Coming Soon and Going Live
All right, listing agents, here are some best practices for listings, coming soon and going live. So these are your items here. The first thing is that we’re going to cover and this is how I’m going to explain daing, that’s like the alert that goes out. That’s the best time for the most interested people get this information. OK, so, for example, when it’s coming soon, there’s people that have safe searches and it goes out to them right the minute that you hit coming soon. So everything has to be in there. There’s the same exact thing for when it happens in your real life. Yeah, right. So you kind of talk about that a little bit.
So, you know, coming soon is not syndicated out to any of the third party sites. It’s strictly just if someone has an MLS safe search, it will work in our Web site when you build a safe search in there. So this is really valuable in my opinion. So it gives your clients and you know, it does a lot for us to be able to capture that information and get some momentum going prior to going live and feeding out to all those other sites and potentially someone paying for that lead. So it’s really important that you do it right.
There have been some instances where it’s OK if you know, there’s a particular situation where we need to really go coming soon, quicker or before we have all of the assets, that’s going to be a case by case basis. And it’s going to have to get approval to be able to have that done.
OK, if you do that, guys, it is so important whether you do that or you are in coming soon that you have a good quality photo out there. It’s just the same. This is the first impression you can only go into the coming soon status one time. So your impression out there is really important. OK, so our standard is that we have to have a high quality photo of some sort, whether it’s one or it’s twenty five or however many it is.
My personal status is I would love to have everything completed when you go to coming soon status. Right. And that your client fully knows that they’re ready to go live within 30 days because it has to happen.
And you know, I hear a lot of times, well, my client wants this. Well, if you explain to your client why we do certain things and why our process is this, they’re going to respect that. You take the time and you have put so much thought into it to get them the highest and best price for their home and how it can hurt them if they don’t follow these procedures. So, you know, you’ve got to have that conversation with them up front.
Yeah, sometimes if you drive the boat in, you’re in charge of the agent. Yeah. Then your clients can have a better experience. You can’t in most cases. You should not let your client drive the ship. You’re the professional, right? You’re guiding them through the process. If they’re telling you what to do, then they’re not valuing you. They’re looking for like a discount or rebate, an incentive. One of those words is agents we kind of don’t like be the true professional and add the value and explain why, how and what’s what’s going on there.
I’m telling you, people will respect that. If you if you go through this with them and say, you know, we don’t do that as a company. And this is why the reason we have the followership and the reputation that we have is because we give out, you know, valuable products.
So so my standard is I would like every single thing completed before you hit coming soon. So at the very least that you have high quality photos ready. So the person it sees in their safe searches set up. People understand that.
And there’s this where it’s headed. If people are looking and that’s you know, you can’t go back and change that. No.
Two seconds later, see this link, this message goes out. Ding, there’s a property that meets your criteria. And then you look at it and you’re like, oh, I’ll update that in ten minutes. Yeah, I just hate coming soon. Nope. That person already saw it. They already clicked on it and they’re like, why do I get this.
There’s like not enough people back and look at them again. They didn’t change your photos. They do not that. The other thing to that is, you know, the quality of the photo. OK, so we want to have a good quality photo, which means one of our approved photographers. Or if you want something other than our approved photographers, it also must be approved by one of us guys.
This is this. Is so important and we know it, there’s proven facts to this topic, so we want to make sure we do that. You can’t send somebody else out or have the seller take a picture or something and send it to you. Sometimes they work out OK, but most of the time they don’t fall within our specs and they just don’t have the right aspect ratio to get sideways.
It’s not right. It’s not high enough pixels. There’s all types of problems. So like just say no to anything related to that. Again, you’re the professional. If you can service the listing correctly, if it’s too far, if it’s cheap instance, it is to pick whatever that is.
We all want the business guys. We all want it. But if you can’t service it, you’re not doing the client justice. So in that case, it’s probably a good idea to get with us and let’s refer it out. Let’s refer it out to somebody who can service it. And there’s different, you know, ways that you can do that where you don’t lose full control of this client. You know, I did one and they sold their home in McKinney. And I just I couldn’t get out to Arlington or wherever it was that they were moving. So we referred it out.
But they run everything past me. I was still a part of the process, but I didn’t have to drive out there and take care of all these things. So there’s a way to do it that does your client justice. That’s number one is your client’s needs. Are you meeting your client’s needs or is it more of your being kind of selfish to yourself and wanting all of it? Right. So if you want that referral, you have to think long term referrals at the end of this, you want referrals from this client. And in order to do so, you’ve got to do the job correctly.
It’s always about doing what’s absolutely best for your client, putting you second and then you will see everything follow up. Yeah, right. You have to be available and take care of the stuff correctly. Yeah. And it’s also important that you review the assets, both digital, online, all of the assets before you actually go live. We talked about coming soon and I think there’s there’s two key dates, right. It’s coming soon. Get set out to all those people. And then when you go live, same thing. So my standard for going live is the same thing except even higher. Right. It should all be like totally done, like not kind of done again.
No one comes back and we can’t use the excuse. Well, this thing’s going to go on multiple offers because there’s no homes like this available. OK, that could be the case that what are they going to be how high are they going to go and how much demand are you going to get if you have photos that just aren’t that great, you know?
So be amazing and review everything.
This is not Stacy’s job to review and double check yourself. This is your job. When you give it to Stacey, it should be completed. You know, I don’t like looking in. You know, sometimes people will call in and we need to give them something because they can’t access, you know, MLS or whatever. And when we download it and we say, oh, they didn’t fill out their seller’s disclosure completely, you know, that’s not good.
So we need to make sure all of these things are done in advance before it gets out there to the public. So double check, everybody, double check somebody double check it and make sure of that. Don’t rely on Stacy to always have to. You know, I’ll just send it in and she’ll fix it. That’s not fair. We don’t want to do that.
Yeah. You want to be picky about this. This is your reputation and that’s how you get references.
You’re building your business. This is all part of it. And valuable. It’s key to that. Key to your growth.
So it is. So be super picky to a great job and look out for your client first, put yourself second and give them all the assets that they deserve. Yes, very good. And that will be good. Now, the next thing that also should happen down there is you should show this off on show me your listings right away so that everybody internally can help there. So that was a shameless plug for you.
It’s Friday and Friday at 9:00 a.m. after TNT, sometimes a little after 9:00. But we go straight into show your listings and it’s great. We show off our listings just as it says. And we talk about some challenges that you might be having if if a listing stain on the market for a period of time, then let’s talk about, you know, getting all of our eyes on it. We can have good ideas on, you know, maybe some changes that you could make that would be beneficial.
And so, you know, on the listings when they come up, it’s weird. Some of the things I hear you guys talk about is, oh, maybe you could move that this picture to this space or maybe you could do this or maybe you could zoom in more on this picture crop better, like one of those items, right. To make these pictures look better. If those ideas are coming up there, maybe that’s something that you should have been picky about in advance before you hit life. Right? Those are things that we should kind of be flying through.
And not having that take place, so Rachel just asked if we could have the photographer do just exterior photos of Interior won’t be ready and this is again going to be on an approval basis because we need to know why this is
happening and and understand it. And then we’ll make that decision. You know, if it’s worth just doing an exterior, you know, we’ve done that a few times and that’s worked out fine.
But now there’s challenges inside because as soon as you do that and you hit coming lock going soon or coming coming soon, that you now have a 30 day time frame that you trigger. And that 30 day time frame now says that you have to be live right within 30 days or it goes if you don’t move it to life, it goes temporarily off the market.
So it just kind of sits there. But, you know, basically coming soon is your time to pre market, to build momentum and to capture people who are looking, you know, so if they’re not ready, then that’s OK. I mean, that’s really why we’re not going live, because they’re not 100 percent ready. But they should be very close. If they’re just starting a process of remodeling, then that’s probably not the time to go. Coming soon and see, you know, how the market’s going to shake out.
There’s all types of things that go on, whether it’s like bad weather, because you need to get more things done. You’re like, oh, I just need a Twilight photo. I just need this. I just want to wait for the grass to green up like we’ve been through it all on things that somebody else is going to say. Like I just need my pool to be clean. It’s the fall and all the leaves are falling in it.
And I want to have a good picture of that. There’s all types of reasons. Yes. Just understand what’s controllable and what’s not controllable by U.S. agent. And if it falls outside your parameters of something that you can actually control, then maybe it’s not the right time to go ahead and hit coming soon and, you know, until those variables are more under control.
So, yes, Rachel, the short answer is yes. We just need to talk about it first.
I understand. All right. And so we have let’s go to let me see Tony, case by case property photographer. All right. So there you go. Yes. Would be better if we went all at once for the photographer and for pricing and all those things we do. Yeah, we do pay for it and it is more expensive for us. It is nice if you would if we did all the photos at once and be much better. But we understand. We understand things happen. So we’ll we’ll take care of that when the time comes.
