Few real estate agents or brokers prepare the real estate sales process on paper. They believe that it is a process that they already dominate, what they have in their mind and they execute it without more. However, each property entails a similar process or protocol of sale, but not the same e.g the process of Blue World City is different than Capital Smart City.
An exercise that I recommend to real estate agents when they acquire a new property is to write in detail what is the process of selling that particular property from when it is captured, until it signs the sale before a notary.
This exercise is essential when selling a new real estate development; being one of the parts of the strategic marketing plan that the Sales Manager must design. In the case of a real estate agency has several properties to sell and planning this process helps to better identify how the commercial budget will be invested.
Having represented in a graph or in a series of steps the process of selling a property has proved very effective so that the agent acquires a joint vision of what he needs to do to sell the property quickly. Let’s see what this process of real estate sales consists of.
It is advisable to indicate in the process approximate dates to perform the different actions; Thus, being written, we do not require ourselves to comply with them, since this graphic is visible to everyone and we want to keep our professionalism in the eyes of others.
The real estate sale process consists of 4 major phases : recruitment, preparation, marketing and negotiation. Let’s look at each of them separately.
The Real Estate Sales Process: The Collection Phase:
The sale process begins before capturing a property, because if an overrated property is captured or under unacceptable conditions, it can hardly be sold.
In addition, the time spent in capturing and in the following phases negatively influences the sale of the remaining properties that are already available.
Every agent or agency needs to have a recruitment plan that indicates what kind of real estate to capture, in which number by category, how many must be captured minimum by category per month and in which area it should capture it.
Then you must establish a promotional plan to get the owners to go to the agency or agent offering their properties. I will not comment on this article how to establish this plan, because I would need a long explanation. Just indicate that my students implement 4 different strategies to achieve it. On average an independent agent captures following these strategies 1-3 properties each month. An agency between 5 – 8 properties.
Then you must have a strategy of visiting the owner. Here you must work with an already prepared script that indicates the guidelines to follow: how to visit the property, what questions to ask the owner, how to help establish the sale price, how to inspect the property, what documentation to request and the conditions of collection.
The objective of this phase is to always capture real estate that is salable and at market price.
The Real Estate Sales Process: The Preparation Phase.
This phase includes the preparation of an informative dossier , (it is an internal document for the agent; not for the client) , which details:
1.- The legal documentation of the property.
2.- The physical data of the property: square meters, rooms, floors, exterior, location, etc.
3.- Documentation to get a mortgage or loan for the purchase of that property. You may need it for some clients and if you need it, it will be a factor that will play in your favor to sell the property quickly.
4.- Extract the benefits that the property provides based on its characteristics. You need between 8 – 12 characteristics per property
5.- Create an ideal client avatar for that property. Definition of ideal buyer and selection of target audience. This helps tremendously in the next phase of commercialization.
6.- Prepare the photos and / or videos of the property in the appropriate formats for use in different social media and on the website.
7.- Prepare a description of the property following the rules of real estate copywriting. You need a description of about 800 words.
8.- Upload the photos and / or video of the property, along with its description to the website.
To do your job well you will need at least 2 days to complete this phase. Detailing features and benefits properly is not something that can be done in a couple of hours. Performing all this work before the next phase will provide you with a good knowledge of what you sell and this will be reflected in the focus of your advertising.
The Real Estate Sales Process: The Marketing Phase.
This phase is generally easy to implement only if you already have a defined marketing plan for your business. The effective marketing of a property means looking for the right angle of promotion (text or messages) and the appropriate means to reach your target audience quickly.
This phase consists of selecting the most appropriate means to promote the property. You should not depend only on real estate portals, or try one way after another. The strategy to follow is to publish in all the means and forms that are possible.
This entails having the right budget and this is where many agents and agencies make a big mistake when creating a global budget and not an individual budget for each property. The rule that you must follow and that will help you tremendously to sell fast, (between 2-3 months), is to allocate a percentage of the commission of each property for promotion and try to invest everything. Do it and you will realize that as you sell you will need less% per property to sell it.
The other part is the writing of the real estate ads for each medium where it will be promoted: Facebook, Google, Bing, Portals, Classifieds, email marketing campaign, etc. Here you should use real estate copywriting and know very well how online real estate advertising works.
This phase of the real estate sales process is not as easy as it seems, if you do not first have a marketing and sales plan for your real estate business. If you define the ideal buyer badly, it will take time to sell the property; And if you don’t spend time writing effective advertising, you won’t get enough requests.
The Real Estate Sales Process: The Negotiation Phase.
This phase includes preparing a script for incoming and outgoing calls if the agent has some clients that may be interested in this property.
The script of incoming calls will allow you to filter really interested customers from those who are not; which will save you a lot of time and work in the next phase.
You must also prepare the information that you will send by email to those who request information.
Then you must prepare your argument for the sale of the property that includes: know what answers to give the most common questions that customers would ask about that property, know what questions to ask to gather more information to help you sell the property
Then you must prepare the protocol to show the house that includes how to explain the benefits of the property.
You must also prepare the closing of the sale: phrases to use so that the client makes a decision as soon as possible. Better a No now than a NO within several weeks. Kindly demand date of decision making and how to act depending on the reservations, (if any), of the client.
I recommend that you first have a meeting with the interested client before showing the property on sale. If this is not possible, try to keep it around a table later. Holding a meeting “before” or “after” showing the property increases the chances of purchase more than 50%. Shown.
In addition, it may be that in the previous meeting one of the parties or both realize that this property is not adequate and therefore it is possible that the client asks the agent to help him find the property he is looking for.
If the customer decides to buy, what should you do? In this case you must prepare the documentation to be provided by the owner and by the buyer for the sale.
There will be times when you will have to help get the mortgage credit if you want to sell fast; so you should know well the protocol to get the credit, including necessary documentation to provide and interview with a bank.
If the client has not decided where to apply for the mortgage, ( or better yet how to request it), try to be the one who informs you about the terms and conditions of the mortgage offered by a particular bank, (which your agency or you will have chosen for good conditions offered).
Do not let the bank advisor inform you for the first time about these terms and conditions; The sale may not be executed at the end. On the other hand, informing your client about this issue increases your credibility as a good professional.
How can you check, in the process of real estate sales you should leave little at random and have every activity scheduled to be carried out. The more organized you have this protocol, the more in control you will feel and know what you have to do and when to do it. It is the best way to sell fast.