EXCEPTIONAL real-estate salespeople are such a rare breed nowadays. There’s no doubt about it.
Seasoned members of the sales force know a good sales prospect when they see one. They have an uncanny ability to understand when to engage and when to hold back. They know what kind of topics to talk about, how to respond to strange or unfriendly inquiries, and when to close the deal without appearing very eager about the sale. They are viewed as assets whose value to the company only continues to grow over time.
These “battle-scarred veterans” have mastered the science of social engagement by learning from a decent amount of missteps they have endured in the past. Some of these mistakes, however, often go unnoticed and may have caused them significant sales in the past have they been addressed early on. Here, let me list down a couple of slip-ups that today’s generation of salespeople often commit without them even knowing it.
Relying too much on external marketing to generate potential clients.
Make no mistake about it: external marketing is a fantastic tool to use if you want to get word about your property out to prospective clients. Yes it’s great, but you should not count on it to fetch you the warm leads you’ve been aspiring for.
By doing so, you are basically putting your career—your main source of livelihood, if I may be blunt about it—in somebody else’s hands. You are merely relying on elements out of your control to make things work for you. Instead, what could help you grow and prosper is to learn and master the art of efficient sales engagement. Remember, property developers will likely favor a sales person with a relatively medium network and excellent closing skills over someone who has a vast network of possible leads but who has very poor closing skills.
Not mastering property knowledge fast enough.
When you have a property you want to sell, you need to sell it to hot prospects as fast and as efficient as you could. Before you can do that, make sure you’ve done your homework and get acquainted with the many aspects related to what you are selling. Failing to get a good grasp of all relevant information about the property will lead to you blowing the sale and becoming the butt of jokes among your peers. Seriously.
Not being an expert in property values, financing, and other financial issues related to property buying.
Too many salespeople are afraid of numbers and would rather hand off a sale to their managers. This becomes a problem because there is a break in the relationship and a loss of personal credibility with the client. Being able to show your expertise in talking about these kinds of things, especially with clients who are interested in numbers, is a great way to win the respect of clients, and eventually close out a sale convincingly.
Today’s generation of salespeople will have to go through an excruciating period to mature enough and understand the complexities involved in the business of selling real estate. When you are much younger than your client, or perhaps not as wealthy, earning their respect is almost as important as earning their trust. That is something that goes prominently with the territory.
It’s your expertise about the property, expertise about the industry, expertise about the location, and expertise about the finance that dictates how far you’ll go in such a very demanding and competitive environment like real-estate sales. Not being an expert means not getting the respect, and not getting the respect often means not getting the sale.