“The investment in staging is always less than the first price reduction!”

Recently there was some interesting client interaction that allowed me to use the familiar “Barb” quotes that are so valuable when communicating with our Realtors® and sellers. I was working with a new Realtor®, quite young and new in the Real Estate business. Right away I could see she was very motivated and had the potential to be a great partner with us at Staged Interior.  I spent a moment in each of our conversations to encourage her, confirming her actions and applauding her attention to detail so she could stay on the path of having the seller make the improvements and stage the property. When she had questions about the return on investment, I was able to, first of all, give her our personal statistics which we should all be tracking.  Also I used the term “ROSI” to refer to the stats and that was a big hit and became part of her own vocabulary as she spoke with her client and her partner.  It’s such a great acronym since the pronunciation conveys such a positive feeling.  There were also a few conversations where the seller was requesting work from us that was not included in the Staging Service Fee.  I was able to explain that it was not our “professional policy” to do any work for which we are not paid and there would need to be an additional investment in the service fee.  She took this to her seller, using that very phrase, paving the way for my later discussion with the seller and making it easy to reason with him after he understood our policies. I think the most effective phrase I used with the seller was the one you see in my signature block “The investment in staging is always less than the first price reduction!”  That sealed the deal in the seller’s making the decision to stage his house.  Thanks, Barb, for giving us this ammunition, your wonderful Staging Sayings, to use as we establish relationships and educate our Realtors® and sellers.

I think sometimes we have heard these phrases so often we forget how powerful they are.  I can testify in this and many other situations, these tried and true statements have saved me time, made me money and boosted the professional image of my company. So I encourage you all to learn them and use them. They will take you far!

Remember,