When my team and I launched my new book Commercial Real Estate Teams Built to Dominate, we had the good fortune of receiving five-star ratings on Amazon.com and endorsements of some of the industry’s biggest leaders. In the first three days, sales were brisk and the book climbed the commercial real estate book charts.
Launching a book is very similar to bringing a new listing to market. If you want the market to accept your new listing, be attracted to the listing, and ultimately put a bid on your listing. You will have greater success by following these simple guidelines.
4 guidelines to achieve greater success when launching a new listing
Know your audience.
Much like my book, you need the targeted audience for your listing. For me, it’s any commercial real estate professional who leads a team, is part of a team, or would like to build their own team. Most sales listings have a specific audience, whether it is neighboring owners, like-kind property owners, or similarly-priced assets.
Conduct some pre-launch marketing.
Once you secure a listing, there is generally a period where your marketing team (you do have a team, correct?) is putting the final touches on the promotional materials. No better time to share with your targeted audience of your pending property launch. Share the highlights of the property and why they will want to review the listing. For example, our team’s pre-launch marketing efforts created a buzz for the book launch, and thus a strong response when we launched.
Price the listing correctly.
There is no greater error in property launches than an over-priced listing. Brokers will “buy a listing” by suggesting the asset is worth more than the market will support and their un-informed owner/prospect is all too happy to go to market. Then the listing sits, sits and sits some more and leaves the broker scrambling for excuses. Pricing a book is similar in that if overpriced, you will lose the vast majority of the market, and any subsequent decrease in price suggests a lesser value.
Extensive marketing.
Yes, you are probably tired of all my blatant suggestions related to my new book, but the key to any sale is extensive marketing to your targeted audience. If you want to secure a successful launch on your new listing, tell everyone, even those outside of your target audience. Marketing should be consistent, yet varied. Phone calls, emails and postcards, letters, market canvassing, etc.
Launching a book, a small apartment complex listing, or a multi-million dollar, institutional asset all require pre-planning, target marketing and correct value positioning. It may seem like a lot of work, but if you have a team, it’s not hard at all. Ok, no more hints 🙂
If you want to learn more about teams, please be sure to visit www.creteams.com
