Readers…the following post is a continuation of last week’s post. If you did not read it, then start reading at the beginning of this post. If you did read last weeks’ start reading at “Lesson #7 – Overcoming Objections”.
Several months ago I was approached by a real estate company to help them solve a problem. You see they had a team of agents that were assigned to families that were relocating to a different area. This agent (who was in competition with another company) would sit down with the seller and pitch the value proposition of their company and themselves. The seller would then make a decision regarding who they wanted to list their house. The problem was the team was losing more than it was winning.
This field of sales is very complicated and clearly there are multiple factors to this problem; most that were out of everyone’s control. BUT there was one thing the company could do…..help their agents become better at the listing presentation. Enter my services.
We began what I call “The Great Listing Presentation Project” or GLPP for short. At the core of this project was asking each agent on this team to perform their listing presentation in front of a reviewer. Using a check-list and a series of questions/objections the reviewer took the role of the seller. At the end of the listing presentation the reviewer would complete written feedback and send it to the agent.
Forty agents later there were clear common denominators in the weaker presentations and clear common denominators in the stronger presentations. This series of blog shares those lessons.
By the way if you are not involved on the real estate market there is still value here for you. Ironically, the majority of these lessons had no relation to a specific market but are about sales skills.
Lesson #7 – Overcoming Objections
The characteristics in slaying objections can be found in this story….
Years ago I was working with a new real estate sales agent named Tom. Tom was one of the few agents I had ever met that planned on building his business working For Sale By Owners or what we call in the business “FSBOs”. The scarcity of this type of prospecting method is mainly because sellers are generally cocky and the number of objections you encounter are high.
Determined, Tom began approaching these sellers. The first door he knocked on he found the seller was rude and slammed the door. Most agents would drive home as quickly as possible after a door slam but not Tom. He went back to his car and wrote down what the seller had said. Then off the next house.
After each encounter he would write down what the owner had said. Pretty soon Tom noticed a pattern….he was hearing the same six objections over and over. So Tom took each objection and wrote a rebuttal. Soon his interactions with FSBOs began going better.
Ultimately he realized that he didn’t have to wait to hear the objection he could actually remove the concern as part of his presentation. In the first month of knocking on the doors of FSBOs he listed 10 houses.
There are several wonderful lessons in this story….
1. He didn’t take the objection personally – Simply put it’s “a request for more information”. In other words the customer doesn’t understand. Think about all the times you say “no” to someone just based on your lack of understanding. I do it all the time. What it’s not is about you.
2. Tom noticed the patterns in objections he was receiving – If you think about it there’s a handful of objections you her on a regular basis. Identify those objections.
3. He was prepared for the objections – How? Tom wrote scripts. These scripts generally followed the model of “Feel, Felt, Found”. If someone said they did not want to list with him because he was a new agent his response would be, “I understand how you feel, other people have felt that way. However, we have found new agents have the energy, enthusiasm, and current knowledge to get your home sold in the shortest time with the least trouble. Isn’t that what you want?”
4. He began answering the objection before it was asked – Why wait? If you know that you repeatedly get an objection go ahead and build it into the presentation. For example, agents report that they are frequently asked by sellers about the relationship between market value of their home and tax value of their home. Instead of waiting for them to ask (or worse them wondering about it but not asking) address the issue in the presentation.
In addition to these lessons from Tom I would like to say that we all can get knocked off balance by an objection, even the most seasoned salespeople. If you are presented with an objection that you blindsides simply ask questions. Very often I will say “Can you give me more information…I don’t think I understand”. By asking this question I buy time, the time allows me to think, and typically they provide enough detail that I’m in a better position to answer the question.
Handling of an objection thing was a major point of difference in the GLPP. The agents that did not perform well were typically stumped and rattled when presented with a legitimate objection. Most didn’t recover.
So my charge to you is to list the objections you hear most often and decide (in writing) how you will respond. By the way, if there is an objection you haven’t actually run into but have a great fear of it, go head and get yourself ready. That will almost guarantee you will never hear it.
Think about it.