Buyers are Wages; Listings are Money in the Bank

There's nothing wrong with real estate buyers, or even working exclusively with buyers. However, if you want to create savings instead of just checking, real estate listings are the way to build wealth.

Get Serious About Seller Content

Sure, you probably have one or more navigation destinations for "Sellers" or "Real Estate Listings Information," but are you creating content at those destinations that will assure potential sellers that you're a local listing expert?

Review Your Content

Do a review of your content for current market relevance and value to sellers seeking information before choosing a listing agent. How long ago was each page/article/post published? Did you write "evergreen" content? That's content that lasts for long periods of time or is of value forever. If you're writing a lot of time-sensitive stuff, keep it on a blog and write evergreen content for lead generation.

Create Content for Specific Lead Generation

For every page or article, you want to have content that's highly relevant to a specific lead generation tool and call to action. Or, you could think of it the other way around—create lead generation and calls-to-action highly relevant to the content of the page/article. Either way, tie your lead generation tightly to your content.

Get Into a Seller's Shoes

First, make a list of the top questions listing leads ask you over and over. If they're asking you in person, you can bet that they've tried to get specific answers online already. Sure, you're going to have a lot of the regular seller-oriented content like listing advice, market information, preparing the home, etc. However, specific content matched with relevant lead generation that adds to the answer the content presents is best.

• "What is my home worth?" – Explain the local market, what influences home prices, how the market moves, features that sell best, etc. That's all good information, but the lead generation tool for this page would be an email MLS report of recently sold homes with features, etc.
• "How long will it take to sell?" – Explain the local market, seasonality, and buyer trends. The lead generation call to action would be the offer to get an emailed report of recent sales and their Days on Market.
• "What kind of first offer should I expect?" – Give examples of buyer types and motivations, as well as how offers drop over time, so accurate first listing prices are critical. Even so, there will likely be negotiations and counteroffers. The call to action would be to get a report of discounts-to-list for recently sold homes. Show them, for example, that recent sales have averaged 4 percent below asking price at the closing table.
• "What kind of repair demands can I expect?" – Of course, this depends on the home's condition, and your content can list and explain the top area deficiencies in inspection reports. Offer a real inspection report as an example of what may be written up for problems. Redact all names and address information.

You're getting the idea—it's all about questions with answers and examples offered via email to get the lead.

Display Expertise

Along with information, listing prospects want to deal with someone they can trust as an expert at what they do. It's their biggest asset, and they don't want to make mistakes. Often they may not realize how many mini-negotiations and decisions a seller and their agent deal with in a transaction.

Real World Examples

Drag out your closed seller transaction files and look for negotiation points, inspection issues, title problems, anywhere you've helped a seller to keep their deal together or better their selling price or negotiating position.

Tell the Story with Documents

Again, you want to be careful to block out any names or other personal information in documents you use. Find that string of real estate listing counter offers that you're proud of in working with a picky buyer, and make notes on them as to your actions and reasons.

Find an inspection and unreasonable repair demands that you helped a seller to deny for the most part and still get the deal closed. Make notes as to your reasoning and advice.

Do this for any other interesting situations you've handled during a transaction as the seller's agent. You can even use parts of a real estate listing CMA, or Comparative Market Analysis, to show how you got the seller their full asking price or a better price than other homes on the market at the time were getting.

You can do these illustrations of real world situations as explanations with words, but offer the documents with attached notes as a lead generation tool. Tell a story of a transaction situation and how you handled it, and back it up with documents via email for leads. Real estate listings are money in the bank, but only after you get that listing agreement signed.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.