We’ve all heard the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” or “don’t tell me, you need to show and sell me.” but rest assured these old adages hold so much truth for Realtors. Let me ask you this question. Do you tell when you sell or do you show? Do you use images, graphs, video, stats and even pad and pen when you work? You may have heard the story of Willy Sutton the famous bank robber and when they asked him why he robbed banks he smiled and said to them “that was where the money was”.
Imagine if Willy robbed those banks without a gun? By using a visual like a gun it gave him the results he was looking for. Studies reveal that human beings process visuals 60,000 times faster than text. This is precisely why social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest are dominated by visuals. People today are busy and distracted.
As real estate sales professionals, we have seconds compared to minutes to convey a compelling message to help people make a decision in their best interest. And visuals – but not just any visuals as I will explain – allow us to do just this. I’ve seen thousands of beautifully designed listing, buyer and pricing presentations and thousands of not so beautiful listing, buyer and pricing presentations – both with equal ineffectiveness.
This is the first point I want to make — beauty alone will not transform your sales presentation results. Incorporating charts, graphs and high quality images into your sales presentation will help you communicate a message in far less time than text and even a conversation. However to harness the real power of visuals which is to influence and help people make a decision – you need to incorporate contrasting or comparative visuals that tell a compelling, almost shocking, story. Here are some classic examples on how to do exactly that:
- Instead of telling them how many more homes you’ve sold than the average real estate agent: show them statistics, images or lists of all of your career home sales.
- Instead of telling them you sell 92% of your listings– compare this to the board average and provide them with hard data so they have a perspective of what that really means.
- Instead of just saying staging is important to getting a home sold: show them images of a home staged and not staged along with a story or testimonial of how staging impacted the clients home sale.
- Instead of telling people you will do a good job for them: show them written and video testimonials of past clients experiences of what it was like to do business with you.
- Instead of telling people about all the marketing you do: show them samples of your brochures, postcards, flyers, magazine ads and let them touch the samples.
- Instead of telling them about your internet marketing strategies: show them all the different websites you use on your computer and what their home will display like.
- Instead of telling them about your social media strategies: show them all the different social media channels on your phone, ipad or computer and how their home will display there.
- Instead of telling them you use a text mobile lead capture system: show them a live demonstration on how the lead capture technology actually works right in their living room.
The list of opportunities where so many agents tell their clients and not show and sell their clients is endless. Implement this simple, yet powerful idea into your business more and let me know some of your ideas and experiences on how visuals have impacted your business like it did the famous bank robber Willy Sutton.
Strength and courage,
Wade
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