Working with Seller Presentations

The seller presentation can be a very effective weapon in getting a listing. Or it can be totally useless. Much of the effectiveness of a presentation depends on the seller's expectations.

Many times, sellers decided to work with you because they got a strong referral from a friend or colleague. In that case, the "presentation" is often a conversation about price, strategy, and marketing recommendations followed up with current comps and other materials to reinforce the points made in that initial discussion.

But when you're competing with multiple agents to get a listing, you want to show your best face. Certainly, after examining their property, you'll prepare comps, recommendations, and so forth in written form for your meeting with the owners. And, you'll refer to individual pages in the package as you give your presentation. The actual presentation may be informal, or formalbased on your intuition as to what will cinch the deal.

When it's time to give a formal presentation, you might want more than a printed package for the prospective client to use to follow as you give your verbal presentation. You could use a visual presentation delivered on your laptop's screen. If you have a marketing or sales background, you could use a PowerPoint presentation, with slides containing photos, sales and other financial data, and bulleted recommendations. (If you're not a PowerPoint whiz, you can buy templates from companies such as RealtyStar.)

If you want to get really fancy, you could deliver a complete animated presentation with audio, video, fancy dissolve effects, and so on using tools such as Adobe's Macromedia Flash Player or Apple's QuickTime Player to display your video. You'll also need fancy video and animation tools, like Apple's Final Cut Pro and Adobe's Macromedia Flash Professional. This level of investmentof both time and moneyprobably doesn't make sense for most residential properties, however.

I suggest being careful when using computer-based presentations, because technology can get in your way rather than help you. Most people want an agent they trust and feel comfortable with, something that an interactive conversation can demonstrate more than a canned spiel with computer graphics.

Because a polished presentation does show you in a professional light, having one could help separate you from other agents. My recommendation is that you create a presentation template and prepare a canned presentation for your potential client, so it's ready to go if you think that's what the client wants when you actually meet. (You could also offer the presentation after you've had a getting-to-know-you conversation, following the conversational "soft sell" with the "hard sell" presentation.) Whether or not you use an on screen presentation, leave a printed version behind as part of any package of documents you create to show market comps, showcase your marketing techniques, and so on. And if you choose not to show the on screen presentation, you can always point out specific slides from the printed version to show the potential client how detailed your preparations were.

CD Resources: For the presentation software, links to Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and RealtyStar. For links to viewer software, links to Adobe and Apple.