Build a ‘presentation team’ and use them on every transaction

Key Takeaways

• Effective presentation leads to higher offers and less time on the market — so it’s worth doing right.
• Develop a presentation team — stagers, photographers, graphic designers — and use their services even on lower-priced homes.
• Become masterful at helping sellers complete the necessary steps before the home is listed.

When I talk about presentation, I’m referring to how a home comes across to buyers when they browse online or walk through the home for the first time.

Every day I see agents not investing enough time or putting enough emphasis on this critical step. In some cases, it’s because the agent is battling with an uncooperative seller. The vast majority of times, however, it’s the agent who fails to recognize the importance of presentation with their listing.

Here are four ways listing agents can improve a home’s presentation:

1. Hire the right people to help you. Develop an awesome team of professionals who can help deliver the best experience and results for your clients. Hiring the right people to help you, and using them even on the lower-priced homes, makes your presentation really stand out. You might sell a house in one day, and that’s just good business.

2. Learn how to edit photos, or find someone who can help you inexpensively. Sometimes you’ll need to illustrate or point out things on a photo. You might add an arrow and description to an aerial photo to highlight a feature that’s next to a house.

A photo might need its brightness or color adjusted to make it really pop. There are a lot of free apps and more expensive software to help you tweak photos. Learn to use them, or find someone in your office or someone you can hire inexpensively to help you.

Humans are visual. It’s so critical that you deliver astounding photos on your listings.

3. There is a lot more to staging than moving furniture. Maybe you already use a stager or hire one only under certain circumstances like vacant homes or new construction. Staging is becoming more popular because it has proven itself to work over and over again.

Staging doesn’t always mean spending big money. Sometimes it’s a matter of consulting and hearing a professional designer say that a wall color has to be changed or some furnishings rearranged. Agents must become skilled at articulating the importance of staging, because sellers often don’t budget the cost of staging the home to look its best.

4. Become masterful at helping the seller get the necessary steps done before listing the home. There is so much to do before listing a home — de-clutter, clean, move things to storage, touch up paint, clean the garage, landscaping, and maximize curb appeal. Those things all cost time and energy.

Any agent could tell the seller not to worry about those things, because the house will sell just like it is. Yes, it will sell, but it will sell for a lot less. As a good agent, you should become masterful at communicating the importance of these tasks. Then become creative about how you help sellers tackle those problems.

If you become skilled at helping your clients present their homes in the best possible way for buyers, you will not only net way more money for your seller, but your time on the market will be a fraction of what it would have been otherwise — which means happier sellers and fewer hours invested into each listing.

This is why you invest more time, money, and energy up front, before you list the home, so that you are virtually guaranteed a positive outcome and higher return on investment (in less time) for your clients.