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2. The Most Sophisticated Sales Technique in the World

My business as a real estate speaker, trainer, and coach primarily involves working with people who are seasoned, successful veterans in our industry. Most of the people I work with have at least seven years of experience in our business, and many of them have 15-30 years or more of their time invested in our industry.

So what can happen then sometimes is a person who has 10-20 or more years of experience in real estate can sometimes be mulling over questions and issues that are really more appropriate ones for someone with far less experience in the business. This is a common result from people learning our business a particular way when they're brand new in it, and then not updating their approaches many years later when they're far more successful.

As an example, a number of my clients have told me recently that they need to stop working on smaller transactions---and that they find themselves sometimes working on transactions where the commission they'll be paid is far less than what their time is now worth. But they somehow constantly have an abundance of smaller transactions coming their way, and they find it difficult to say "No" to people.

Because of the nature of our business, it's very easy to get wrapped-up in the activity that's right in front of our faces, and cost ourselves a lot of money in the process, too. But being busy doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing the activities that will maximize your income, but sometimes we can delude ourselves into thinking that this is the case. Despite the fact that most agents in a real estate office will look busy throughout the day, the ones making the most money year-after-year are busy doing far more productive activities than everyone else. And these activities normally don't involve wasting their time working on smaller transactions.

With this in mind, an exercise that I've given to a number of my coaching clients recently is asking them to describe what they want their life to be like five years from now. I suggest that they ask themselves questions like, "What will you be doing with your time?" And, "What activities will you be focused on doing in your business?"

While an exercise like this may sound simple, the results it can lead one to can be quite profound. In summary, it can lead you to easily identifying the activities you're now doing that are completely wasting your time.

When you see yourself five years from now doing business at a much higher level, the activities you're now doing that are incompatible with this new higher level become very apparent to you, and you realize that you really need to stop doing these activities NOW.

Sometimes this will involve no longer working with people on a non-exclusive basis, sometimes it involves no longer working with people you don't enjoy working with, and sometimes it means from now on you'll only work on transactions that meet a new minimum level of anticipated commission for you.

Whatever the case, moving to the next level of production in your business involves letting go of your less productive activities and embracing new activities that will make you more money. And with this in mind I recommend that you spend 15 minutes to an hour describing what you want your business to be like five years from now. Consider asking yourself questions like:

What kind of clients will I be working with?

What kind of transactions will I be working on?

What will the minimum or average commission amount be on the transactions I'm closing?

Will I only be working with people on an exclusive basis?

And if your game plan in five years involves investing in and/or developing properties, ask what you'll now be doing in this arena also.

If we don't watch out for ourselves, we can get wrapped-up in doing activities and working on transactions that served us well in our early days in the business, but continuing to do so now is no longer appropriate. And if we don't recognize this and implement the appropriate changes, we can end up paying for it dearly.

But when we clearly identify the person we want to become in our industry and how we envision spending our time and energy five years from now, the unproductive activities that are holding us back from this new level will often jump right out at us, making it easier to remove them and replace them with new activities that will propel us forward in the direction of the agent we really want to become.

Click here for downloadable E-books and live audio interviews with top-producing real estate agents. These interviews are with industry experts who show you exactly what they do to continually make hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a year.

2. The Most Sophisticated Sales Technique in the World

We hear all the time about different techniques for closing people in sales situations, and other approaches that are designed for us as salespeople to gain more business with our clients and prospects, too. While some of these approaches can be helpful at times, there's simply no substitute for what I consider to be the most sophisticated sales technique in the world:

Building great rapport with your clients and prospects, and having them feel you're totally committed to fulfilling their needs, wants, and desires

But this isn't how a lot of salespeople are operating out there in their own businesses right now, is it?

Oftentimes people get into sales because they see it as a way to make a lot of money. But they then somehow get into the routine of being forceful in their sales approaches, trying to move the client in the direction that's best for the salesperson.

The real joke of the matter is that these salespeople often don't get that their clients sense and know exactly what they're up to. Somehow these salespeople feel that they're not telegraphing what they're doing in any way that can be detected by the client or prospect they're working with.

With this in mind, just once I'd like to be in a clothing store and hear a salesperson say to the customer, "You know, that really doesn't look very good on you at all."

Any salesperson who did that with me would have their level of credibility instantly skyrocket!

But there are so many real estate agents out there trying to steer their prospects towards doing deals that may not be the best ones for the prospects, but they're the best ones for the agents instead. And once your prospect picks up on this behavior, your relationship with the person is absolutely doomed. Now you've become just someone who presents properties to them, but they know now that they can't trust your judgment and opinion on any of them. They have to determine whether or not the property will work for them completely independent of anything you now say to them.

With this in mind, I had my own experience in my first few years in the business that created an epiphany for me in this arena. I was showing buildings to the President of one of the most famous clothing manufacturers in the world. Whether it be now or at some other time throughout your lifetime, you've probably had one or more pairs of their jeans in a closet somewhere in your home. Now I don't remember exactly what I said to this person, but I definitely remember the reaction and the feeling it produced...both in my client...and in me.

I was showing the company a facility of several hundred thousand square feet that they were thinking of moving into. The President had just toured the facility and was standing by himself looking out a window, wondering if the facility would work for him.

While he was standing there silently thinking, I brought up some selling point about the property and mentioned it as a reason why he should move forward and buy it. And when I did this he just turned his head to the side, shook it, and laughed. I could tell in that moment that my desire to close a large transaction with his company on this property had been blatantly detected, and I'll probably never forget that feeling I had in the pit of my stomach in that moment as long as I live. I realized then and there, some 23 years ago, that I had to transition myself into becoming a completely different kind of salesperson, and that experience has served as a constant reminder and motivating factor for me to have made the transition along the way.

The type of salesperson we all want to work with is someone we like who we feel has their number one priority being serving our best needs. When we both like someone and feel they're committed to serving our best interests, we naturally just feel ourselves wanting to work with them.

The same applies for you, too, in your own real estate business.

As an example, do you think if you were the one looking to buy or lease property that you could sense if the agent you were working with had your best interests in mind above their own? If your answer to this is "Yes," don't you think the same applies with your own clients and prospects, too? Don't you think they can sense if you're serving their best interests or looking out for your own commission?

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we don't feel our clients and prospects share our same intuitive qualities in this arena. And it can cost us big time, too,  if we haven't already become the kind of agent who always puts their needs before our own.

So make sure you're a master at developing great rapport with your clients and prospects, and make sure they always get that serving their best interests is constantly your number one priority.

And in closing, once you've mastered this in your own real estate business, people will sense that you're the best choice they could ever make when it's time for them to hire a real estate agent.

Click here if you'd like more information on my one-on-one coaching program to take your real estate productivity to the next level. One-on-one coaching is available for both real estate agents and company management.

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