Home For Sale: Your First Business

Many of you have never owned your own business. Maybe you have no business training whatsoever. You might not even realize that when you are selling your home you are basically turning your home into a business. You are transforming your front yard into a store front and the product is your home! The moment you realize this is the moment you have gained a competitive advantage over your competition. YES you have competition! And lots of it! The trick is recognizing this and taking a marketing approach. Make sure that your agent sees selling your home in this way as well because it is a proven approach.

So now you have a product and there are a lot of stores with similar products for sale in your area. What can you do to ensure that yours is the one customers see and want to buy? Well that is the million dollar question. Ask any business owner and I am sure they would love to know as well. I have the answer and it has never been a secret! Many business owners are already doing it and they don’t even know it! It’s a simple approach really and it’s why they haven’t gone out of business. Here are some parts of it:

1. Have long hours. Stay open on weekends. Stay open nights. Translation to home owner? Make your home available so that no matter what time of day it is (within reason) your home is clean and ready to show. If an agent has potential buyers and they are only in town for the weekend and want to buy a home in 2 days (YES this happens and happens OFTEN) if you say "no I can't show it today we are busy this weekend" then you know where to point the finger when your house takes longer to sell.

2. Make your business inviting. Translation? Clean, Clean, and Clean. It’s the 3 C's. I can never stress this enough. Ever been turned off by a store with dirty bathrooms? It’s the same with selling your house!

3. Market your business. Translation? We probably can't afford TV ads specifically designed for your home, few business owners can. We don’t have the marketing budget of those big name, stick on the tip of your tongue companies. Sure it is your agent's job to market the sale of your home but that doesn’t mean you can’t! Tell everyone you know you are selling your home. Think of the organizations you are a part of. Make everyone you know aware of this fact. You probably know hundreds of people and they know hundreds of people! The 6 degrees rule can be true and before long everyone knows about your home. It should be the start of every conversation you have and the more you talk about it the more others will talk about it. You probably know someone who would buy your house you just don’t know it!

This list is by no means finished. More to come of course!