buyer does, right? And their job is to negotiate the price and the terms down. Okay. Our choice is that we fish with the net. We're going to get a lot of potential buyers interested in your home, willing to submit offers.  When we do that, we put us ourselves in the position  that we have all the leverage in negotiating price.

And if we do our job right and create a lot of competition, we even give them the process to be able to take and pay whatever they need to pay to get the house they want. That's what the Home Boss listing system is all about. It's designed to create massive competition, give the buyer the ability to pay whatever they want to be able to get the house, ensuring the seller gets the highest market value. 

But you actually have to have a process when you talk to people, right? So we have a blueprint that we literally send them before we go on a listing presentation that talks about, here's what we do. It says, here's all of the processes that we do. Here's the checklist that we use. Here's how we handle the open house.

This is what the agent at the open house does. This is what our marketing looks like. This is when it starts. This is when it ends. And we lay it all out for people to be able to see why, because it gives us credibility and expertise. And remember this folks that, there's an old saying. I'm sure most probably heard it.

If you're telling. you're selling. If you go into a listing presentation and you're talking about why you're so wonderful and you're a company and you're this and this is why this ad works so well and things of that nature, when you're telling folks you're selling, when you can demonstrate your expertise and you can fulfill the number one objective that the seller has, which is to get the highest price and the only way to get the highest price possible is to create competition.

How do you do that? What's it look like? And do you have it in writing? So when you have a process like that, you're going to, you're going to be able to have a lot more success in a listing presentation. Number four, conversion conversations.  I say that most people would say, Hey, that's a scripting.

I just need good scripts. What I will tell you folks, while I have scripts and I have them all written out, I hate giving them to agents because what happens is people then begin to just read them. Good afternoon. This is Bob with XYZ Realty. How are you today? That doesn't work folks. It just, you have to have a conversation. Being if you don't do that and you can't get skilled at that, let's face it, if you can't get appointments and you can't convert those appointments into listings because you're not saying and doing the right things you don't have closings.  It's just that simple.  And so you have to learn how to take and talk in a conversational manner with a format, right?

Like maybe an outline. Think of it as, hey, I've got an outline of things that I talk about. Okay. What I hear, probably the number one thing I hear  supposed gurus and trainers teaching agents like, so sit down with people and find out what their goals are. So I want you to think about this sitting down in somebody's house.

So you go so what are your goals for this house? Think about that as the seller. They're going what the heck kind of question is that? My goal is to sell a damn thing. You fool. We sound stupid when we say that. I'm sorry. We just do. What we say is, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Seller, in my experience, there's really three things  that sellers want.

They all want the same three things. The first is to get you the absolute highest price.  The second is to get it done quickly. And third is to eliminate the hassles and headaches that of an old fashioned listing. The listing the way that every other agent does it, and you've got to be, keep the house clean and all those things.

Those are the three things that everybody wants. Is there anything else that's important to you  about the process of selling your home? Now, the truth is, folks, in all the years I've been doing this,  nobody's really ever said, yeah this and this, because then I would just add that in.

They go, no, that sums it up pretty well. Great. Would it be okay if I can show you how we actually get the process we use to create competition  for your property and then give people the ability to pay whatever they're willing to pay to secure the house? That's how we can get you the highest market value.

The process that I have allows us to not put a lockbox on your house. We're only going to do a two day open house. So you don't have to sit there and freak out all the time keeping your house clean and all those other things or people knocking on your doors. We're doing a two day open house and that's it.

And my process only takes 14 days. We're going to have it under contract in 14 days, right? So what did I just answer? How do I get you the highest market value? How do I do it fast? And how do I eliminate your and headaches? Do you notice how that was much more conversational? than using a script. Because here's the thing, folks.

If you can't have a conversation with, call it a FISBO, a canceled, expired, a home seller, about really  setting an appointment with you, considering to hire you. And then if they go, okay yeah, come on over and we could talk about it. But then you can't convert that appointment into listing because you're not saying the right things, or you're not doing the right things, or you don't have a process. If you don't do those things, you don't have closings.  So you have to work on your skill at not only what you say, but how you say it. If you notice the pauses that I did in there, sometimes I would act like I'm stumbling. Folks, I'm not stumbling. I know exactly what I'm going to say. It's a script, if you will.

I know it so well because I've said it a million times. But when I can make people feel like, hey, I'm having a conversation and I'm not just doing it, so scripted they're a lot more comfortable. And then what I encourage agents to do is you have to role play that stuff. Once I teach them what to say, then I have to teach them how to say it. 

And then they have to practice it. So if you want to be successful folks, I've never met a successful listing agent that does not spend hours and hours role playing. They just don't. Now what most agents say is, Oh, I hate that role playing. I'm always embarrassed and whatever. I just do it in the house and I'm good on my feet.

My question is, why in the world would you experiment  on what you're going to say and how you're going to say it when there's money on the line, right? Say let's call it a 400, 000 listing, 000. Why would you ever experiment with 12, 000 at stake? Wouldn't it be better to practice that with another agent, a relative, a friend?

Man, I don't care if you do it in front of the mirror, but you don't practice when there's money on the line. Make sense? And finally, number five,  a listing presentation that actually outlines your system, your process. You have to have it in writing. You have to be able to demonstrate your past results  because you go it's one thing to say, this is my process.

The logical question that a seller is going to have is does that work? So you have to answer that. So you have to have documentation of your past results. And then you have to have a complete schedule of what will happen and when the process will be completed. So for us, with inside of our pre list packet, we have the open house checklist or schedule that we work.

So I can sit there and say, folks, if I sat there and dropped dead tomorrow, I can have another agent who comes in and follows this blueprint, this checklist to the T, and will run your open house, whether I'm there or not. When you say something like that, what does that make a seller feel like? Do they have confidence that you know what you're doing?

And that you prepared for this, and this isn't something new to you? Or when you go in, you go, yeah, we can do some open houses, a couple, a few hours on Saturday, and I can do a couple Sundays too. It's yeah, no big deal. Which way would you feel better? And for us, we have proof.

We videotape. We take pictures of our open houses, right? Our open house where we had 1224 people in it. We have video of that. And so you have to be able to provide proof that what you're telling them is true,  right? So it's process first. I have to demonstrate process and then I have to prove it. Over promises.

So if you can have processes proof, or processes and proof over promises, you're going to convert at a much higher rate. That doesn't mean you have to sit there and go through a gazillion PowerPoint slides, and let me show you this, and let me show you that. And, folks, I see all kinds of listing presentations, and I got let me tell you about my family, and little Joey here, and then, and people don't care about that.

They really care about three things. How much are you going to get me? How fast can I get this done? And what are you going to do to avoid all these headaches?  That's really what they care about. It doesn't mean they don't care about you or that you're a nice person. Don't get me wrong. But to spend 10 or 15 minutes on doing that, I, in my opinion, is crazy.

And I can document the results of our 20 minute listing presentations are far more effective than 90 minute, 2 hour presentations. I don't know why any agent would have to do a two hour listing presentation. But if you don't have that documented, like in our listing presentation, folks,  I think we have 14 slides. 

And we do that because we do it on Zoom.  And we're able to share these things. And what we're really sharing is conceptually what is when I say, hey, selling your house is like fishing. If I show you a graphic of somebody putting one line in the water. And then, hey, if you've got one person and you're negotiating, what way is the price going to go?

And the answer is down, right? And I show you a visual of that. So I tell the same story I just told to you listening. I just have a graphic for it. But then I do have slides where we prove, hey, here's another home. This is how it sold. This is how many offers we had. This is what our open houses look like. 

Proof over promises. is going to make all the difference. So the reason that I say having a listing presentation is important, number one, you have to know what to say. And what we did with ours, we created it in Canva. So if somebody does it on zoom, they can actually share their screen on zoom and they can actually read what we tell them to say.

I don't want somebody to sit there in, just read this, right? So like I have notes for this podcast and it says, Hey, finally, number five, right? If I said, and finally, number five, a listing presentation that outlines your systems Your processes, which must be in writing, your past results, and a complete schedule of what will happen and when the process will be accomplished or completed.

How robotic does that sound, folks? So what we do is we give people the talking points, our agents the talking points, to be able to take and run through that slide, get it out, get it done, and then we record them. We actually send them a recording of our listing presentation. At the end of the day, they have our guides, their checklists, all that.

We send them video proof of the things that we told them. We have all that for them. If you had 2, 500 to 5, 000 people to talk to,  you could give them a great reason to hire you. A unique selling process, a proposition. You had an effective sales and marketing progress, process that created competition for the listings.

You got good at having conversations with people and you actually had a presentation that would outline and prove what you're telling people.  I think we can agree if you had those five things in place, you'd have massive success.  Make sense? Now, if you need help in any of these five areas, folks, you should just consider becoming a member of the real estate asset advisor network.

Now, if you want to learn what we do to help agents, you can attend one of our overview classes every Thursday at noon Eastern time. And you can register for those at www. creaoverview.

com. We designated as CREA, Certified Real Estate Asset Advisor. So it's CREAoverview. com. Why do we use certified real estate asset advisor? When people say to you, what do you do? I'm actually a real estate asset advisor. I teach people how to use their primary residence  to build a net worth in excess of a million dollars. Suddenly now when you go, Oh, I'm a real estate agent, you know how people back away. We don't say we're real estate agents. We're real estate asset advisor. We advise people on how to use real estate to build personal wealth. So if you want to learn what we can do and how we do it, just go to www.

creaaoverview. com and just check out what we do. It's your call, you're in control. So that's it for this show. I hope that helps you out because folks, you need to have those five things. I think we can all agree that those would be critical to your success, right?  So go out and think about how you can do that.

If you need help, you've got all kinds of ways to contact me. Make sure you join the Facebook group. You can always grab me there.  We'll go from there. So that's it for this show. We'll talk to you next week. And remember, if you list, you last. Talk to you next week.