By Joe Klock Sr.
Special to Realty/Builder Connection
Sales tips to help you in your daily life
When answering telephone inquiries, don’t “give away the store” by rattling off the price, location and full description of the subject property. If the prospects get too much information, they may simply hang up and be lost to you forever.
On the other hand, don’t “stonewall” callers by answering his/her every question with a self-serving question of your own.
Here’s the wrong way:
Caller: “What’s the address of that home you have advertised for under $300,000?”
You: “May I have your name, please?”
Here’s a better way:
Caller: “What’s the address of that home you advertised for under $300,000?”
You: “That’s in the Maple Shade section. What sort of home are you looking for?”
The technique is to give a little information in exchange for getting some in exchange.
Your “key questions” should focus on the caller’s wants, needs and motivation (how long have they been looking for a home, how much time do they have to find one, why are they moving, etc.), rather than their identity.
Instead of opening with a “third-degree” confrontation, trade bits of your information about the property for their answers to valuable qualifying questions.
Too many beans spilled at the outset might give the callers all the info they need to motivate them ... to hang up!
Your objective should be to keep them talking until you can separate the casual callers from the buyers in your future.
Think out a strategy
When confronted with an obstacle (e.g., “The price is too high”), a salesperson’s natural instinct is to meet it head-on and smack it down immediately.
The trouble is that the first question raised is seldom the big objection, and it is almost never the only one.
A better strategy is to close on the objection, like so:
First, acknowledge and restate the customer’s complaint, to prove that you both understand and respect it.
Then say something like: “If this (e.g., the price) were not a problem, could we do business right now?”
Such an approach will either isolate the problem, so you can effectively deal with it, or smoke out other objections, among which might be the real obstacle to getting a commitment.
If you handle every objection as soon as it arises, you may be wasting time and energy by attacking “straw men” without getting to the root of the buyer’s resistance.
Are you a mighty oak?
The aftermath of a hurricane shows a phenomenon of nature that is useful in sales.
Mighty oak trees that stood defiantly against the raging winds end up as fallen logs and shattered stumps, while slender palm trees remain standing.
The rigid oaks had no choice but to resist the awesome power of the gale, while the palm trees wisely bent to accommodate the storm.
Thus, they were able to survive and resume their former stature. (Even those flattened completely quickly took root again when pulled to an upright position.)
This comparison reminds us that when we encounter an irresistible force, it’s better to “go with the blow” temporarily in order to avoid irreparable damage.
For example, when customers disagree or become angry — however wrong or unreasonable they may be — our best response is to back off, assure them that we understand how they feel and tell them we’re sorry they feel that way.
In the calm that inevitably follows every storm, we can then get the relationship back on track.
The rigidity of the oak is a more instinctive human response than the palm’s flexibility, but there’s little future in standing one’s ground against ominous odds.
Joe Klock is a consultant and can be contacted through www.JoeKlock.com.