Selling is not marketing. Successful real estate selling requires marketing, but it also requires selling.
Sending out your newsletter and your direct marketing pieces is marketing. Putting your picture on the bench at the bus stop is marketing. Sending out letters of introduction in a target neighborhood is marketing. Dropping off refrigerator magnets with your phone number is marketing.
But talking to a prospect at an open house is selling. Cold calling is selling. Knocking on the door of a FSBO to talk to the seller about listing with you is selling. Calling a referral from a past client is selling. Asking for referrals is selling.
Some real estate agents are extraordinary at marketing, but extraordinarily poor at selling. To excel at selling real estate, you must have exceptional questioning skills, closing skills, sales momentum-building skills, and presentation skills.
Sufficient training on these skills could take volumes of books or dozens of sales webinars. But here are four sales tips for real estate agents to improve selling (not marketing) skills:
1. Engage your prospects.
Engagement can be measured in the percentage of time that salespeople talk versus the percentage of time the prospect talks. Whenever you are in a selling situation and in the "getting to know you" or needs assessment step, the prospect should be the one doing most of the talking. When the prospect's talking, you're listening, and you're getting valuable information that will help you connect the prospect to your product.
2. Be skeptical.
Look for holes in the prospect's story. Connect the dots between the various statements and answers of your prospect. Check and recheck information. Verify and verify some more. Question everything.
3. Get commitment.
Your time is valuable. To protect it, make certain your prospect's talk is connected to action at every step of the selling process. Talk is cheap. Action isn't. While you're working on one selling step, make sure you get agreement that the prospect will take the next step if certain conditions are met. For instance, consider showing the wife properties that fit the family's needs in your community (that they'll be moving to in a couple months), but only if you can schedule a firm appointment for a face-to-face meeting with the husband when he next visits your town.
4. Focus on the prospect, not the paperwork.
Selling is activity that takes place between two parties, the seller and the buyer(s). Don't let your focus of your selling process be on your sell sheets, the details of the property, the paperwork; make the prospect your focus. Get to know your prospect. Get the prospect to be comfortable with you. Lead them through the process, but sell them also on following you through the process. Prospects are human. You're human. Be human together during the selling interaction. Paperwork and marketing collateral are not human, and can even distract your prospect.
If you like this post (or don't) please click on "comments" below and share your comment. Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies and individuals who sell to consumers in B2C, retail, in-home selling, in the financial, real estate, and insurance markets, and other consumer-selling industries.
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