A Letter To Expired Listing

Ten Reasons to List With Me

Today I received a expired listings sample letter from a very ambitious, hard working agent. He wanted my opinion…

Nice headline, well-thought out points explaining why this particular agent is a head of the completion. Strong impressive selling points, and all the facts that are important. There is, however, one fundamental problem with it. It’s not a good letter for expired listings. At least, not at the beginning. Here is why…

When a listing expires, sellers are bombarded by agents with letters and calls. And the message is always (or most of the time) the same:
1. “I know why your house didn’t sell. You had the wrong agent and wrong price.”
2. “List with me, I’m different/better/expert/specialist/top producer, etc.”
3. “I sold many homes”

Now, those are all relevant messages, but why don’t they work on the first approach? I’ll give you an example…

Let’s say you want to buy a car. You walk into a dealership, look around, and a salesman approaches you: “Hello, my name is Joe Carguy, I’ve been in business ten years and I’m the top producer of this dealership, I won three awards this year, and I sell to 93% of all customers that walk in.”

What’s wrong with the picture? The first contact is all about Joe. You don’t care about Joe. You care about a car. Do they have what you want? Is it a good choice? Is it priced well? Can you test drive it? How much can you get for my trade in?

So back to expireds… The first contact (actually several early contacts) need to be all about THEM. On the phone, in letters, postcards, in any contact.

Make it about the seller, because that’s what they care about, and that’s all they want to hear. The rest is simply an advertising noise that ends up in the trash.

It’s that old saying slightly modified: Show us how much you care first, then we’ll care who you are and what you can do for us.

Download the First Contact letter and the Follow Up letter here.