Go for daylight

• Welcome to the property management blog. There are a lot of us who promote using a selling strategy . You can hear us chanting, “Sell, sell, sell!” However it is sometimes easier said than done. Many people in commercial or residential are still living in the shadow of the “Build it and they will come” days that were in the not too distant past. Making the transition from property management, where your focus is on collecting rents and controlling costs, to sales, where your focus must also include getting prospects to choose you over the competition, is as much of a challenge as taking a defensive end on a Football team and turning him into an offensive running back. Many of the skills are the same. The game is still the same. But there are a lot of new skills and new ways of thinking that have to take root in order for the transition to take place. You can tell I watched football last weekend and I am in a Football frame of mind. Some of us see ourselves as sales coaches, trying to get the players to adjust their game from defense to offense. Sometimes we coaches make things a little complicated. We don’t mean to. We know there are lots of ways to run the ball for yardage. But sometimes it is hard for the players we are coaching to absorb all of the things we are saying. They become overwhelmed and end up doing whatever they have been used to doing, just to avoid the stress and confusion. I love using football analogies because I lived in Wisconsin during the Vince Lombardi years at Green Bay. I am sometimes called “The analogy man” by a client of ours. I kind of like that. Anyway, Lombardi was the master of teaching fundamentals and the master of keeping it simple. Lombardi might have told the defensive end that all he had to do to become an offensive running back was to look for daylight and run for it. When he made contact he should dig in his feet for the extra yard. That’s only three things. Look for daylight. Run for it. Dig in your feet for the extra yard. A person can memorize and internalize three things. So let’s do the same thing in our selling efforts. Look for daylight, run for it and then dig in for the extra yard. In Football you look up-field through the defenders and dodge, weave and wiggle until you see daylight. In sales, you look for daylight by asking good qualifying questions. There are a lot of great qualifying questions. I’ll list a few. “Do you know how soon you will need to move in with us? Do you know anyone who rents with us? Do you know where we are located and is that a convenient location for you? Do you know how many bedrooms and bathrooms you might need? Will you need help moving in?” Your job as the offensive running back is to ask good qualifying questions, so you can see what the prospects needs are. That is where you see your daylight. Your prospect’s needs are what you run for. However your prospect identifies his needs, you have a convenient and economical solution. You have a value –added service to help the prospect however he answers these questions. If you don’t ask good questions it is like handing the ball to the running back, only to have the running back stand still hoping that the defenders will bounce off of him so he can walk into the end zone. Create some daylight to run to by asking questions so your prospect will indicate his needs and concerns. Then run to those needs with your solution…a clean, safe, reasonable and friendly place to live. Not every defensive line is willing to just let the running back cruise through the daylight and into the end zone. The linebackers and safeties will run in for the hit and try to stop your forward motion. That is where you dig in your feet, duck your head and grind out the extra yards you need for the first down. Running backs don’t just lay down the first time they get hit or tripped up. They push forward. In sales you grind out the extra yards and get the business by asking for it. Depending on the circumstance, your first down is the rental, or an appointment or. You dig in your feet by asking when the prospect would like to move in or when he would like to tour the unit. If the person says he is not quite ready, he is trying to tackle you. Dig in your feet and find out why he is not ready. Many times it is a situation you have experience with and you can assure the prospect that moving in with you will be a good solution all the way around. Then you drive for the extra yard by asking for the appointment or the rental one more time. If you are satisfied with having to punt a lot during the game, then don’t dig your feet in for extra yards. Just lay down each time you get hit or tripped up. You may still score a few points. But if you like making first downs and you want your biggest decision to be whether you should take the single extra-point or go for the two point conversion, then you have to dig in your feet and grind out extra yardage with every carry by asking for the sale. In many ways asking for the sales takes as much courage as digging in for the extra yard. You will get hit again. You will get ground into the dirt from time to time. You may get your bell rung on occasion. But you will get the extra yards. You will get enough extra yards to increase your occupancy and profitability. You will get enough extra yards to be encouraged to continue to go for the extra yard. Then it will become habit. Each time a prospect hits you with resistance , each time a prospect tries to trip you up by saying’ “I still need to shop around”, you will dig in your feet, assure him that he is making a good choice at your community and ask for the appointment or rental one more time. Keep it simple. Master three things: Ask good qualifying questions. Sell your solution to the prospect’s needs. Ask for the business.

Related Posts:

Let the prospect do the selling- People do their own buying- Customer and culture- Scripting- Sales Skills- Sorry, I don’t handle that- Questions and Sales- The Rule of Thirds- Sales and Training Topics- get more appointments

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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