Home stagers often get frustrated in their home staging marketing efforts to real estate agents. An Ottawa home stager summed up many of our frustrations with this comment on Facebook:

“Answer me this….why are real estate agents so cheap they don’t care about VALUE & RESULTS they only care about the cost?!”

The shortest answer to her question is that most real estate agents are making very little money right now and they’re not willing to spend any more than is absolutely necessary on a listing, especially when they don’t know if the house will sell at all.

Real estate agents aren’t employees with guaranteed pay checks.

Home stagers have almost no ongoing expenses to keep their businesses running and we get paid when we provide our services when we follow the Staging Diva formula for starting and growing a home staging business.

Unlike us, real estate agents have considerable ongoing expenses with no money coming in until a deal closes. Without this positive cash flow, really why would they want to spend money on your home staging services when they won’t get it back for many months, if at all?

This is one of the MANY reasons I advise against putting all your marketing efforts towards real estate agents which is a common mistake made by home stagers who haven’t listened to Course 4 of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

That said, real estate agents are one of our 4 key target markets. They can help build awareness for the importance of home staging in general and for a preferred home stager’s services in particular.

To better your chances that a real estate agent will recommend your home staging business over your competition, here are 5 secrets real estate agents need to hear from you:

1. Home staging will make it easier for you to market and sell your listings because your MLS photos will be 100% more enticing, and once visiting a property, home buyers are more likely to make an offer on a home that shows well.

2. With 70% (US) to 90% (Canada) of home buyers searching online before ever calling a real estate agent, you will attract more leads with better photos, not only for the staged listing but from active buyers who will want you to show them other properties too.

3. Home stagers can address problems head on and tell your clients the things you don’t want to say for fear of losing your listing. With so many people selling a home due to divorce, a home stager is an independent third party who will save you from having to get in between the different opinions of each spouse.

4. Home staging is a service you can recommend to your clients as a faster way to sell their home for more money, but it’s not a service you personally have to pay for.

5. Your clients don’t want to hear you recommend a $10,000, $20,000 or $50,000 price reduction because that’s money right out of their pockets. Home staging services can range anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a consultation up to several thousand dollars to fully furnish a large or very high-end home. In every case, the cost to your client will be significantly less than the price reduction. This makes for a much easier conversation with your clients and keeps you on the “same team.”

These are only some of the many marketing ideas, strategies and tips I share in Course 4 of the Staging Diva Program, “Staging Diva Sales & Marketing Secrets to Boost your Home Staging Business.” In this home staging course, I also share how to build your home staging business without spending any money on advertising  while attracting home sellers who are prepared to really invest in staging their homes for the real estate market.

Home stagers, have you found any other phrases particularly helpful when explaining the benefits of what you do to real estate agents? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting below.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould has been an entrepreneur since 1989 and knows how to make money as a home stager. She developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. There are now more than 7,000 students in over 20 countries learning from her many products and services for home stagers.

Home staging is a powerful part of the real estate industry. In fact as much as a decade ago, Forbes Magazine called home stagers the “dream weavers of the real estate world.” I quite loved that label and quoted it in my very first website for Six Elements Inc., the home staging business I started in 2002, after profitably buying, decorating and selling 6 of my own homes.

Despite the fact that this is not a totally new industry, and it’s not hard to argue that savvy home sellers have been decorating their houses to sell faster and for more money for at least the past 25 years (I know I have!), there are still people who don’t properly understand the role of a home stager.

There are others who misrepresent that role for their own marketing reasons as happened this month on mega real estate site, Trulia.com.

Before going into the truly bizarre claims made by San Francisco real estate broker Tara-Nicholle Nelson, I’d like you to consider her marketing motives! One of the best ways to get lots of comments on a blog post (ie: attention) is to stir up controversy.

If you make crazy or misleading claims while doing it, people will flock to their own defense. If you make wild statements masquerading as education, people who know better will comment in an effort to set the record straight. They’ll also share your content with others and encourage them to visit and make comments too (as I did when I shared a link to the original post on my Staging Diva Facbook page).

In case you didn’t see the original post, the real estate broker was apparently trying to warn gullible home buyers not to fall for the 5 “hypnotic” techniques home stagers use and position herself (and by extension all buyer’s agents) as the buyer’s savior in any real estate transaction.

Let’s face it, with so much real estate information on the Internet and an increasing number of buyers going the FSBO route, the real estate community has to keep reinforcing how essential their services are lest they follow the path of travel agents (another industry completely transformed by the Internet).

As a marketer I take my hat off to the broker, she did a great job of using two important and dare I say “hypnotic” triggers— Generating Controversy and Creating a Common Enemy.

As a home stager, her article was totally offensive. But it was designed to be controversial, so that lots of comments would follow! It’s no coincidence by the way that you have to set up a profile on Trulia to be able to comment, and they make their money by selling contact info.

According to this real estate broker in her post “5 Hypnotic Home Staging Techniques and How to See Through Them”, home stagers employ these tactics to negatively manipulate buyers:

• Tiny furniture
• Camouflage and cover-ups
• Activity props you’ll never use
• Items used strictly for appearances

And my personal favorite:

• Neighborhood staging!

Yes home stagers, it seems we even have the power to get everyone on the street to collude with us to hide the fact that there are normally “cars on the lawn and screaming schoolkids” up and down the street! Wow, sometimes I can’t even get my own client to repaint a bathroom, I must be doing something wrong!

I really enjoyed one of the hysterically sarcastic comments left on Facebook by home stager, Susan Pfeuffer-Powell in reaction to the claim that we use tiny furniture, “I’ve been using my daughter’s American Girl doll furniture for years! Not only is it perfect in size to make those small rooms look huge, it also comes in dozen of period styles to fit the house style and target audience.”

There’s nothing wrong with a home stager’s goal being to have the home sell for as much as possible, as long as we’re not deliberately hiding real flaws. After all, isn’t that the goal of the listing agent too? In ANY transaction, real estate or otherwise, the seller wants to sell high and the buyer wants to buy low. It doesn’t mean unethical tactics need to be involved.

So while you may get all riled up reading the Trulia.com story, remember there is a marketing agenda at work, at least that’s how I see it. How about you?

Please share your thoughts below!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.

Sarah Richardson holiday decorating idea as featured in the Globe and Mail.

Home stagers, the holiday season is definitely upon us and this means a gradual slow down in your home staging business over the coming weeks.

A great way to bring in extra money at this time of year is with holiday decorating. A TV News producer contacted me to appear on camera this week with my tips to “deck the halls.” They know I’m an expert home stager, yet I have never promoted myself as a seasonal decorator.

I declined the tempting offer because it’s totally not my expertise and something I personally feel intimidated by.

Everything I know about holiday decorating is what I pick up from reading news stories, like this one in the Globe & Mail featuring Sarah Richardson’s festive decor tips. She suggests combining orange and pink for an alternate festive color scheme which I found clever.  I also loved what she did with the urns pictured in this post.

For my own media opportunity, I put the word out to Staging Diva Graduates who might be interested in appearing on camera this week instead of me. As always, first dibs went to members of the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers.

If you’re not a member yet, you should be. It’s not only a great place for clients to find your staging and redesign business, but it also leads to media coverage and guest speaking opportunities.

We build a professional webpage for you within 7 days of when you submit your Directory materials for less than the cost of a nice blender (I happened to be reading Christmas sale flyers filled with kitchen gadgets so I know!). You even get a custom company brochure that website visitors can download, and a print version that you can hand out in meetings— it’s included in the cost of an annual hosting plan! Get the full scoop on how to join the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers here.

Anyway, back to seasonal decorating . . .

If you’re more comfortable than I am with the art of decorating for the Christmas season, and you love doing it, consider how many people are too busy or overwhelmed to take this on themselves. You might decorate the inside and outside of their home, decorate for a Christmas or New Year’s Eve/Day party or even transform an office or showroom for the holidays!

Home Staging is not equally busy all year round because it follows real estate cycles.

In the Staging Diva Program I discuss ways for you to even out your cash flow by combining your staging business with things like:

• interior redesign
• color consulting
• professional organizing
• seasonal decorating

What you choose should not only come from your desire to make money but also be a function of your interests. I don’t believe in starting your own business only to do things you don’t like! If you’re going to make the effort to be your own boss, make sure you consider what your interests and natural talents are.

If you love holiday decorating and have a natural talent for it, then why not go for it?

There are no rules when you’re an entrepreneur. If you see an opportunity that inspires you then why not take advantage of it? The idea that you should only build a business that you’ll REALLY want to work in, is a theme that runs throughout the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, especially in course 4 “Staging Diva Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.”

I don’t act on every opportunity that comes my way, but I certainly consider the ones that inspire me. When it’s something that just isn’t “my thing” or I’m too busy to take it on, I refer those inquiries to Staging Diva Graduates as I did with the TV News story for this week.

To be honest, I don’t even plant my own outdoor urns for winter and I always hire someone else to do it for me. I’ve never used little white lights in them but Sarah has given me the idea to try it out this season!

Home stagers and redesigners, have you been approached by potential clients to help them with their seasonal decorating? Do you do any marketing of that service?

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould is President of Six Elements Inc. and creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program. An entrepreneur for almost 25 years and author of several guides, Debra has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate and uses her expertise to train others worldwide.

Deborah an interior designer who is in the process of adding home staging to her services (an excellent strategy to recession proof an interior design business) writes:

I am about to embark on a home staging project that requires rental furniture. If it turns out that buying furniture would be more cost-effective, would you recommend that?

There would be the selling aspect at the end which could be a challenge, but overall I think the client would save money over a 12-month period with purchased rather than rental. What is your advice?

Home stagers, I’d love to hear your advice and points of view on this home staging business dilemma. Please add your thoughts and I’ll summarize the best and add my ideas in a future post.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Intrepid entrepreneur, Debra Gould, developed the Staging Diva Training Program to create opportunities for others to grow their own profitable home staging businesses. There are currently over 4,000 Staging Diva students across the United States, Canada, Australia and 18 other countries around the world. She is the author of 5 guides and is frequently profiled in the media.

Isn’t it amazing how little care some real estate agents seem to put into their real estate listings? From bad MLS photos to typos in listings, I know most home stagers have seen it all.

In the more relaxed spirit of summer, I just saw a funny clip from Ellen which pokes fun at bad real estate listings. Thought you’d enjoy these examples of what not to do when selling a home!

On a more serious note, what are the worst things you’ve seen real estate agents do after you’ve carefully staged one of your client’s homes? My pet peeve is the real estate agent who walks into a home I’ve just carefully arranged for photography and throws his coat over a chair, leaves his shoes in the middle of the hallway, dumps papers all over the dining room table and then takes the listing shots!

Has this or similar happened to you? Please share your experiences by commenting below.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the home staging courses to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. Prior to becoming a professional home stager in 2002, Debra bought, staged and sold 7 of her own homes.

This is part 3 of a feature on home staging marketing where home stagers learn how to promote their services to real estate agents at an open house.

In part 1, I discussed your first objective in using this home staging marketing strategy which is: initiating and starting to build your relationship with the real estate agent. Since it’s your first meeting with the real estate agent, and you basically have a captive audience, I explained ways to use this to your advantage and create the right first impression so you are memorable for the right reasons.

In part 2, I discussed your second objective, demonstrating your own expertise as a home stager. This where you give the real estate agent a sample of your expertise and give them an easy way to open the door to home staging with their client (especially when the house has been sitting on the market for some time).

To complete this 3-part feature, today I’ll explore your third objective:

Educating the real estate agent about how home staging can help him/her make more money

It’s important to put yourself in the mindset of the Realtor®. If you just say something typical like, “home staging will help this house sell faster and for more money,” you might be met with a blank or skeptical stare. Or your comment might just breeze right by because it sounds almost cliche by now.

You need to take it beyond the obvious by demonstrating other benefits

For example, you can tell his/her client things that they might not want to. In other words they don’t have to be worried about annoying their client (and risking the listing) by saying things their client won’t want to hear.

You can also make his MLS photos look great so that more people will book showings and come to open houses like this one (this will be especially meaningful at a quiet open house that’s eating up his/her weekend and not generating any qualified leads).

As the home stager, you are the independent third party who complements the real estate agent’s services allowing them to focus on what they do best, finding clients and selling real estate.

Don’t leave the real estate agent empty handed

Successful real estate agents meet hundreds of people in any given month and you want them to remember you. Plan on giving the agent your business card and brochure during this conversation. Your brochure should look professional,  include quality before and after photos from your home staging portfolio and the address of your home staging website.

This will help even the most skeptical agent envision the difference you can make— especially if the agent hasn’t worked with a stager before.

By the way, if you’re wondering how to go about getting a brochure and how much it will cost, I personally create a FREE company brochure for Staging Diva Graduates who have profile listings in the Staging Diva Directory of Home Stagers. They all use these when visiting open houses. Many have been Directory members for years rather than taking the time, money and considerable effort required to build their own standalone website.

If you’d like many more ideas for compelling messages to use when discussing home staging with real estate agents, you’ll find them in course 4, Staging Diva Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.

Please comment below and let me know if you’ve found this 3-part home staging marketing series helpful. What was your biggest take away from the series? Is there something you’ll do differently in the future?

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

With an MBA in marketing and hundreds of home staging clients, internationally recognized home staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva, is uniquely qualified to train others how to start and grow a profitable home staging business. She has be writing about marketing since the 1980s and home staging since 2002. Her Home Staging Business Training Program has over 4,000 students in 21 countries.

Recently I posed a staging business dilemma from Leah Fritz of Perfect Place Home Staging about whether it’s OK to use before and after photos for your staging portfolio when you didn’t physically do the work.

In Leah’s case, the client staged her home herself based on all the advice Leah provided during a home staging consultation. There were great comments from home stagers in the Staging Diva community with ideas of how Leah could use the photos and what she might say to new potential clients about the project.

By the way, unlike in most home staging courses, I don’t recommend offering to write detailed reports for your clients after your consultation.  In fact, I go so far as to say that staging consultation reports are a waste of time (unless of course you’re charging extra for them, or you just love doing paperwork and having “write a report” hanging over your head when you get home from a client meeting)!

Just because you aren’t typing up a fancy consultation report to send your clients, doesn’t mean you can’t give them comprehensive advice during a consultation. When you follow the home staging consultation formula I teach my students, your clients will follow your advice based on your instructions.

Will they do absolutely everything exactly how you would have done it? No, probably not. As Staging Diva Student and Realtor® Alison Davies pointed out in her comment, you will see things that you would have liked to tweak yourself.

Will they get a great result anyways? Yes, if you’ve provided the right instructions and you have a committed client. One of the ways to ensure you have a committed client is to charge a lot for your staging consultations! The more they invest in your advice, the more they’ll be committed to following it. I discuss this in an article, Home Stagers, It’s Not All About Price.

Here’s my answer to Leah’s home staging business dilemma about whether to include photos in her home staging portfolio from her do-it-yourself staging clients:

Plenty of home staging clients will want to do all the staging themselves following the advice they receive during a home staging consultation. In cases like this, the home stager is the Creative Director of the transformation. The fact that the stager doesn’t personally move the furniture, paint the walls or fluff the pillows is not relevant. In fact, I don’t believe a home stager should personally do many of these things because you make more money coming up with the ideas than doing the physical work yourself.

I see nothing wrong with including the before and after photos of projects where you “only” provided home staging advice in your portfolio and many home stagers share this view based on the comments from the original post.

When using the photos, you can also turn the fact that you only provided advice into a selling point by saying:

“Look what was achieved by this home staging client who decided to do the work themselves following my step-by-step staging advice. Having me come in and do a detailed home staging consultation with you so that you’ll know exactly what to do to prepare your house to sell quickly and for more money is a great way to go if you’re on a tight budget!”

I love how Staging Diva Graduate Stacy Goade of Alaska Premier Home Staging explained why it’s right to include home staging consultation projects when she said, “If we are the major force behind a successful home sale it is appropriate to give ourselves credit as well.”

Staging Diva Graduate Debbie Fiskum of Denver-based Perfect Transformations had a great idea for getting the client’s permission to use their after photos when she said:

“I’d just call the client up and say, ‘Your home looks absolutely charming in the listing photos! It looks like you took my advice to heart and did a great job of staging the house yourself. Would you mind if I used a couple of your photos in my portfolio? I’d be happy to include your name if you wish!’ If she would prefer you take your own, ask when it would be a good time to come over and take a few shots.”

Staging Diva Graduate Pamela Moore of Impressive Spaces Home Staging LLC in Tennessee rightly pointed out that “Most homeowners are so happy with the results that they are more than willing for you to come back and take pics.”

What do you think of this advice? Will you use photos from home staging consultation projects and do these ideas make it easier to envision how you’ll get or use them to sell your home staging services? Please join our community by adding your comments below!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the home staging courses to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. She offers a FREE Staging Consultation Checklist with Room-by-Room Planning Forms as part of course 3, Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations.

A real estate agent, who believes in the power of home staging to help real estate listings sell faster, can be a real asset when you’re building your home staging business. Especially in the early days when few people have heard of you yet and getting noticed as the expert home stager in your local market is critical.

However, there are downsides to working with agents as you’ll see from this business challenge sent in by Melanie*. She writes:

“I am currently working on my first home staging job and just about ready to go in for the final stage. Even though this is my fist staging project, I am finding the REALTOR® a little micromanaging to say the least.

She has an opinion on EVERYTHING! I would like to think that I know what I am doing and I am sure the real estate agent does too, but she is starting to get on my nerves.

Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with this?”

*The home stager’s name has been changed for the purpose of sharing this business challenge publicly. If you have a question you’d like to see featured and answered in the Home Staging Business Report, send it to me by email with “Ask Staging Diva” in the subject line.

Readers, what do you say to Melanie? I’ll be posting my thoughts in the next week or two, but before I do, it would be great to get some ideas and suggestions going to help her deal with this home staging business challenge.

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould has been a home stager since 2002. In addition to developing the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, she has bought, decorated and sold 8 homes— dealing with thousands of real estate agents as a home buyer, home seller and home stager.

This is part 2 of a feature on home staging marketing strategies, where home stagers learn how to promote their services to real estate agents at an open house.

In part 1, I discussed your first objective in using this home staging marketing strategy which was: initiating and starting to build your relationship with the real estate agent.

Now for part 2. Here I discuss your second objective which is:

Demonstrating your own expertise as a home stager

This is where you give the real estate agent a sample of your expertise. You might 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.”

In this way you’re providing a free sample of the kind of helpful advice you give your clients.

The analogy here is the free spritz of perfume you get while walking past the cosmetic counters in a department store, or the food samples you get at the grocery store. My 3 year old used to love going to Costco and shouting “free food” while pointing to each new sampling station. If you’re anything like me you went in for 5 must-have items and came out with a cart full of stuff you never intended to buy, especially from the food section!

Notice this “free sample” of your home staging talent, delivered to an agent at a real estate open house, only took a maximum of 15 minutes of your time (to walk around the house and then provide your one or two suggestions).

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!

The real estate agent may pass your suggestions on to the home seller as his/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.

For easy design ideas that you can use with both real estate agents and home sellers, see the Staging Diva Ultimate Design Guide: Home Staging Tips, Tricks and Floor Plans.

Giving the real estate agent an easy way to recommend you to their client

By handling your meeting at the open house with the agent in this fashion, you’ve also provided a way for the agent to bring up the subject of home staging to his/her client by saying something like:

“We’re really not getting any offers on your home as it stands right now, but a home stager can make suggestions that will make your home more appealing to buyers. One stopped by the open house today and she recommended for example that you . . . . imagine what other ideas she might have for us? Here’s her card and brochure, perhaps you should give her a call!”

You can plant that idea in your conversation. Consider how tough it is for an agent to bring up home staging if they’ve already had the listing for a long time. You’ve just given them a way to ease into the topic with their clients!

Stay tuned for part 3 in this series where I discuss objective number 3 of using this marketing strategy, which is:

Educating the real estate agent about how home staging can help him/her make more money

Until then, I would love for you to share your thoughts on this article so far.  Have you tried this sampling technique when meeting agents at open houses? Had they ever used a home stager before?

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Discover the ONLY Home Staging Business Training Program taught by a seasoned entrepreneur who has successfully grown her own home staging business. There are many ideas for marketing to real estate agents in course 4, Staging Diva Sales and Marketing Secrets to Boost Your Home Staging Business.

Staging Diva Graduate Leah Fritz of Perfect Place Home Staging has this staging business dilemma and wonders what she should do. See what you think and add your comments below.

“A homeowner I did a home staging consultation for took such excellent detailed notes during our meeting that she was able to execute my whole staging vision herself! After the recommended painting, updates, and editing were all done, this client arranged and styled all the rooms herself, just the way I suggested. I thought she wanted me to come back for a work day, but the home is completely staged and now on the market.

I saw the photos of her house on MLS and it looks lovely. I’m not upset because I’m glad she found my home staging consultation helpful. Obviously she was able to move forward confidently with a clear executable plan.

My question is: Can I use before and after photos of this house in my home staging portfolio? Do you think its OK to consider this staging as an example of my work? I really want to go back to this house and take some photos for myself since I already have the before shots. Look at it like this… I didn’t shoot the gun, but I gave this client the bullets. What would you do?”

How would you answer this dilemma as a home stager? I’ll share my thoughts later but first, I’d like to hear what you would do in the same situation. Have you ever faced this before in your own staging business? Please share your comments below!

Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging

Debra Gould knows how to make money as a home stager and she developed the Staging Diva Training Program to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love. She offers a FREE Staging Consultation Checklist with Room-by-Room Planning Forms as part of course 3, Taking the Mystery Out of Home Staging Consultations.