The 5 Systems You Need to Have in Place for Your Active Listing Process

Listings aren’t “set it and forget it.” Not in this market. If you want fewer cancels, calmer sellers, and faster contracts, you need real systems, not vibes.

In this episode, Mike & Rachael lay out the 5 non-negotiables:

1. Showing Feedback System:  Pre-showing texts, tight surveys, weekly compiled reports. Raw, unfiltered feedback your sellers can’t ignore.
2. Marketing Accountability Report:  Prove the push. Views, clicks, watch time, CTR, site traffic, delivered every 1–2 weeks. If buyers see it and don’t show… its price or product.
3. Weekly Comp Analysis:  Same criteria, every week. Track actives, pendings, price drops, and solds so the data tells the story—not your opinion.
4. Expectation Framework:  Set barometers up front: showings per week and average DOM. If you’re not tracking both, you have a pricing problem.
5. Price-Move Protocol:  Know when to cut, how much to cut, and when to wait. Time reductions around seasonality, avoid going stale, and reset strategically when needed.

Agents: steal the playbook.
Sellers: this is how you stay in control when the market isn’t.

Listen. Implement. Stabilize your listings.

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Transcript

Transcript

Mike Novak:

[0:33] Mike and Rachel Novak, back at it today with you. And today we're talking about the five

systems you need to have in place for your active listing processes, right?

Rachael Novak:

[0:42] That's right.

Mike Novak:

[0:42] And so when I think about this, you know, we're in conversation through our network at Real

Brokerage and through coaching that agents are frustrated. And I think their sellers are frustrated

as well.

Rachael Novak:

[0:54] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we're in the thick of a very shifting and shifted market where listings are

sitting for much longer.

Mike Novak:

[1:04] Some listings are.

Rachael Novak:

[1:05] Yeah, exactly. Some listings are just sitting for much longer than anticipated and that they

foresaw when they first listed it.

Mike Novak:

[1:13] Right. And obviously, like, you know, we're seeing a ton of canceled listings in our market,

which is further evidence that there's definitely misalignment of expectations between what a seller

is expecting is going to happen, what actually happens. And as agents, you know, oftentimes

you're kind of caught in the middle trying to explain this, trying to interpret it yourself and also keep

your client calm. So our goal today is to give you some systems that have worked really well for us

that might bring some calm to the chaos and that might also help you set better expectations with

your seller up front and then manage those expectations in an effective way once the listing is

active in the market. Because right now, like at least in our market, the average days in the market

are, you know, closing on a 30. Okay. And so it's not the market where you can just list it and offers

just start pouring in. Like you need to have a process and system in place to hold on to this listing

for a period of time and manage the listing actively.

Rachael Novak:

[2:09] I would also like to add that it's not the market. Test the market, right? A lot of sellers will be

like, well, let's just toss it on for 30 days, test to see if it'll sell. This is not the market for that, at least

in our area, in our metro area, the Seattle area, because we're seeing at least 30 days average on

market, new construction, we're seeing significantly longer, we're seeing four and five months of

inventory. This is not the market to test. So, you know, we'll talk a little bit probably about how to

discern what listings to take and how to have that conversation before. But for now, let's go through

these five things, that you need to have in place in order to maintain that active listing and keep

your sellers informed as to what's going on in the marketplace.

Mike Novak:

[2:54] Right, and a reminder, we did a podcast a few weeks back about how to price your listings.

So if you feel like you don't know how to price things right now, maybe go take a listen on that. It

could get some wheels turning for you. But number one, you need a showing feedback system. So

why is this important?

Rachael Novak:

[3:10] This is important because the feedback cycle needs to be as short as possible and as clear

as possible to the sellers. So that all of the feedback isn't just coming from you. You need to be

able to get at least a little bit of feedback from the buyers in the market, the buyer's agents who are

out with those buyers in the marketplace to be able to report back to the seller how the market is

interpreting and how the market is receiving their listing.

Mike Novak:

[3:36] Right. So like most people have showing time set up, which automatically surveys buyer

agents. We always like to make sure the seller is set up as a CC to the responses on those

because that way they can see it raw and unfiltered. You know, our job is not to like cushion the

feedback we're getting. It's to share it very honestly and candidly with sellers. You know, whether

they want to hear it or not, it's important they see it. So that's one way we collect feedback. Some

other ways we collect feedback, you know, we send a pre-showing text message to the buyer's

agent before they show the listing with five bullet points that makes it easy for them to show and

sell the house. Okay, like five things we don't want them to miss showing the home.

Rachael Novak:

[4:17] So an easy way to build this, just for efficiency's sake, is take the marketing remarks, take the

listing, take any of the marketing tidbits that your seller may have given you to include, put them

into ChatGPT and say, hey, give me five succinct bullet points as to what, like great features of this

particular property. And then create a template in your text messages that you can easily just send

as soon as a showing request comes through.

Mike Novak:

[4:44] Right. And so... You send this text before the showing happens and this establishes

communication with the buyer agent before they do anything and so they typically will respond with

something like thank you or you know awesome and so they're they're really thankful and grateful

for you reaching out and giving them this like kind of snapshot of information and if you think about

if you want to go be a buyer agent on a showing like it just makes their job very easy i was gonna

say like here's five things i make sure that i point out to my buyer yeah exactly like you're like.

Rachael Novak:

[5:13] Our job as listing agents isn't just to market the property, but it is to help and give tools to

buyer's agents in order for them to sell their client on this home as well.

Mike Novak:

[5:22] Make it very easy for them to sell it.

Rachael Novak:

[5:23] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[5:23] But the next thing that that does is when we then reach out for showing feedback, then they

tend to respond. I hear a lot of agents say, well, no one ever responds to my feedback requests,

but very few people are actually reaching out preemptively. And so if you do this, you're going to

see your response rate go through the roof. Mine is north of 75%. Like some people respond on

calls, texts, or the automated survey 75% of the time.

Rachael Novak:

[5:45] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[5:46] Which is huge for the sellers.

Rachael Novak:

[5:48] Well, it is huge. And, you know, prior to us doing this, if we were just relying on the showing

time feedback, number one, agents, I would say less than 25% of the time, they would fill out that

showing time feedback. And even if it was filled out that pre, you know, the five questions in there.

Was not detailed whatsoever there was no reason as to why they didn't like it was just not great or

they loved it but why you know so it just it creates a little bit more detail that you're able to give to

your clients.

Mike Novak:

[6:16] Yep and so i like to send feedback once per week to my sellers i don't provide it right after the

showing or right after i receive it because that creates disorder and chaos like try doing that with 10

active listings you're going to be a train wreck you're never going to keep up. You're going to miss

sending some of them along. It's just, that's not a system, right? That's really just like running

around haphazardly. So a better system is collect the feedback, have your system put it on a

spreadsheet, have it sent out once per week to your seller. And then that becomes the basis of

conversation. Okay. So you need to set that expectation up front though, because if you don't, your

seller's going to ask you like, what do they think of the house? What do they think of the house?

What do they think of the house? So I literally have our list coordinator sent out a text. As soon as

we go live on the market saying, I'll be sending you the feedback report once per week. And I've

usually talked to them three or four times in person before they get that text as well. But we're just

revisiting it one last time as we go live.

Rachael Novak:

[7:04] Yep, exactly right.

Mike Novak:

[7:06] So I don't know about you, but I'm not going to go like relay feedback at 8 p.m. on like a

Monday night. It's not time sense of whatsoever.

Rachael Novak:

[7:13] Let's be perfectly honest. If the buyers are like hot to trot, if they're super excited, then you're

going to either get a call or text, hopefully from the buyer's agent in regards to potential offer terms.

So if that's the case, then OK, we'll circle back with the seller as soon as we actually have an offer

in hand if it's sooner than when the feedback would be received. But otherwise, like the feedback

can wait for whenever that is during the week that you provided.

Mike Novak:

[7:35] Yeah. If there's an offer on the table, I'm jumping all over it.

Rachael Novak:

[7:38] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[7:38] So number two is a market report for your seller on the marketing. Like I'm not talking about

like the actual like comps. I'm talking about the marketing that you're actually doing for them. So

whatever you promised them that you would do to market their house, it's important you have a

way to show them that you're actually doing it and to kind of pull back the curtain and give them

that data. So I like to provide this every one to two weeks to our sellers. And our marketing plan is

very digital focused. So it shows them things like YouTube views, website visits to their single

property site, time on the website.

Rachael Novak:

[8:12] Click through rates.

Mike Novak:

[8:13] Yeah, all those types of things. So they can see like, hey, we're out really offensively

marketing their property. We're not just sitting back waiting for an offer to come in or for putting in

the MLS and hoping that a buyer agent shows it.

Rachael Novak:

[8:24] Well, this shows that, you know, to your sellers, when you're able to back up with data, what

you have been actively and proactively doing to market their property, as opposed to just putting it

in the MLS and saying a prayer, is it shows that there's other views, there's other platforms than

just the Zillow dashboard or the Redfin dashboard that they are also able to see. So on that weekly

marketing report, so the marketing that we're doing, yes, we're including the views that we can see

that, you know, and the saves on Zillow and in realtor.com and on Redfin. Those are the basic

things. We take ours a little step further. I think we've talked about some of these before in the

podcast where, you know, we have a single property site for that particular property. We are

pushing it out through Google and targeting people. We're pushing it out through Meta, but that's

Facebook and Instagram and also on YouTube. And so we're able to have some, you know,

analytics in regards to what Michael was saying, the views, the clicks, the impressions, how many

people are looking at it, how many people are watching it, how long are they watching that video

for? And that's really helpful information because the distinction between those two is like, okay, I'm

seeing all these people like and save it on Zillow. But if I'm also seeing a bunch of people... See it,

like it, click through it, watch 30 seconds of this video, and yet I'm not getting any showings, that's a

very high indicator that we are out of alignment with pricing in what these buyers are looking for for

that particular property in the market.

Mike Novak:

[9:51] Yeah, they're seeing it online. They're rejecting the price or what they're seeing, and it's

keeping them from coming out in person.

Rachael Novak:

[9:57] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[9:58] Number three is the updated comp analysis process. So what does this look like for you,

Rachel?

Rachael Novak:

[10:02] So every single week, you need to have kind of a basis criteria for the comps that you're

pulling. So when you do the original CMA, when you go on the listing appointment, there's a

particular criteria that you provide for the comps that you pull. That exact criteria needs to be

carried through all the way to when you're under contract on this listing. So you're doing it at a

listing appointment. You're doing it again during the pre-listing process if you're connecting on

comps and if the market is shifting. You're doing it again, of course, right before you go live so that

you can actually justify price and decide on price with the sellers. Now, every single week, you want

to be pulling that same exact criteria in a market analysis, showing what's actively happening in the

market. So they are able to watch their competition either stay active on the market, which is, you

know, if they're still active. If their competition is lowering their prices, if their competition is going

under contract, their competition is selling and what it's selling for. So it provides them a real time

every single week comparison as to how they are stacking up in the marketplace.

Mike Novak:

[11:05] Yeah. I mean, the market is really dynamic, obviously. It changes week to week. And so it's

important that they don't see a market analysis once and that's it on their house. Like it needs to be

a continuous feed of information because the information tells a story.

Rachael Novak:

[11:21] Exactly.

Mike Novak:

[11:21] Right? Like, you can, you know, tell them everything until you're blue in the face, but if they

can see the data and they can see what they're up against, it helps them come to their own

conclusions as well.

Rachael Novak:

[11:32] And that's what I was going to say. You know, like, at some point, your voice... In your

opinion, almost becomes noise to them. Like every single week, you could call them and say, yeah,

the market's really tough and nothing's really going under contract. And, you know, I saw this other

house, like you can be telling them these things and they will still feel like you're not doing enough

or, you know, they're frustrated with you because you're the easiest target right in the market.

Whereas if you can be pulling the actual data, they are looking at the data, they're seeing the other

homes on the marketplace it takes all of that like pressure of selling off of you and into what is

happening in the marketplace because the market is what determines the ultimate selling price

100.

Mike Novak:

[12:15] Number four the system of framing expectations so this is like again about kind of, before

you even get into the issue of the home being on the market for a while, what kind of mindset have

you developed in the seller ahead of time? Okay. And so this is hard to do if you've got listings that

are just sitting there right now, like you can go back and have this conversation for sure. And you

probably should, but it's better to have this conversation upfront before you go onto the market. So

all of us tell sellers like, Hey, you know, this is the price I think we should come on the market, but

you know, it's possible that that's not the right price and the market doesn't respond well to it. So

there's a couple of barometers that I'm really going to be like looking at to know if we nailed the

price and those two barometers are of course the showings per week and then how long does it

take to sell the average home in this market so like if we just do some really simple math like you

don't have to be a math genius to figure this out if it takes 30 days approximately four weeks give or

take to sell a home in that market and the average showings is 12 then you need about what four.

Rachael Novak:

[13:16] Showings a week.

Mike Novak:

[13:16] Three showings a week Right. So I know if I'm getting zero or one, we have a pricing

problem and I'm kind of ahead of it. I'm not waiting for the days on market to be matched by my

listing. I'm saying like, hey, like we should have had three this week based on this data. We had

one. We need to see if this is just a weird week. Usually I won't do anything for the next week. But if

I get a back to back week of really low showings or no showings, that's when the price conversation

will start to come up. Right. Because we obviously have a problem in some way. So those are the

barometers I recommend watching and explaining to your client to confirm you've got the price

right.

Rachael Novak:

[13:54] Yes. And another way to look at that data is also to say, okay, if I know that in your particular

marketer in that zip code, on average, it takes, you know, 12, just say, we'll go around numbers, 12

showings to sell this home, and then we're getting two showings a week. Okay, then we can, again,

deduce by math, it may take at least six weeks to sell. And if we then cross that average days on

market, and then we also cross the average showings per month, you know, to sell, then we know

for sure that it is price at that point. But obviously, like Mike said, we want to try to get ahead of it.

So if we're tracking, if we're not tracking for the average days on market with the average

showings, then we likely have a pricing issue.

Mike Novak:

[14:36] Right. And the average showings to offer is also important because, you know, you can get

these listings. I've got one right now where we've had like 42 showings. The average is 10.

Rachael Novak:

[14:46] Right?

Mike Novak:

[14:47] But But the reason why, it's actually not price. It's because the home is like in the middle of

nowhere and people don't think it's as far out as it is. So by the time we go out there, they're like,

oh my God, this is way too far. Yeah, you can only say- You gotta like find that right buyer that's

okay with it, right?

Rachael Novak:

[15:00] Yeah.

Mike Novak:

[15:01] But we're at 42 showings, the average is like 10, 11.

Rachael Novak:

[15:03] Yeah.

Mike Novak:

[15:04] So like that kind of tells a story to the seller if you've explained what that data means.

Rachael Novak:

[15:09] Mm-hmm, exactly.

Mike Novak:

[15:10] The last one, of course, is the system to know when to have the price conversation and

reduce it.

Rachael Novak:

[15:15] Mm-hmm.

Mike Novak:

[15:16] How do you do this, Rach? channel. This is one that you've done a lot.

Rachael Novak:

[15:19] Yeah, yeah, we sure do. So, I mean, along with looking at the average showings that I'd like

to see per week, as well as average days on market, like we're tracking those in real time, of

course. But at the end of the day, if I know, if I see other homes going under contract that are

priced lower, if I see other homes going under contract that are priced similarly, or they have better

features, like there's a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to price adjustments. But,

How we start this conversation, especially in a shifting market, is if we are not getting the showings,

or we're getting the showings and we're getting no interest whatsoever, we need to have a really

hard conversation simply about the fact that the market is shifting. And in this kind of case, we

could do one of two things. Number one, we could wait it out. We could not touch the price, and we

could just wait for the right buyer to come on. But what we risk is now going stale and creating

perception of shelf life for that listing, which the longer it stays on the market, the more people

think, oh, what's wrong with it? And therefore, your price is going to continue to go down and down

and down. The other thing that we can do, especially if they are wanting to sell, if they're motivated

to sell, if they need to sell, whether they're purchasing another property or they're moving out of

state or whatever.

Rachael Novak:

[16:36] The next option, of course, is we need to go find the market value right now, because

obviously what we are priced at is not in alignment with what the market is saying that we are what

it's worth. So we are going to price reduce relatively aggressively for a couple of weeks in a row

until we find what that looks like. And, you know, I've had sellers say, no, I want to I want to wait it

out. Okay, so we go past the average days of market, we go past the average showings. And now

what I always hate to see, but always will say is, I don't want to see you take less later, because

now we're chasing the market down, as opposed to proactively finding where the market is, which

likely will save and retain a little bit more equity.

Mike Novak:

[17:19] At what point would you say, hey, because we're making this podcast, we're shooting this in

October. At what point would you say, hey, this listing has been on market for four or five months.

It's kind of a dead listing at this point. Let's pull it off. Let's reset the clock. Let's come back on in

January.

Rachael Novak:

[17:34] Yeah, good question. You know, I've done that a couple of times over the over the years.

And I think once we get into like the second week of November, and if it's been on the market for

five, four or five, six months, that's about when I would probably pull it. Or actually probably this first

week of November, because in in our MLS in our market, you have to be off market for 60 days in

order for the days on market on the listing to reset. So that's about when I do that would be

probably right after Halloween, pull it for the holiday season and then list it the first week of

January, right? Is that 60 day mark?

Mike Novak:

[18:06] And then if you're going to keep it on the market, but you know, you need to reduce the

price. Do you wait tactically until like the right, like, let's just say like it's the first week in December,

you've got the listing on the market. They don't want to take it off. You know, you need to move

price. Do you move it then or do you wait till the market's going to come back with like in January,

for instance?

Rachael Novak:

[18:24] It's totally going to depend on the seller and their personal, like every listing is customized

based on, of course their needs but most likely i would wait and then we would price reduce after

the first of the year.

Mike Novak:

[18:35] Yeah yeah same i usually try to time my price reductions to eliminate any kind of seasonality

dynamic you know like for instance i usually won't do a price reduction the week before labor day

yeah like i'll wait until people are back in school. And then I'll time it for like a week after that. So

just kind of being like strategic about that.

Rachael Novak:

[18:52] Well, and another thing to think about too, especially as we enter Q4 and we're going

towards the end of the year, December 31st is the biggest listing expiration day of the entire year.

For whatever reason...

Mike Novak:

[19:03] I don't get why listing agents make the listings to the end of the year.

Rachael Novak:

[19:06] I don't know either. We have a minimum, you know, that we do. It's a fiscal year for our

listings. But for whatever reason, 1231 is like the biggest listing expiration day. So if you can list,

you know, five to seven days after that into January, you're hitting a market where the inventory is

actually quite low at that point. And so it's that's an that's been historically speaking, like I had a

listing this last last year, the end of 2024, we did a big cosmetic remodel on it. And the sellers were

quite antsy to get out on the market and their friends and professionals and business owners. And I

said, hey guys, please trust me on this. We were done with the remodel at the beginning of

December. They wanted to list it right away and sell it. I said, please trust me on this. We waited

until the second week in January, listed it and it sold almost immediately within a week.

Mike Novak:

[19:53] Timing does matter. And the market does, like every market has different seasonality

components to it, but ours definitely is quiet. Like once you get into the Thanksgiving time zone and

not much really happens until the second to third week in January.

Rachael Novak:

[20:07] Yeah, I mean, we literally... People on our team and we both have sold homes on

Thanksgiving Day, on Christmas Day, like on New Year's Day, it's happened.

Mike Novak:

[20:15] But if you look at the sales data in our market, you can graph it out and say, where is the

point of highest sale price for the year? It's always the end of January through April.

Rachael Novak:

[20:27] Yeah, exactly.

Mike Novak:

[20:28] Right?

Rachael Novak:

[20:28] People think it's April and May.

Mike Novak:

[20:29] And we're talking like a $40,000 to $60,000 difference on an average home price area. So

the seasonality is really actually a pretty big component to like. strategy here.

Rachael Novak:

[20:40] If it makes sense for you. Right.

Mike Novak:

[20:42] If timing is something that is not pressing for you, then it's a dynamic that you should be

considering. Yeah, exactly. So, okay. All right. Awesome. Well, hopefully that is super helpful for

people. If you want to connect with us, you can do so on meetthenovacs.com. We're at Real

Brokerage. We sponsor and mentor agents coming to Real across the whole country and Canada

as well. You can reach out to us about that on instagram i'm at the real mike novak and.

Rachael Novak:

[21:07] I am at rachel novak with an a.

Mike Novak:

[21:09] We'll see you next week.

Rachael Novak:

[21:10] See you then.