Presentation is Everything!

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First impressions mean everything. We’ve heard it over and over. Whether in business, sales, interviews, speeches, and so on. How someone sees us or our product for the first time makes a bold statement without a spoken word. Recently, with the Florida real estate market downturn, I’ve noticed quite a few “for sale” and “for rent” signs throughout my neighborhood and town. The complete lack of presentation skills with the signs astounds me.

Your sign and information sheets are like the banner ads and pop-ups of the internet in a real, tangible format. A sign offers potential buyers a “first impression” of the product you hope to sell. However, I see sign after sign (advertisement after advertisement) that scream, “Don’t buy/rent me!” Below, you will see two examples. At first glance, these may seem extreme examples, yet it took me less than fifteen minutes to find two examples and I ignored many more. Also, these were not found in a low-income community, rather on an island near the Atlantic Ocean.

The first picture shows a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home for rent for $1,200/month. The sign is on cardboard, falling apart, and hand-written with a marker/crayon. I would say this homeowner just lost 90% of all interested parties. I’m not even stopping to get a number, let alone go look at the house. If the sign is any indication of the care and concern this person has for their property, I want no part of living in the house.

The second picture shows a lot for sale on a marsh, literally yards from the ocean. The owner asks $975,000 for the lot. As you can see in the picture, the one sign is falling off the tree and has fading, hand-written information and the other is rusting away in the salt air. This one gets better. There is an information sheet available that shows the price and layout of the lot. The owner also uses this sheet to sell his home building services with a sample home that he offers to customize and build on this lot for the low price of $2.6 million. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not letting someone build a $1.6 million dollar home for me that can’t even manage to construct and maintain a half-way decent sign.

*Note: The only alterations I made to these photos was to black-out the phone numbers.

Is selling really this difficult? These are expensive homes and lots that sellers are asking buyers to spend LOTS of money to purchase in a depressed market. It takes minimal effort to get decent signs for things you’re selling. Your potential customer’s first impression. I actually drove by the “lot for sale” sign before I realized what it was and I was LOOKING for signs. Even once I found it, I would not have dialed a number to investigate further. Even if they do get an interested party, that party will expect a rock-bottom price, so you lose equity and profit by not spending the time to make a quality first impression.

I believe this presents a valuable lesson to anyone in sales or marketing. Spend a little extra time to create a quality presentation with anything you sell or market. It can make a difference in real money, not just impressions. While perfection is the enemy of good enough, you still need to make it to good enough.

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