Zero Resistance FSBO Prospecting
How To Prospect for FSBO – Scripts and Plan
There is a ton of information out there on how to get an FSBO to list with you. Working to build trust with a for sale by owner prospect takes skill and a FSBO prospecting plan. With this, you can make FSBO leads one of the largest sources of business for you as a REALTOR. The problem with most FSBO prospecting plans is they are too pushy and create resistance. These old school tactics may have worked in previous years, but leads respond much differently in our modern world and if you are not meeting the FSBO prospect with value, you have little chance at landing the listing.
In this post, you will learn an easy, zero resistance FSBO prospecting plan and you can start contacting these leads right away.
What’s Wrong with The Current Information?
Many FSBO prospecting tips out there center around the same thing: trying to convince the for sale by owner that it is in their best interest to list with you. That is one of the main issues. The scripts and objection handlers all focus on trying to convince the FSBO prospect that their approach is wrong.
The FSBO scripts and dialogues all have some form of this:
“If I could sell your home in less time and net your more in your pocket, would it be worth your time to chat with me?”
There is nothing necessarily wrong with this, however, all your competitors are saying the same thing. By the time you chat with them, they have already said, “no” to this ten times.
The FSBO leads are smart people and they know that you are again trying to “convince” them to list with you.
In this day and age, this approach is failing and REALTORs are facing more rejection when they apply this standard approach.
We know the motivation for listing on their own is they want to save the commission. As a modern day real estate agent, we need to respect this choice and mindset and flip the script to a value add approach.
It you want to land the FSBO listing, you chances will greatly improve with changing the focus, plan, and mindset behind the FSBO.
Zero Resistance FSBO Prospecting
In the zero resistance FSBO prospecting plan, you will be approaching the lead with a completely different approach and mindset. Your new approach will be less pushy and less “salesy” which will lower the leads resistance down to almost nothing.
Step 1 – Set the Face to Face Meeting
The first step in the zero resistance FSBO prospecting plan is you NEED to meet the lead in person. You can begin the conversation over phone or email, but you must meet them in person.
Face to face meetings are where the magic happens. You become memorable and you have an honest opportunity to build rapport with the lead.
When you first reach out the for sale by owner, you are simply trying to book a meeting to see the property.
Most of the time, the FSBO lead will want to know if you are working with a buyer. When they ask this question, you need to let them know you work with many buyers in the area. If you don’t have a buyer for their house, there is no need to lie and say you do, but you do need to let them know you have a number of buyers.
Agent: “I would love to come by and have a quick look at your house to see if it would work for one of my buyers.”
FSBO: “I’m not looking to list my home so are you in fact working with a buyer that might be interested?”
Agent: “I totally understand and not to worry, I have no intention of listing your place. I work with a number of buyers in the area and I would love to see if it could work for one of them. Afterall, it’s my job to know the inventory inside and out for them.”
You are making it abundantly clear that this is not a listing presentation. You just want to have a look around the house.
Step 2 – The Face to Face Meeting
Your appointment has arrived and you are ready for your viewing. This might throw you for a loop but you are not going to go into the home with any intention of listing the home. Instead, you are going to go into the home prepared to tell them that they should have no problem selling it on their own and they may not need a REALTOR.
Have them tour you through the property and provide positive feedback. Take notes and compliment them on their property.
After you have looked around, you are going to say the following:
Agent: “Wow, you have a great property, you should have no problem selling this on your own. With your presentation and marketing, I think you are in a good position”
In saying this, you will be dropping the FSBO’s resistance down to almost nothing. Not only will they feel complimented but you will leave them with a great feeling.
And at the end of the day, if they do sell the home on their own, then that is great. It’s a good thing that there are options out there for consumers. People should have the option to sell on their own!
I can assure you that this will be one of their most memorable REALTOR visits with this approach.
Step 3 – The Sell on Your Own Guide
The next step is to send the FSBO a handwritten card in the mail with a short guide on, “how to sell your home on your own in the [CITY] market.”
Many FSBOs have researched the latest and greatest tips to sell on their own, but chances are they don’t have a short guide on how to sell in your market.
Provide solid advice in this guide as you want to start establishing yourself as true source of value to the FSBO.
In your follow up letter, you should include
“It looks like you will have no problem selling this property. If the day ever comes to sell I’m happy to chat but I think you are well set up to sell on your own.”
With this line, you have planted the seed that you are interested in chatting about listing, however you are doing this using the zero resistance approach.
Step 4 – The FSBO Market Follow Up
With zero resistance FSBO prospecting, all of your income will be in the follow up. This is truly where the money is and most agents will not continue to follow up as much as necessary. You may be thinking that you could start to see resistance creep in with your FSBO follow ups, however, this approach is completely low pressure and comes only from a place of helping the FSBO out.
Every Friday for the next 4 weeks, you will be sending the FSBO market information. It will be in email form will be completely pressure free.
This simple FSBO email is short and will include market activity over the past week. Here it is:
Hi FSBO,
I hope you had a great week, just sending over the activity in the market over the last week. Here are the sales, new listings, and price reductions in your market (LINK).
No need to respond – I just want you to have all the info needed to get your home sold.
Best,
Michael
There are two keys to this weekly email. The first is that it contains useful market information. The second is it contains the zero resistance email hack, “no need to respond.” This is a powerful line that lowers their guard even further and takes all the pressure away.
They will begin to expect your emails and most will really appreciate it.
Step 5 – The Updated Evaluation + Next Steps
After 4 weeks, of sending market information, they may be getting closer to listing their property with an agent. This is the point where you ask for the listing presentation. You have been providing them with value and service while they are trying to sell their home on their own and now they are likely warmed up to you and the thought of selling with an agent is on their mind.
Offer then and updated market analysis on their home. You can let them know you can quickly drop by and go over the updated numbers.
When you go to the property, bring your listing presentation material. Go over the CMA and follow with some of the marketing perks to working with you. You can also let them know if you have any form of guarantee where they can continue to market the home for sale while you have it listed and if they still find a buyer, then no commission is payable.
At this step you are showing them some value in listing with an agent, but you are still not asking them to list.
If nothing comes of this, you ask them if they are liking the weekly emails with the market update, if the answer is yes, then you can put them on automated emails to allow more time for nurturing while freeing up more of your time to continue to prospect.
The Wrap
That is the zero resistance FSBO prospecting plan. If they still aren’t ready to list after you move through this plan, you continue to keep them on automated emails, but chances are, after they have moved through this, they will be getting close to listing with an agent.
You will notice not once do you ask the person to list with you, nor do you try to convince them of anything. You respect their decision to sell their home privately and you provide them with help throughout the process. This builds trust and makes you a top pick if they do choose to list with an agent in future.
Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Rev Real Estate School. The podcast with quick tips and actionable advice to help you sell more real estate in today's world. And now your host Michael Montgomery.
[00:00:10] Hello and welcome back to Rev Real Estate School. I'm your host Michael Montgomery and today we are talking about the zero resistance first sale by owner prospecting plan.
[00:00:21] This might sound like it's just not possible. How do you get a For Sale By Owner to have no resistance? Well in this episode we're going to break that down and make sure you go to the show notes for this episode so you can really work through each one of these steps.
[00:00:37] First off let's talk about what's wrong with the current information out there. Oftentimes when you're researching how to best prospect for first sale by owners you're getting something like this sort of script,"if I could help you sell your home in less time and net you more money in your pocket would it be worth your time to chat with me now." There's nothing necessarily wrong with this. It's just a lot of first sale by owners have heard this or they may have even heard of that exact day if they're newer on the market. We have to start going about this prospecting in a different way. We have to start thinking about it in a different way which leads to different conversations that we're going to have with for sale by owner leads. You'll notice with the zero resistance first sale by owner prospecting plan. There is very little pushy or sales these sort of approaches to this. It's just a very human approach where you're starting to build a relationship with somebody that may need some help to sell their home. If at the end of the day though they sell their home on their own or if they don't want to work with a real estate agent that's totally fine. It's good that there's options out there for people so we don't really want to come from this place that they need to list with us. We want to come from a place of do they need any help. And if not that's fine let them sell their home on their own. So let's jump into the steps.
[00:01:52] Number one make sure that you book a face to face meeting. So this can't really be done over the phone. And when you are face to face with somebody you start to build real rapport with them. Try to do everything you can to get in front of them and the beautiful thing about real estate is this is very doable because they have something that they need to show you. But the big question is this the first sale by owner lead will of course ask you, "are you working with any buyers in the neighborhood." They want to know if you have a buyer for their home or if you are looking to list the property. This is a script that I would recommend: you're basically saying I'd love to come by and have a quick look at your house to see if it would work for any of my buyers. From there, the first sale by owner might say I'm not looking to list my house but if you are in fact working with a buyer please let me know and I'd love to show it to you. And then you can respond even if you don't 100 percent have a buyer for that home. You can respond by saying I totally understand and not to worry I have no intentions of listing your place. I just want to have a look at your home because I do work with a number of buyers in the area. And after all it is my job to know this inventory inside out. If I can have a quick five minute Look I can then send off the information to them. How does that sound? That's a lot more approachable and you're making it abundantly clear that this is not a listing presentation that you're just having a look at the house because you work with a number of buyers in the area.
[00:03:17] Step number two is when you are actually meeting them face to face so your viewing day has arrived and this might throw you for a little bit of a loop but you're not going with listing documents you're not even going with marketing material. You are simply 100 percent going to look at the home when you're at the property have them to hear you through the home and take notes as you're going through and compliment them provide them with positive feedback on the property let them know if they're doing things right. This is really really important. And then after you've had this face to face meeting or they've to review around the home in person you just want to say wow you have a great property you should have no problem selling this on your own with your presentation and marketing I think you're in a great position. You're complimenting them again and you're saying look like in this market and how you have this presented you shouldn't have a problem selling it on your own. And at the end of the day if they do sell it on their own like we said off the start no problem whatsoever. What you're doing here is you're reducing the resistance yet again you're letting them know that you're not after their listing. And at the end of the day if they do want to list for somebody of course you want to be that person that's first in line. But this whole approach just lowers their resistance like crazy.
[00:04:28] Next after you've toured the home you want to send them a handwritten card and send them a how to sell your home on your own in your own market guide. This can be a short little guide and a lot of for sale by owners will have done their research on how to sell their home but chances are they don't have a guide on how to sell it within your market. This can be a short little document that you send to them with the handwritten card that just has a few tips and have true honest tips on there on how they can best present their home or how they can price that home strategically within your market and then in the note you just want to say something like this and this somewhat plants the seeds you say it looks like you won't have any problem selling your home if the day ever does come to sell though I'm happy to chat about it but I think you're in a pretty good position and set up to sell on your own. Again we're reducing that resistance. This is all about lowering the resistance so that you are not the salesperson you are the person of value.
[00:05:24] The next step, so after you have done that and sent that off in the mail this is where the follow up comes into place. So this is step four and the follow up is typically where we start to get a little bit more pushy and we're not going to do that. And step four of our follow up it is all about providing them with information and the information that you have is market information. So it's a simple email that you're going to send every Friday for the next four weeks. And all it's going to have is market information. So it's going to go something like this high seller. Hope you had a great week. I'm just sending over the activity in the market over the last week. Here are the news the new listings the sales and the price reductions and then include a link. And then at the end say, "no need to respond." I just want to make sure you have all the information you need to sell the home. So two big keys here. Number one is you're providing truly useful information that will help them sell their home which is great. The second part is the No need to respond. This is a very very powerful line that really reduces pressure. They do not need to respond and you're letting them know this is great and oftentimes you won't necessarily get a response but they will very much appreciate the e-mail and they will begin to expect it. After four weeks of that you move to the updated evaluation and the next steps process.
[00:06:44] Now you've known them for about a month and after that after those four weeks you want to reach out to them and say, "hey do you have any interest in getting an updated market evaluation on your home?" This is a basically an updated CMA and you will head over to their home and provide them with an updated market analysis at this point in time. You'll probably bring some listing information and some marketing information you'll be showing some value in using a listing agent but you will not be asking them to list you'll simply be showing them you know when we market properties we do this. Finally at the end of that you do want to ask them if they are liking getting the weekly e-mails just with things that are happening in their market. If the answer to that is yes and they're not looking to list yet no worries then put them on an automated email for what's happening in the market. It's just an automated coming from your MLS system with what's happening in the market. This frees up more of your time to go out and prospect new people but still keeps nurturing them as time goes on. If after four weeks though this is typically the time that we see the frustration setting in for the first sale by owner if not even a little bit before this. This meeting can be very very timely and if everything's gone well and the resistance is lower they might just ask you to throw it on the market especially if you have some level of a guarantee or you have something where they can still continue to market the home on their own and if they find a buyer there's no commission payable. These sort of structures. So if you have something like that that last meeting is where you put that into play so that's it. It's very simple and all you're doing is you are just reducing the resistance and you're coming there with a level of value. And this is one of the issues that we see with a lot of expired prospecting as well as for sale by owner prospecting where it's really coming from the place of why they should list with you. And you're trying to convince them instead what you're doing here is you're providing them with information to actually help them sell on their own. And by lowering their resistance you greatly improve the chances that you will be the agent that they choose when it comes time to put it on the market.
[00:08:49] Thank you very much for listening to this episode. Remember you can ask a top producer anything. All you need to do is rate review the show head over to our Web site. Let us know where you did that. And a top rooster will give you a call and you can have a chat about anything. Thanks so much for listening and we will see you in the next episode.
[00:09:03] This episode of Rev Real Estate School has come to a close. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back here for the next lesson.