Last year, I went to a car dealership a few miles from my home to buy a car. The salesman showed me a brochure with beautiful pictures. Then I test-drove the model that interested me. I told the salesman that I liked the car but wasn’t in love with the color. He responded that he only had two on the lot and that if I wanted the car, I had my choice of white or white.
I was ready to buy. The only hurdle was the color. And I knew from many prior buying experiences that auto dealers use an online locator and switch cars to make a sale. But the lazy salesperson wasn’t ready to make the small leap to get the sale.
I walked out of showroom, drove home, and did my own locator search. I found a dealership 15 minutes away that had four cars in the color of my choice. I drove there that afternoon and bought the car. And I also return there for service, even though it would be more convenient to use the closer dealership.
The same laziness that I experienced with the first salesman is a chronic problem with many new home salespeople. They need a jolt of a sales strategy I call “GOYA” or “Get Off Your Anatomy! You don’t close deals by sitting behind a desk and taking the take-it-or-leave-it attitude—not in any economy, but especially not in a down one like the present. Get out of the sales center. Show them the homesite where they can envision their new life. Help them experience the dream and then make it happen. And it doesn’t happen when you don’t take control of the situation and guide your buyer to the purchase decision.
Making a sale requires action, not inaction. Unfortunately, I see one sales center after another populated with so-called “salespeople” who are merely waiting for a prospect to walk in the door of the model. They’ve sharpened their pitch and are ready to hurl it at anyone who crosses the threshold. But, in the meantime, they sit and wait for the company’s marketing efforts to deliver the buyers to them. While they sit and wait, sales are being lost to more proactive professionals.
Here’s the reality. Marketing is the act of attracting. Prospecting is the act of seeking. The Bible says, “seek and ye shall find.” It doesn’t advise you to sit around and wait. In any economy, but particularly in a down market, you need to get out of your chair and find the buyers. Make it happen!
Prospecting is a contact sport. The more contacts you gain, the more sales you will close. Yet oddly, most salespeople wrap themselves in a cocoon and wait for change to occur, laying their hopes entirely in the ability of the company’s marketing campaign to generate leads. As a salesperson, you can let things happen or choose to seize control of your success. When you become an active prospector, you declare, “I accept complete responsibility for the traffic that comes in here. I depend solely on myself as a marketing department.”
Every day that you wait for someone to come to you is eight hours wasted. Get in the game and make direct contact!
Are you battling the price war in your sales efforts? Do you feel like you have to bottom out your bottom line just to stay in business?
When you feel like taking a hatchet to your price, stop for a moment and think of this: Disney.
Does Disney push you to buy a pass to just one theme park? Do they entice you to come for the thrill of a single ride? Do the ads sell you on a hotel room as a destination or the dining experience of a particular restaurant? Of course not. What Disney sells is a magical experience. The big picture is a mosaic made up of tiny treats that combine to create a vacation like no other.
According to statistics, the average family that visits a Disney theme park consists of 4.5 people who come for four days and five nights at a cost of $5,000. That’s no small investment these days, but the parks continue to fill up. Perhaps in a down economy, the magic of Disney is more important than ever.
But I have to believe that the success of Disney is the corporate culture that is fully invested in delivering a magical experience. And it doesn’t just happen with a spray of pixie dust — even though they can easily make us believe otherwise.
I challenge you to put the magic of Disney into your selling strategy. Visitors invest $5,000 in a Disney vacation because the cost of admission is at least equal to the pure enjoyment they get in return.
What is the cost of admission to your theme park? It’s the price of a new home. How can you turn your sales presentation into a magical experience? What can you do for your buyer that will make that individual not just agree to purchase but be thrilled to do so?
Sell the joy of the home, not the price of the house. Deliver the experience and share the magic.
I’ve learned that people who don’t believe they are creative are usually wrong. Creativity isn’t limited to art, music, or literature. Being creative simply means you approach a challenge with a fresh look. You’re not a cookie-cutter robot who just churns out the same answer time and time again, regardless of the situation.
Look at “creative financing” which is prevalent in home sales. If you’re a forward-thinking sales person, you continue to explore “outside the box” thinking to help your clients secure the home they want, at a rate that will keep them in their home as long as they wish. They are relying on your ingenuity and knowledge of the process to find solutions that the layperson hasn’t discovered. “Creative financing” doesn’t mean locking a person into more debt than they can afford. That’s what contributed to this mess—and gave the term a really bad connotation.
So, get away from the term “creative financing” and instead explore “creative solutions.” Yes, it’s tougher to find the financing, but it’s by no means a rock-solid impasse. You need to unleash your ingenuity and talk to the financing sources in your network. You must also work to expand that network to keep broadening your creative resources. And so on and so on. Ask questions of your providers. Give them scenarios and get their take on what will work and what won’t. Demand creativity from them as well! Your diligence will make the difference between an offer and a closing.
I keep hearing successful closers described as “a natural-born salesperson.” When a baby is born, do you think the doctor hands the infant to the parents and says, “Congratulations, you have a bouncing baby salesperson?”
We are born with certain physical traits and then develop behaviors and knowledge. The skills that distinguish a successful salesperson are not genetic. It’s not a gift to be a closer, as any successful closer will tell you. A salesperson must learn the skills of the trade, just as any other professional. A lawyer, doctor, or accountant spends years studying their trades to become the best they can be — which is why they call their businesses “practice.” Their skills are not intuitive, but based on years of practice.
The “natural-born salesperson” is simply an individual who excels at this profession to such a degree that he or she makes it look easy. But underneath the smooth exterior is a good listener, a person who hears the buyer’s spoken and unspoken needs. This successful person understands buying behavior and has finely tuned negotiating skills. This ability to sell is developed by making the effort to stop and listen — a talent that far too few people possess. The knowledge is honed through an unending educational process of reading and attending seminars, and by being ever watchful for signs and opportunities.
I am always amazed at the small minority of salespeople who do not study the art of negotiation. They spend their entire careers negotiating six-figure (and greater) deals but have never invested the time in learning how to negotiate effectively. You do your homework to learn to bake a pie or fix your leaky faucet, yet when it comes to your livelihood, the most important “how to” of negotiating is ignored.
Make it your goal to read a book or attend a seminar or webinar on negotiating skills in the next three months. Never stop growing. Your success depends on it.
Marketing guru Seth Godin wrote an eye-opening book called “The Dip.” The premise is that you need to learn when to quit. Cut your losses and shift that energy into a place where you can be more effective. Learn to recognize when you’re faltering and either pump up your forces or bail. Yoda, the wise Jedi warrior in “Star Wars” summed it up: “Do or do not. There is no ‘try’.”
When I work with home builders, developers, and new home salespeople, I advise them to step out of the gray area. “Get in the game or get out. If you cannot get out, then get in.” What I’m saying is, make a commitment to yourself and your business. Explore your options for staying in the game. What will it take for you to continue? Do you have to negotiate better pricing with your contractors and suppliers? Do you need to eliminate certain products and costly features? Determine what you must do in order to get in and stay in. Then do it! Or cut your losses and get out.
When the game has changed, you can’t play by the old rules. So, it’s up to you to decide what to do in your business. Get in or get out. But get going!
Do you remember when you walked into a car dealership prepared to play the negotiation game? You make your offer. The salesman walks into the manager’s office and chats for a few minutes to make you believe he’s ardently negotiating on your behalf. Then he slides a piece of paper across the desk to you with the manager’s best offer. You head for the door, expecting the salesperson to haul you back with the sweet deal—which he likely does.
Nowadays, car deals are made on the Internet. You know what you want and make your deal via this virtual dealership. Click, click, click, and you’re done. You go to the dealership and sign the papers, or, in some cases, a dealer brings the car and paperwork to you. Either way, the game of negotiation has changed.
But here we are in the new homes industry where negotiation is the game. Every single day, you negotiate five- and six-figure deals in an atmosphere where the rules have changed. How are you rising to the challenge of negotiating in this competitive environment where buyers have raised the stakes? What strategies are you using to close the deal? I’ve asked this question at many seminars and I’m met with blank stares. You can’t afford to rely on the old playbook because the other players, the buyers, are calling your bluff. Step up to the plate and invest some time right now in developing a strategy for dealing with absurd offers, countering objections, and setting up your winning ways!
I was recently talking with a builder who was incensed by the demands of prospective buyers. “They want me to just throw in a furniture package with the deal,” he sputtered.
I listened and empathized with his plight. I’ve heard this same frustration voiced by many builders, developers, and new homes sellers in this market. Buyers want ridiculous discount and absurd freebies in order to close the deal. They’ve been handed a market where the buyer dictates and they are feeling choked by the heightened demands.
Let’s take a look at the situation though. The leak in the housing market started to trickle in the first quarter of 2007. Now, 25 months later, the sellers are scurrying to plug that gaping hole in a market that is flooded with short sales and foreclosures. The media, real estate agents, and mortgage companies are telling these buyers that now is a great time to buy. Have you ever heard them advise buyers that it’s not a good time?
As a result of the economic crunch, buyers are making offers that would have been swatted away like a pesky bug just two years ago. But these buyers, while they may appear vulture-like in their approach, are not fools. They resisted the top-of-market buying frenzy, sat on the sidelines to gauge the action, and are now quite enlightened about the status quo of the buyer’s market. They’re ready to play the buying game like a battle to the death. What you call “absurd”, these savvy buyers call “realistic.”
My advice to you is to be prepared. Know that these crazy offers will come, and that they arise from hopes but not necessarily expectations. Sharpen your negotiating skills and respond to those offers respectfully—because at least you have an offer to negotiate! Communicate the value of your property and justify the price. Work harder to see where you can cut your margins and where your buyer is willing to bend. A ridiculous offer just means you have to work harder and smarter.
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