If you don’t provide a brief — and unfortunately even if you do — you may be disappointed in what many agents provide in the way of a marketing proposal. What you want to receive is a strategic sales and marketing plan specific to selling your development so you can compare and choose the agent who has the best ideas and most likely success in selling your development down. Large agencies with project marketing divisions are well versed in putting slick and targeted marketing proposals together. From others you may receive nothing more than a basic résumé, a listing agreement and an advertising budget. Some agents, especially in a busy market, either through arrogance (sometimes warranted) or incompetence, may not give you anything but words from their mouths.
Whomever you encounter encourage the agent to submit a proposal that describes:
- Their team’s experience relevant to your project including previous and current project campaigns and sales results for off the plan projects.
- Back office support resource.
- References from other developers.
- Recommendations of the appropriate mix of product and target market (remember you are talking to agents long before you have finished design).
- Indicative pricing ranges.
- Indicative sales velocity.
- How they intend to market the subdivision and what collateral is required.
- Their sales strategy and preferred method of sale.
- Strength of their internal ‘databases’ and investor/buyer networks.
- Publicity channels they understand how to mine (editorials, advertorials, interviews, social media, product placement).
- Advertising channels they will utilise, reinforced by results-based reasoning and evidence.
- Their listing agreement key points such as commission and listing period.
Ask the agent to present their proposal in person together with the team they are promoting to work on the project. Naturally some agents will be better at selling their proposal to you than it comes across on paper. You also want to make sure that you are not being ‘sold’ a lead agent who will delegate all the day to day sales to below par team members, so ask for them to be present so you can see if they stack up to expectations. Even if you find no one suitable in these first interviews the more interactions you have with various agents the more information you will capture that will help you understand your market and the better prepared for selling you will be.
When you have interviewed enough to make a decision on your preferred agent you will contractually engage them via their listing agreement.
Andrew Crosby
+64 21 982 444
andrew@xpectproperty.com
