(UNITED STATES) May 29, 2012 – According to home staging expert Debra Gould, one marketing technique that home stagers can use to promote their services is to introduce themselves to real estate agents at open houses. On the
Home Staging Business Report blog, Gould discusses how home stagers can demonstrate their expertise to agents during these events.
After meeting the real estate agent responsible for the open house and explaining the role of home staging, a home stager can then give the agent a sample of his or her expertise. Gould advises stagers to say something like this:
"If I were doing a home staging consultation for this home seller, I might have suggested . . . for this room. This one simple change would really . . . which will make the home much more appealing to prospective buyers."
Gould explains that providing this kind of helpful advice does not take a lot of time or effort.
"This is a much more effective strategy than falling into the
free home staging estimate trap, which is where you go out to do an estimate for a potential client and before you know it, you've actually done a free
home staging consultation!" remarks Gould. "When you provide advice to the real estate agent, he or she may pass your suggestions on to the home seller as his or her own, but that doesn't matter. The point is you've still given a solid example of how you know how to make a home easier to sell without doing anything too complicated, expensive or time consuming. And this is key when you're speaking to agents who may have no first-hand experience working with a home stager, or who may have been unhappy with a previous experience."
Gould, who founded the
Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, says that providing the real estate agent with a free sample also gives the agent an easy way to recommend staging to their client.
"Consider how tough it is for an agent to bring up home staging if they've already had the listing for a long time," says Gould. "You've just given them a way to ease into the topic with their clients!"
For additional home staging marketing strategies, home stagers are encouraged to visit the
Home Staging Business Report on the
Staging Diva website.
About Staging Diva
The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars' worth of real estate, including 7 of her own homes. She is the president of Voice of Possibility Group Inc., which operates a home staging division, SixElements.com, in addition to StagingDiva.com, which has trained over 7,000 home stagers to start and grow their own businesses.
Debra has gained international recognition through features in major media in the US and Canada including: This Old House, HGTV, CNN Money, CBC National News, CBS Radio, Global TV, City TV, The Wall Street Journal, Women's Day, Reader's Digest and more.
###