[Your Input Wanted!] Upcoming Interview With World Class Sales Trainer

Say what? i did not agree to any Interview ! lol.

But seriously, who is the interview with ?

That's a secret surprise! I don't want everyone banging on his door.

He and his blog have won many awards, including for 2011. I'll be sharing all that info with the audio.

But do you have a question for him? You'd probably have an in-depth one, with your knowledge.

Perhaps I need to re-phrase the question.

Is there one key thing that keeps coming up and stopping you in face-to-face or over-the-phone selling?

Ok here's my stumbling block for what it is worth.
I have been in real estate for the last 14 years. Top producer for many of those and very proud of that! If I have a client that I CAN help, I probably have about a 95% closing rate.
Now I know realestate is not a very hard sell and to be honest I have hardly ever prospected!! so I do not consider myself a sales person.
With my market now in the toilet, I am trying to start offline, but I guess I want to be a marketer and provide value and service to local clients.
(sorry for the ramble!!)
I like to buy, but I don,t like to be sold. Equally, if someone ASK's me about what I do I am pretty confident I can convert them. ( see I can't even SAY sell lol)
How do you MARKET without a sales pitch?

Interesting question, Karen. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but our answers are probably going to jive:

What urgent, emotional problems do you solve for your clients?

Let me give you something to work with right now.

I have many realtor friends in the hot Vancouver market back home. What makes them stand out? Why should someone deal with them and not another realtor?

Because they...listen to their clients' needs? (who doesn't do that?--stay tuned, many don't!)

My wife and I enjoy watching House Hunters, For Rent and the like, and our favorite realtor show is Property Virgins. If you've ever seen the show, you know that Sandra has a very different and very successful method. She doesn't "take control" and lead the prospects through the property. She lets them go in, check it out themselves. Then she joins them and asks some clear questions about what they liked, what they didn't like, and gets them to guess the price to see if it is in their comfort zone.

No fit? Move on. Prior to taking them out, she interviews her prospects to make sure she's showing them what they want. But as you no doubt know, what a prospect thinks that they want in a home at the start of their buying journey can be quite different from what they end up choosing. But Sandra has a plan, which she can adjust, and she's honing in on the target.

Contrast with Selling New York, in which these heavily made-up property slingers drag their wealthy prospects from apartment to apartment without even considering to ask what kind of a place the client is interested in. "Well today was a total fail...she didn't tell me she wasn't interested in a masculine space." No, you didn't ask!!

Trusted advisor versus product pusher.

If I were to pick up in the realty business tomorrow, which it has been suggested I do more than once, here's what I'd tell buying prospects:

"People typically choose to work with me as their real estate advisor because they are:

* frustrated with pushy realtors who don't seem to care about finding out exactly what you want

* concerned that they are going to miss something critical in the buying process, and get taken for a ride on the money side

* upset with previous realtors who dragged them to place after place, wasting time and never getting more on target."

I'd build this into my marketing literature and stand out boldly compared to every other realtor out there who "listens" and has "many properties to show you."

Of course, there's also the property selling side...which requires it's own 30 second commercial...

Hope this helps!

Hay Kaniganj here are my questions

1)How to handle errors when we makes a mistake with a client?
2)How to control Self-gratification?
3)Do we need to use regular fantasy elements to promote sales?Is there any other option left?

Hi Erik,

I'm gonna hit the ball back over the net to you for some clarification.

1) When you say "errors", do you mean errors in the sales process...errors in fulfillment (ie. technical mistakes)...or at some other time?

2) Could you expand upon this? Self-gratification in what sense? Blowing your commission check on a crazy weekend? Needing that pat on the back (we call it a "stroke") all the time?

3) What do you mean by "regular fantasy elements"?

Thanks!

Well it looks like I got caught up in the first part of your post that talked about real estate. Silly me. I like real estate and hopefully my overzealous reply can help someone.

Sales trainers deal with direct face-to-face and over-the-phone selling, not marketing. So this really is not an area that he can help out with.

Eventually, though, I'll bet you end up getting asked what you do for a living. And at that time you'll have to have something to say. These urgent, emotional reasons of why people do business with you also transfer very well into print.