Every listing presentation you sit through will promise you marketing. Professional photos. Social media. Syndication to hundreds of sites. Aggressive negotiation. It is the same page in every folder, and it tells you almost nothing, because none of it is falsifiable — there is no version of "we'll market your home aggressively" that anyone can hold an agent to in week three.
So here is ours instead, written the only way we think is useful: as the nine things you actually have to do to sell a house, what genuinely worries you about each one, and exactly what we do so that worry stops being your problem. Read it before you talk to us. Take it to the other two agents you're interviewing and ask them for theirs.
Why it reads this way. A marketing plan written as a list of deliverables is a list of things we find impressive. A plan written as a list of your objections is a list of things you find frightening — and those are the only ones that decide whether your house sells. Nothing below is aspirational. If we haven't built it, it isn't on this page.
The nine steps, and what we do about each one
Get a real number before you decide anything
What actually worries you"Zillow already gave me a number, and I'm not ready to sit through a sales pitch to get a second one."
A free 15-minute Seller Strategy Call and a real comparative market analysis on your home — no listing agreement, no obligation, and no expectation that you list at the end of it. You get the number and the reasoning behind it, and you're welcome to take both to another agent. We would rather be the people who told you the truth early than the people who won a listing you weren't ready to give.
Price to the market, not to the estimate
What actually worries you"You're just buying the listing with a high number — or talking me down so you get an easy sale."
We show you the comparison math itself rather than handing down a figure. That means the actual closed sales we're pricing against, the adjustments we're making and why, and a price range with the reasoning attached — not a single number you're asked to trust. For Lake Norman specifically we apply factors derived from this market rather than generic ones, because waterfront, water view and water access are three different homes and a national model treats them as one. If you disagree with an adjustment, you can see exactly which one to argue with.
Prep, declutter, repair
What actually worries you"It's thirty years of house. I don't have the time, the money, or the energy for this."
The main answer is vendor coordination on one call — painter, handyman, stager, cleaner, junk haul — against a short list of the work that actually moves the price, which is usually a small fraction of what you're imagining. Most of what sellers dread doing has no effect on the number, and we would rather tell you to skip it than watch you spend six weekends on something the market won't pay for.
If you'd genuinely rather do none of it, a home can be listed as-is and marketed honestly on that basis. And where it fits — a house needing more work than it's worth putting in, an inherited property, a rental you're finished with — we'll put a same-day cash offer next to the listed number so you can see both outcomes at once. On a well-kept home with time to sell, listing usually wins by enough that we'll say so plainly.
Media day — photography, film, and the 3D tour
What actually worries you"I don't want strangers walking through my house, and it isn't ready to be photographed."
One scheduled media day, one preparation target, and then it's done. Every Winston Dane listing gets a Matterport 3D tour as standard — not as an upsell on premium homes — and that tour does something for you that has nothing to do with looking impressive: it lets buyers walk your house before they walk your house. People who were never going to buy it tour it on a screen at eleven at night and quietly rule themselves out, which means fewer strangers in your hallway and a higher proportion of the ones who do come being serious.
Go live on the calendar, not on impulse
What actually worries you"Why are we waiting? Just put it on the market."
Because the first day your home is active is the single highest-value moment of the entire campaign, and it only happens once. Every buyer with a saved search sees it that day, and it is never new again. So we build an audience during Coming Soon and spend it on Just Listed, rather than launching into an empty room and hoping syndication finds someone.
Coming Soon
Build the audience. Neighbors, our database, paid reach, the sign and the QR code go up before the listing is live.
Just Listed · day 0
Spend it. Every channel fires at once on the day the market sees the home for the first time.
Open House
Its own creative and its own push, with a QR sign-in so we know who came and can follow up properly.
Trust that it is actually being marketed
What actually worries you"Every agent says they market. My last one said that too, and then I never heard from anyone again."
This is the objection the whole page exists for, and the only honest answer is that the plan has to be a document rather than a promise. So it is: the marketing plan for your home is written down and handed to you, and before anything goes out the door it runs through a ten-point launch review — a fixed, countable checklist that every listing passes before it launches, so "it's ready" means the same thing on your house as on every other one. You don't have to take anyone's word for what was done. You can read it.
Open houses and showings
What actually worries you"This is my home and my life. I don't want it disrupted, and I don't want strangers in it."
The 3D tour and the QR sign-in do most of this work — the tour filters out the browsers before they arrive, and the sign-in means we know who actually came through rather than guessing from a paper sheet. Showings get scheduled around your life rather than at it, and if there are windows that don't work, we plan the campaign around them instead of quietly losing showings you never hear about.
Read the weekly report — and reply to it
What actually worries you"Once you have the listing, I'll be in the dark." This is the single most common complaint we hear from sellers whose listings expired with someone else.
A written seller update every week on every active listing — showings, feedback, and our read on what the market is telling us. Two things about it matter more than the report itself. It arrives whether the news is good or not, because the weeks you most want to skip sending it are the weeks you most need to read it. And it fails loudly: if a data source is missing that week, the report says so rather than printing a stale number and letting you believe it. A report that quietly shows a zero is worse than no report.
Solve where you're actually going
What actually worries you"If it sells fast we'll be homeless, and if it doesn't we're carrying two mortgages."
For most sellers this is the real reason the house hasn't gone on the market yet, and it has nothing to do with marketing. We sequence the move as one plan rather than two transactions — a rent-back so you close and then stay in the house while you move, buying before you sell where the numbers support it, and a closing date set to your calendar rather than to whoever writes the first offer. You should not have to gamble on the order of two closings, and the sequencing is a planning problem we solve at the strategy call, not something you discover in week six.
What we don't claim
Two things belong on this page precisely because they are missing from it, and you should ask every agent you interview the same questions.
- Our weekly report covers showings and feedback, not advertising metrics. A marketing report with impressions and reach in it is a promise with a number attached, and we would rather add it when every number in it can be sourced than ship one that prints a confident zero.
- We don't yet automate the marketing that runs after the home goes under contract. Plenty of plans promise a full campaign through Pending and Just Sold. Ours is built and proven from Coming Soon through Open House, and we would rather tell you where the built part stops than promise you a stage we'd break on.
Who this isn't for
We are not the cheapest option in this market and we don't try to be, because the plan above costs real money to run and we run it on every listing rather than only on the expensive ones. If the only question you're weighing is which agent will cut their fee the furthest, we will be the wrong answer and there's no hard feelings in that — you'll get a straight referral to someone who's a better fit.
If what you actually want is to know that the plan exists, that it's written down, and that somebody will tell you the truth in week three when it isn't working — that's the entire reason this page is public.
Common questions
Do I have to list with you to get the pricing analysis?
No. The Seller Strategy Call and the comparative market analysis are free and carry no obligation, and you're welcome to take both to another agent. That's not a loss leader — a seller who knows their real number makes better decisions whoever they list with.
Is the 3D tour an extra cost?
No. Matterport is standard on every Winston Dane listing regardless of price point.
What happens in week three if there's no offer?
You get told, in writing, in the weekly report — and the conversation is about the marketing and the presentation before it is ever about the price. Ask that question of every agent you interview. The answer tells you a great deal about what month three will feel like.
Do you work with both of us, or just one agent?
Winston Dane has two brokers, Wendy Atherton and Sean Herndon. The plan on this page is the firm's and runs identically whichever of them you work with day to day.