The one place you should never neglect in getting you product ready, is the apartment you are going to show the prospect.  It should be absolutely perfect.  This is the rule: When there is no further reason to enter the apartment to make any improvement-when it is absolutely market ready-then, and only then, should you show it.  More prospects are lost through violation of this rule than for any other reason.

Picture what often happens: The manager (or agent or landlord) shows a prospect into an apartment and immediately steps on a stack of literature that has been slipped under the door over the past few days or weeks.  The apartment itself is musty, dirty, and either overheated or chillingly cold.  The carpet is stained, and the walls are full of holes and marked with dirt where pictures have hung.  In the kitchen, the refrigerator has food stains, the stove and oven is encrusted with baked on debris, the sink is rust streaked (and leaking facuets), insect poison is in the cabinets.  The bathtub has dead spiders, a dried-up toilet bowel (and partial roll of toilet paper), a medicine cabinet with rusty shelves and a desilvered mirror.  To cap it all off, bulbs are missing from the light fixtures or the power is off-you may have to show the apartment by flashlight.

TIP FROM CROSSETT REAL ESTATE
Make sure there is no garbage/debris in the apartment OR in the yard. Parking area clean/grass mowed or in Winter snow shoveled on steps and parking areas/smoke alarms working/carbon monoxide detectors are installed and working.