I recently called upon one of our virtual tour providers to see how things were coming along. We regularly email or calls to providers to see what is happening on the front lines of the virtual tour industry. Often during a call, a Real Tour Vision provider will also ask their sales rep how to handle specific objections they are facing in the field. Real Tour Vision uses this phone time and emails with our providers to help educate as well as gain direction for our future developments.
It was during one of these phone calls that the virtual tour provider stated that the people in their town only use virtual tours on upper end homes and not on any of the others. The virtual tour provider was not yet able to break into more than a handful of tours each week.
What follows are some good reasons a real estate agent should provide or at least offer a virtual tour of every listing. These are some facts that you should arm yourself with and be prepared to use them if you are faced with objections. As a provider for Real Tour Vision or any other virtual tour company it is your responsibility to educate the real estate agents in your market. You must become the local online marketing expert that they look up to. Dive right in and start giving them the straight talk and facts that will sell more tours.
When a prospective home seller is seeking out a real estate agent would you like to get their business? If you would, then you should show them from within your online storefront aka “Your Website” that you care enough about each client to do a virtual tour of every listing.
Are you really prepared to explain to a client of yours that they don’t get a portion of your treatment that the “Jones’s” get because their home is not worth enough? I don’t know anyone who would take that very well. People like to feel important and if you make them feel any differently you WON’T get a referral.
Do you really want that level of inconsistency on your website? Ask yourself, “Who is the online you?” If the online you is supposed to be somewhat like the “In-Person You” you should strive to be consistent in what you do and how you market yourself.
Think GREEN! Showing homes all day long only to have an immediate “No!” when you pull in the driveway is not exactly the best way to spend your time or money. It is a HUGE waste of gasoline and our natural resources. Imagine for a moment if all real estate agents used some form of a virtual tour. How much gas would we save? How much time would we gain to sell more homes?
You have the palm pilot. You have the computer. You have the cell phone. You have all these tools that make your life more efficient and save you time yet you don’t fully embrace virtual tours which would save you countless hours each month.
Point blank. It is a proven fact that nearly everyone gets online to shop for a home these days before they even pick up the phone to call you. Online shoppers enjoy looking at virtual tours. Just over half of American adult internet users (51%) have taken virtual tours of another location online, up from 45% in a previous Pew Internet & American Life Project survey in November 2004. So what are you waiting for? Start using a virtual tour on every home you list and not just the upper end homes.
These are all great facts to load into your arsenal of objection busters. Good luck out there!