As an agent in Colorado Springs, Weyland Betha admits the competition is pretty stiff. Because of the military bases and the stable housing market, many other people opt to embark on a real estate career, and Weyland needed to find something that helped him stand out from the slew of other agents.
“Here, it’s everybody knows a Realtor, or their neighbor is a Realtor,” he says. “So, yeah, there's a lot of competition.”
One day, Weyland discovered Authorify while surfing social media and decided to give it a try. He was immediately thankful for the investment, not only for the books but also for the other training materials that came with his membership. The listing presentation, in particular, was appealing to Weyland for how it walked the seller through the process and sold them on the benefits of hiring him.
Using the Easy-Close Listing Presentation
“I liked the pre-listing package and the listing presentation. Your listing presentation is far above and beyond any other listing presentation I've ever done because it actually shows value to the clients and that you're actually on their side,” he says. “A lot of agents will come in and say, ‘Hey, I'm on your side.’ And then they'll try and differentiate a price from what the sellers have. But this listing presentation shows how to bring the house up to value to get what they want. And that's huge.”
Weyland says the presentation, including the comps, is useful for showing sellers what they can reasonably expect in selling their home. After a price is established, if improvements are necessary to achieve the price point, the Authorify listing presentation also makes it easier to review marketing strategies to cast the home in its best light, as well as necessary repairs or updates.
Because Weyland starts with cold calling and frequently meets leads who are interviewing other agents, a free copy of his book, coupled with an organized listing presentation, cements his expertise in the seller’s mind.
“I'll just ask them if they're still interested in selling their house. If they say yes, I'll say, ‘How soon are you interviewing agents?’ If they tell me, ‘Oh, we've already had a couple interviews already,’ then I tell them, ‘Great! Not only am I a Realtor, I'm an author, and I write books. Would it be OK if I gave you a book to skim through before you interviewed your next agent?’ And usually, I haven't gotten a no out of that. [Then I say], ‘OK, since you're already interviewing agents, would you mind if I dropped it off at your house? I can drop it off today.’ And I'll do that.”
Taking as much as he can off the shoulders of the sellers, Weyland also offers his own contractor to look at the home and make cost estimates. Though this might mean waiting a bit longer for a signature, he says it makes a listing more probable.
“I just compare the price they have in mind with the comps that are sold on the market, and I say, ‘This is what you're looking for, which is more than any houses have sold for. So, the condition of your home needs to be improved. Do you have the money or the resources to do the improvements to get you where you want to be in your price range?’ And usually they do, and if they do, I say, ‘Great, let me get my handyman in here. We can get him to come in here, take a look, tell you what everything's going to cost and then we can get a timeframe from him on when he'll be done with all the work, and we can sign that day.’ ...So, that helps me get the signature that day, even for the future, which is awesome.”
With the listing presentation and the book, Weyland was even able to overcome the infamous “commission objection” that so many agents dread.
“[It was] kind of a shocker to me because any listing appointment I've ever went on, of course you get the listing objections, and then you have to go through the commission objection, and you have to go through the commission objection handler. With this ... they see the value in the book. They read the information and kind of skim over it. Just them actually reading a book helps them overcome that objection of, ‘OK, will you lower your commission?’ Because, I guess subconsciously, in their minds, they're thinking, ‘Hey, this guy has a book; he's worth the full commission.’"
Establishing Repeat Business
An agent’s best strategy is to build relationships and get referrals later on, and Weyland feels this has been easier with his Authorify membership. Weyland recently listed more than one property for one client — which he attributes to his books.
“I did mail her the book. So, when I showed up to the listing presentation, she had the book on the table. So that tells me she read the book,” he says. “She told me at the time that she wasn't interested in selling that house because she had a townhouse that they were upgrading and doing some improvements to, and they wanted to sell that. We ended up putting that townhouse on the market for $193,000, and it sold in 17 days, the highest in the subdivision that had ever sold.”
Following the success of this sale, Weyland heard from this client when she was ready to list the larger property.
“Then, I guess about five months later, after we closed that one, she called me up and she said, ‘Come up and tell me what you think of our house.’ So I went back up there and looked at her house. It's not a stick-built home. It's all concrete and steel. She built the home herself because she owned a construction company back in the day. It's all geothermal and radiant floor heating, so super efficient. ...But looking at the construction and the way the house was built and everything, it was determined best to put it on the market at $1.2 million. So I ended up getting a $193,000 townhouse sold and then a $1.2 million house.”
Want to Uplevel Your Listing Presentations Like Weyland?
Did you know your Authorify membership includes a lot more than your book license? It also includes an assortment of marketing and training materials to help you excel in your business. The Easy Close Listing Presentation Weyland uses contains the following helpful materials to facilitate your listing appointments:
- A visually engaging slide presentation that covers a five-step plan for selling a home:
- Promote the home to more buyers
- Use aggressive marketing to help home stand out
- Showcase the home with high-quality photos
- Improve the home’s condition so buyers fall in love with it
- Use aggressive negotiation tactics to ensure the highest price possible.
- Examples of great marketing vs. poor marketing
- Fully customizable slides so you can add your own photography examples, reviews, testimonials and contact information
Think of our listing presentation as your master outline — you can tweak and change slides to fit your own market and business experience, while following a time-tested format that has helped thousands of other agents seal the deal.
In addition to the listing presentation template, other training materials useful for seller campaigns such as Weyland’s include:
- Templates for letters, postcards and printed materials to send out to leads
- Scripts for calls and voicemails to use in conjunction with your books
- Success courses on the right way to use and advertise your books, plus more
Lessons Learned:
- Sellers will consider you a credible expert if you use your books and employ an organized listing presentation that shows them what to expect.
- Show sellers what you can do FOR them — for example, offer a contractor to look at the home and talk about what needs repairing or updating.
- A great marketing campaign, including a seamless presentation, can help you get repeat business from satisfied clients.
