Most sellers believe that placing ads in local newspapers and magazines is an effective way to market the sale of their home.  As soon as they get impatient, they wonder why their listing agent isn’t spending more money advertising their home for sale.

An agent must be prepared to deal with this question.  Although it may be obvious to agents that for the most part very little success can be attributed to print advertising, an obvious answer is that as many as 90% of all buyers are searching the internet before making the decision to buy.  The problem with this answer is that it’s hard for an agent to distinguish themselves from other agents because every company claims to have the best internet exposure.  Additionally, sellers believe that this answer is just an excuse for the agent to use to avoid spending money marketing their home.  Listed below are two great approaches to use to address the advertising issue with your sellers.

1. Documenting Where Buyer’s Come From: make a list of all of the buyers that have purchased homes from you.  Include with this list their names, addresses, and source or what prospecting program generated the buyers.  Even better, ask your company to provide a list of the hundred most recent buyers and their sources.  The list will show that practically no business came from print advertising.  Approximately 60% will have come from buyer’s requesting information on a company’s listing through the website, realtor.com, yard finds, and open houses.  Most other buyers will have come from past clients and sphere of influence networking.  Some will probably come from direct mailings.  The list is documented proof of which marketing programs work.  Ask your sellers this question, “based on where our buyers success has come from, where do you think we should invest our time and effort?” 
2. Repeat Business from Experience and Reputation: most of our business comes from repeat business from over “____” agents that have been with our company for a very long time.  These buyers and sellers listen to us because of our experience and reputation.   Our agents have a great wealth of people that they deal with.  Our company staff and market share back this up.  As you can see from our documented list of where our buyers come from, by giving the highest level of service to our clients, we get a tremendous amount of repeat business.  This is one instance where “who you know” makes all the difference.

Remember, when you just say something without having documented proof, it’s much less believable and much less impactful to your buyers and sellers.