Making Your Presentation Useful and Interesting

Most Agent presentations put sellers to sleep, mainly because most presentations lack interest, usefulness, and structure.

To increase the interest in your presentation, follow this advice:

• Share market knowledge. Become a student of the local marketplace and share meaningful statistics. Also track trends in the national marketplace, both to enlighten your prospects and also to distinguish yourself as a well-read, well-connected, and well-informed Agent.

• Ask questions. Listen in on typical listing presentations, and you’ll hear the Agent talking 80% of the time, with the prospect hardly getting a word in edgewise. I guarantee you that the seller finds that monologue uninteresting.

• Watch the clock. Don’t let your presentation run too long and don’t save the information the seller most wants to receive until the very end. If you put your price recommendation at the very end of a 90-minute presentation during which you did 80% of the talking, you can pretty well predict that your seller will be tuned out.

• What the prospect has to say is more important than what you have to say. Great salespeople do less than 25% of the talking. You already know all that you need to know about what you’re thinking. You need to learn what your prospects think and know and desire, so you can match your service to their wants and needs.

Keep it short and sweet. Let’s get right to the point . . . a 90-minute presentation is neither short nor sweet. What in the world an Agent finds to talk about for 90 minutes I have no idea, but I do know, for sure, that sellers don’t want to sit through a 90-minute appointment, and they most certainly don’t want to listen to an Agent for that long.

Within the first few minutes of the appointment, inform your sellers that your listing presentation will take no more than 45 minutes. Based on my own experience, I can tell you that more than half of the sellers will thank you when you tell them that your presentation will be brief. Many times, I’ve had clients thank me again when I was walking out the door with the signed contract, sharing their appreciation that I wasn’t there all night!

A good, brief presentation results from a proper structure, a clear presentation plan, and knowing what to say and how to convey it.

Many Agents translate the terms structure and plan to mean “canned presentation.” They say, “I don’t want to sound mechanical and scripted.” People sound mechanical and scripted for lack of practice, not because they have a pattern or process to follow. In fact, most people require professional service providers to follow plans. For example, when I board a plane, you can bet that I want the pilot to follow a “canned” preflight checklist, landing checklist, flight plan, etc. I want the attorney who defends me to have well-constructed or planned legal briefs, questions, and arguments.

I am not working to “can” anyone, but the necessity to plan your presentation is essential. You need to have a framework that you are comfortable with, that allows you to deliver key facts, findings, and segments, using key phrases and dialogues, every time you present. I would rather an Agent err on the side of “canned” than just “wing it.”

Other advice:

• Know your prospects. If you aren’t completely clear on your prospects’ interests and needs, you haven’t qualified them well. Acquiring prospect knowledge is truly the key to a good presentation. You absolutely have to secure the right information before going into the appointment.

• Set a goal to keep your presentation to 45 minutes or less. Look at every piece of sales material you present. Does it demonstrate clear benefits to the seller? Does it need to be used? Does the seller understand it? Does it create differentiation between you and the other Agents? As the saying goes, “when in doubt, leave it out.”

• Limit the volume of PowerPoint slides or color presentation binder pages that eat up your presentation time and your chance to dialogue with the sellers. Typically, each page in your presentation – whether it’s on a computer screen or on paper – represents two minutes of presentation time by the time you turn to the page, talk about it, emphasize key points, and ask for questions to confirm your prospect’s understanding. Do the math: 30 pages eat up an hour, putting you well over your time limit before you even get to the contract!

By following this advice, you are on your way to making your presentation one that is useful, structured, and interesting – that all sellers appreciate –, and it will set you apart from the rest.