Power Sales and Marketing Tips

Do the unexpected!

Consumers have expectations of how people should act and respond in given situations. As a real estate professional part of your job is to "sell" or market real estate. When your prospective clients interact with your product (or you) they expect to see and hear certain behaviors. For example, at an open house the expectation for a prospective buyer is that there will be a friendly, smiling agent at the open house to answer questions and tell them about how wonderful this house is.....in a general sense that is what everyone is doing and therefore it creates an expectation.

How to use the home inspection service to do the unexpected.... As a sales representative, every prospective client expects a certain amount of salesperson-ship in your efforts to find them a home or earn their trust for the listing. That is what everyone is doing, in order to be different you must a-c-t different.

Acting different can be something as subtle as the clothes your wear or the words you choose in conversation both of which can be powerful differntiators. Acting different can also be more process oriented. A good example of a process oriented approach is how you, the agent, facilitates the home inspection process.

The expectation for a home inspector and report is that the information is independent and unbiased (perceived as high value by your client). So how can you (who is likely not a home inspector) use the services of a home inspector to do the unexpected? Here is a tip: Gather up all the documentation that you can about the property; use the transfer disclosures, old home inspection reports, pest reports. Gather all the information about previous repairs, upgrades, improvements, other positives about the property or home.

Once you have gathered all the good and bad (bad is a matter of perception) information about the property, bust out your word processor and make up a table listing all the known issues on the left and all the positive attributes on the right. For each of the known issues, have contractors provide a solution (this could be an estimate and a scope work), this really takes the guess work out of the equation for the buyer. You could also demonstrate how you adjusted your list price to accomodate these known issues and bolstered your price because of some of the unique amenities (better school district, tile floors, new roof, ect). In a tougher market for sellers this approach could literally save your clients thousands of dollars at the negotiation table and make for a far smoother transaction.

In the 15 years that I have been going to open houses, I have never seen this type of one page document. For the record, I am not a real estate salesperson, but I do possess over 15 years of sales experience in a variety of industries (software, home inspection, insurance, automotive sales, ect) and therefore I can't guarantee that this will work but I can assure you as a person that if I attended an open house and saw this type of document presented with the flyer, I would perceive you, the salesperson, as an advocate, as honest, of extreme value, and of course, different.

If you are looking for a home inspector that you can team up with to bring value and service to your clients please consider my company, Envirovue Home Inspection for your next referral.

http:///www.envirovue.com