A few weeks ago, we asked 1,000 agents a simple question: how long does your current listing marketing plan last?
The average answer was 10-12 days.
Then we asked: what's the average days on market in your area? 40–60 days.
That's a 30–50 day gap with no plan.
Which means most agents are showing up to the biggest financial moment of their seller's life with a plan that expires before the listing even hits its stride.
We’re gonna help you fix that.
On March 18th from 12-2pm ET, we're hosting a live workshop: The Ultimate 90-Day Listing Marketing Plan.
You’ll walk away with:
The Core 90-Day Plan: social, video, email, text, past clients, and buyers.
Scenario-Based Sub-Plans: because not every listing is the same. Price reduction hits on day 40? There's a plan for that. Decide to host an open house? Activate it. Offer submitted? Mini-campaign ready to go.
How to Match the Right Plan to the Right Listing: ad-spend heavy, email-first, open house focused, or behind-the-scenes grunt work. You'll know exactly which plan fits before the sign goes in the ground.
Now let’s get into B.I.T.S…
🏆 [B]est in Class: 8.7M impressions later…this stood out
💡 [I]deas That Work: How to win 47% more often
📈 [T]raffic & Attention: $1.5M. 8 beds. 1 flying saucer.
🔔 [S]eller Signals: Why are so many sellers searching for this?
🏆[B]EST IN CLASS
Your voice has a ratio…here's how to find it
Angel Del Valle is a Sacramento Realtor who posted 91 Reels and carousels last year and generated 8.7 million impressions, 203,000 engagements, and nearly 20,000 comments.
There are a lot of reasons this is working: production quality, consistency, a brand he's been building for a while.
But we wanted to look at the piece most agents overlook: his voice.
His voice runs on a ratio: 50% friend, 30% advisor, 20% entertainer.
Friend: "I'm not too fond of basements. But you know, I had to for you guys."
Advisor: "I think one of the main selling points for this home is definitely the location. Location is everything."
Entertainer: "I had no idea that the chair reclined. Call me dramatic, but my life flashed before my eyes."
All advisor and he sounds like every agent with a ring light and market stats.
All entertainer and no one trusts him with their biggest asset.
All friend and he's likable but forgettable.
The blend is what makes him feel like a real person and a competent professional at the same time.
Why the ratio matters for you
Most agents default to 90% advisor, 10% everything else.
All specs, all polish, and a voice that sounds like everyone else in the market. Ask most agents to describe their voice and they'd say "friendly and approachable," which describes nearly everyone, which means it describes no one.
The fix isn't to copy Angel. It's to figure out your own ratio.
Start here: when sellers say you were different from the other agents, what word do they use?
"Easy to talk to" - you lead with friend.
"Really knew your stuff" - advisor.
"Made the whole thing fun and stress-free" - entertainer.
Whatever that word is, that's your lead mode.
Now ask: what's your secondary mode, and when was the last time you let it show up in your content or your listing appointments?
Takeaway: Your voice doesn't need to be polished. It needs to have a point of view.
The agents sellers remember aren't the ones who sounded the most professional.
They're the ones who had an opinion, named the hard thing, and didn't sound like they were reading from a script.
🧠[I]DEAS THAT WORK
The agent who sets the frame wins the listing
Copywriter Joanna Wiebe recently broke down a concept from Harvard negotiation professor Deepak Malhotra that's worth paying attention to: the person who establishes the frame of a negotiation aka the lens through which everything gets interpreted, achieves 47% better outcomes than the person who responds to someone else's frame.
The frame isn't what you say. It's what the conversation is about.
And most agents walk into listing appointments and let the seller set it.
The seller says "We want to talk about your commission" and now the frame is: defend your value.
The seller says "We want to make sure we get top dollar" and now the frame is: prove you can deliver the number I already have in my head.
The seller says "Walk us through your marketing plan" and now the frame is: audition for us.
Every one of those frames puts you on defense.
And once you're on defense, the best you can do is respond well. You can't lead.
The move: Set the frame before the seller does.
This doesn't mean steamrolling the conversation. It means being intentional about what the conversation is about before it defaults to a dynamic you didn't choose.
Instead of waiting for them to ask about commission, open with:
"I work with sellers who are looking for a strategic partner, not just someone to put the home on the MLS. My process is built around maximizing your net, which is a bigger conversation than commission."
Now the frame isn't: justify your fee.
It's: are we aligned on what this actually takes.
Instead of waiting for them to ask about price, open with:
"Before we talk numbers, I want to walk you through how I think about positioning a home in this market because the pricing strategy matters more than the price itself."
Now the frame isn't: will you list at my number.
It's: there's a strategy here I haven't considered yet.
Instead of waiting for them to say "tell us about your marketing," open with:
"I'm selective about the listings I take on because when I commit, I go all in. What I'd like to figure out today is whether we're a fit for each other."
Now the frame isn't: pitch me.
It's: this is a mutual evaluation.
Why this works
Once a frame is set, everything that follows gets interpreted through it.
If the frame is "audition," your track record sounds like a résumé.
If the frame is "strategic partnership," the same track record sounds like proof of expertise.
The information is identical. The frame changes what it means.
The formula
Before the appointment, identify the frame the seller is most likely to set (justify your commission, promise my price, prove yourself).
Decide the frame you want instead (strategic partner, mutual fit, pricing strategist).
Set your frame in your first two sentences…before the seller sets theirs.
Hold it. When the conversation drifts back toward their default frame, redirect.
Takeaway: The agent who sets the frame at the listing appointment is the agent who gets the deal.
📈[T]RAFFIC & ATTENTION
Zillow
An out-of-this-world listing
Somewhere in Hurricane, Utah, a 20-minute drive from Zion National Park, there is a full-scale flying saucer sitting inside a building called Hangar 18.
It doubles as a bunk room. It even has a flight deck.
Next to it: a cryogenics lab with two aliens in giant test tubes labeled Subject 5 of 7 and Subject 7 of 7. (They're the listing agent's brother and himself. Long story.)
The compound is listed at $1,489,000, and you have to see all the pictures.
It has three separate rental units, a pool with a volleyball net, a slide armed with Nerf guns, an '80s Atari arcade, and a hot tub for 10.
Oh, and you can ride an ATV directly from the property into the desert.
The listing agent built the whole thing from scratch with his brother, a former builder for Seaquest Aquarium.
He's now selling it to go build a shipwreck and a mine shaft two blocks away.
As one does.
This man has never once asked himself "but is this too much?"
We respect that.
🔔[S]ELLER SIGNALS
"Can't sell house" just hit an all-time high on Google
The search term "can't sell house" reached its highest volume ever in the U.S. this month.
When that many people are typing the same fear into a search bar, it's a vibe shift.
And the homeowners in your sphere who've been thinking about selling are feeling it too…even if they're not the ones Googling it, yet.
This is when you want to control the narrative. Be the person who shows up with context while everyone else is quiet.
A short email to your sphere this week that says "here's what I'm actually seeing right now" does more for trust than any market report.
It tells the homeowner who's been sitting on the fence that someone is paying attention and has a perspective worth hearing.
So we wrote one you can send today. Feel free to make it your own.
Takeaway: The homeowners who are going to list in the next six months are feeling this anxiety right now. The agent who names it first, calmly, with something useful, is the one they'll call when they're ready.
💡by Beacon
Every agent has a marketing plan. Few have this.
We’ve mentioned before that you can (and 1000% should) use Beacon to win listing appointments.
In fact, Kim did just that.
Beacon helps you document everything you're doing for a seller, views across platforms, marketing campaigns, showings, feedback, market context, updated every week - into a single, beautiful, shareable report.
And as great as having a killer marketing plan is...
Being able to prove it in real time when you’re sitting across from a skeptical seller is even better.
Just imagine how good it’d feel to say at your next listing appointment:
“Hey ______, I've sold a lot of houses over my career, and the one thing I know to be true is that communication is critically important for my clients.
Has anybody walked you through their weekly communication plan?”
They’d probably say no because most agents will lay out their marketing plan but not their communication plan.
“Would it be helpful for me to show you what that looks like?”
Of course, their answer would be yes.
Now imagine pulling up a real report, not a PDF you built in Canva, not a Powerpoint, and walking them through it:
"Each week, I prepare a comprehensive report that includes what's happening with your listing online, how many views it's getting, where it's being promoted, every marketing campaign, showings and Open House feedback. We also cover what's happening in the market with the homes for sale that are most like yours.
You'll get a new one every week. Same day, same time."
That's the moment their posture changes. That's when "why should I hire you" becomes "when can we start."
Agents who've started using Beacon at listing appointments have almost unanimously said the same thing: sellers stop asking about commission and start asking when they can begin.
If you’re looking for an easy way to document all the work you do for sellers that they typically wouldn’t see…
…in a way that instantly builds confidence so they trust your process to get their home sold…
It’s gotta be Beacon.
Thanks for reading the entire B.I.T.S.
We’ll see you next week.
- Chris Smith and Jimmy Mackin
P.S. Don’t forget to register for The Ultimate 90 Day Listing Marketing Plan - we started prepping for it last week. The quality of this workshop will be off the charts. Register here.