Introduction
Explore Million Dollar Listing Strategies to secure your first high-value property and elevate your success in real estate.
So, you want to get a million-dollar listing? I got you. Welcome back to a new desk vlog! I tried this once as a one-off, but the comments were insane—totally, totally crazy.
So, let’s do another one. Today, I want to talk to you about something everybody asks me about: how do you get your first million-dollar listing?
If you want to learn, stick around because I’m going to dive into it and give you all the tips, tricks, and strategies that I teach all of my agents at my real estate firm in New York City, Serhant, and all our members in our Salt Lake Serhant online course.
How to Get Your 1 Million Listing
Before we get into the strategies, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. It really helps us, and the more people I can help, the better it will be for you. After all, isn’t that what we want—all salespeople everywhere to do better? That’s the goal.
Now, there are three strategies you can use to get your first million-dollar listing, or maybe you’ve already had one and want to get more.
These are three strategies that I teach everyone, and they are foolproof—they work. You can do one strategy at a time, or if you’re like me and want more in your life, you can do them all simultaneously to increase your chances. This is called increasing your rate of return, right? The return on your investment, which is your time.
Strategy 1: The Ladder Strategy
The first strategy, which will take you the longest but is a sure-fire way to get into the luxury category you want to be in, is called the Ladder Strategy.
Your brand is your reputation. If you want to sell million-dollar listings, you need to be someone who sells million-dollar listings because that’s going to be your brand. Think about the most expensive deal you’ve done. If you’re a brand-new agent, go out and do at least one deal—a rental or sale—then come back to this strategy.
If you’ve only done one deal, that’s fine. That one deal is the most expensive deal you’ve ever done. From today on, that is your brand, and you must be consistent about you being an agent who sells at that price point and above in your marketing.
You need to shout it from the mountaintop. Let’s say you did a deal for $400,000 last year, but most of your deals are between $200,000 and $400,000. You no longer talk about, market, or post about listings that are $200,000 to $400,000.
You do deals that are $400,000 and above. Everything else is fine—you still need to do those deals—but you won’t spend your personal time on them because now you are a professional brand builder, building your luxury brand.
Find a junior agent to help you with everything under that highest price deal you ever did. As you talk, promote, and post about you being the luxury agent who only does deals at $400,000 and above, people will start to associate you with those types of deals.
Then you’ll get a client, maybe from an open house or a buyer in that $400,000 range, and you start talking about that deal. You’ll get another client in the $400,000 to $440,000 range, and so on.
It takes time, it takes work, but it is foolproof. The biggest takeaway? No one else cares about the deals you do except you.
So just talk about the most expensive deal you’ve ever done—promote that over and over, even if it’s the same deal you did last year. It doesn’t matter. No one cares. It’s going to help people associate you with that type of price point and get you from one level to the next.
Strategy 2: The Associated Marketing Strategy
Strategy two ties into strategy one, and it’s called the Associated Marketing Strategy.
There are tons of examples of this. For instance, Conor McGregor wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather—there was a good chance he was going to lose, and he did lose—but he wanted his name associated with Floyd Mayweather, and it worked. His pay went up, people associated more with him, and he was in one of the biggest fights seen worldwide.
Another example is Tommy Hilfiger. They ran a famous ad associating themselves with the top fashion brands in the world. People saw it and believed it, thinking, “Oh wow, Tommy Hilfiger is a luxury brand,” because they just saw it next to other luxury brands.
You want to associate yourself with who you want to be in the future and the type of clients you want to work with.
When I first got into the business, the only listings I had were open listings, not exclusive ones. I’d post them on Craigslist, meet people on street corners or at Starbucks, and take them around to see rentals. Then I noticed that across the street from my office was Saks Fifth Avenue.
Wealthy people came out of Saks with tons of shopping bags, so I started associating myself with wealthy shoppers there. I’d talk to them, carrying a shopping bag—empty, but still—and say, “Hey, you just bought a lot of clothes. It looks like you need more closet space. I’m actually a real estate agent, one of the best. If you’re looking for more space, I can help.”
Did it work every time? No. Did it work sometimes? Yep. That’s where some of my first deals came from.
Remember, $1,000-a-month clients have $1,000-a-month problems and referrals, and you’ll get stuck in that market. Million-dollar clients have million-dollar problems that you’ll help them with, and they have million-dollar friends who give you million-dollar referrals. Keep that in mind.
Strategy 3: The Low Hanging Fruit Strategy
Finally, strategy three: the Low Hanging Fruit Strategy.
You don’t need to go after the big $10 million listing that every broker wants—that’s going to sell because you have no experience, no resume.
Why would any seller give that to you? Don’t go after what everybody else wants; go after the low-hanging fruit. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; just find an old wheel that no one else wants, dust it off, make it look cool, and use it to attract other wheels.
For example, let’s say you can’t do associated marketing right now because of COVID, or it’s really hard to go up the ladder because there’s not much deal volume in your market. Go after low-hanging fruit—look back at expired listings or for-sale-by-owners that are impossible to sell.
Find that luxury or million-dollar listing that no other broker wants because maybe the seller is difficult to deal with. Get that one because other buyers and sellers will see you have a listing over a million dollars.
Someone will reach out to you and say, “Oh, I saw you have that property. Mine isn’t that expensive, but if you could sell that place, you could sell mine.” Absolutely.
Conclusion
Those are the three strategies you can use right now to get your first million-dollar listing. But remember, it doesn’t happen overnight. Everything takes time and work. I didn’t take a single day off for the first three years in the business.
Let me know if you like this desk vlog in the comments, and tell me what you want me to talk about next. I’m thinking of putting out two videos a week because I think you deserve it, and I love doing this.