Let the prospect do the selling

• Thanks for coming to the property management blog, where we talk about our views of the world of property management. You Can’t Sell Anyone Anything Many people think that good sellers excel at the art of persuasion. Some think that if you tell someone enough times that they need your service, they eventually give in and say “OK”. In reality most people don’t like being told what they need unless the salesperson has pretty strong evidence from people in similar situations. Other people think that good sales people are just pushy enough to get people to buy things they don’t want or need. Inexperienced sales people are often guilty of this faulty thinking, too. They often think all you have to do is to beat the prospect over the head with enough features and benefits and keep asking for the sale, you eventually tucker out the prospect and he says yes. How many times have you had a green salesperson rattle off the features of an offering? That usually ends up annoying or irritating people rather than selling them. I even knew a salesman whose strategy was to stay sitting on the prospect’s couch until the prospect bought something. He knew that eventually the people would want him to get out of the house and would agree to buy anything, just to get him to go home. That sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? The fact of the matter is that you cannot sell anyone anything. People make up their own minds about buying or not buying. You can put your offer in front of them. You can make it easy to buy. You can make it look and sound pretty. You can even tailor your offering based on market research. But when you get to the point of the decision, it is the prospect who talks himself into buying. Even though you cannot talk anyone into buying anything, you can help people talk themselves into buying. How do you do that? Ask the right questions and have confidence in your offer. If you ask the right questions you help the prospect sort out all the things that must be considered. The right questions help the prospect come up with answers that involve your service or product. The right questions make it plain to your prospect that buying what you offer is a good idea. Confidence in your offering shows that you have had many happy customers. Confidence in your offering tells people that you believe it is a good value for the money spent. Confidence in your offering means you are not afraid to ask for the business and are not afraid of people who are not yet ready to buy. In every offering there are many things that need to be sorted out. This is why good sales people ask qualifying questions. This tells you where your prospect is in the whole buying process, what your prospect’s expectations and requirements are and what sort of experience he has had with your industry. The next set of questions helps the prospect visualize using your product or service and experiencing the pleasures of ownership. Good questions will help the prospect determine how your offering will be used and how the prospect will see benefit and value. There is an old sales adage that goes something like this, “If the salesman says it, it might be hogwash. If the prospect says it, it must be truth.” So if you tell your prospect he will be happy storing his belongings in your facility, he might not believe you. But if, after some good questions, your prospect tells you that he will be happy storing his belongings with you, he believes it. So asking good questions helps a prospect talk himself into buying with you. This is powerful stuff. I’ll give you one good question for free. It goes something like this: “If you can visualize your belongings in our floor plan A or our floor plan B, which one do you think would work better for you?” Now you can’t just blurt this out. You have to do some set-up work and ask enough questions and give enough information to get to where this question sounds perfectly natural and helpful. More great sales phrases have been slaughtered by sales people who don’t do a good job setting up the line of questioning and waiting for the right time to ask the closing question. It is a little like, “Don’t shoot ‘til you see the white of their eyes.” In any case master this phrase and ask some good questions to set it up so you can use it effectively. Confidence in your offering comes into play as soon as someone says, “What are your specials?” This question, when translated into real language, means “Please sell me the value of your property?” If you hesitate when giving the price or give it in anyway that might be construed as apologetic, your prospect will get spooked and run. When the prospect answers your price with a grumble and a grunt, he is seeing if you think the price is too high. Most people have no idea what rent costs, so one good way to find out if you are over-priced is to tell you that you are charging too much just to see how you respond. They may have an idea of waht they think they can spend. But what will they really spend? If your response to the prospect’s sticker shock is not confident, the prospect will think that you think the price is too high, which means you don’t get the rental. If the prospect sees your pricing doesn’t make you flinch or quiver, than it is probably not too high. I’ll give you another phrase for free. It goes like this, “Our Garden apartemtn is only $twelve hundred a month, which is a really good rate for the area.” This tells your prospect you know the prices in the area and you know that yours is not too high for the value. This is a big help in the prospect’s ability to allow himself to sell himself on your property. It also helps to be confident when explaining the reasons why your site features are worth the money. If you don’t show confidence in your security and convenience measures, your prospects will think your community is nothing special. You need your prospects to know that your community is special. Not every competitor has what you have. You want that prospect thinking to himself, “Well, it sounds like this place has got everything I might need, and the rent isn’t too bad either.” There is not too much distance between that thought and the prospect saying to himself, “Ah, I might as well just rent here.” Be aware of your prospects’ thought processes. Help them talk themselves into renting from you. Ask them good questions and have confidence in your community. Don’t sell your community to your prospects. Allow your prospects to sell themselves on your community…and then ask, “Which day would you like to move in. Would Monday be good, or would Tuesday be better.” Good luck and good selling. bye for now, Tron

Related Posts:

People do their own buying- Sales Skills- Sales notes- Customer and culture- Go for daylight…- Assume you get the lease- assume the rental- Go for daylight- Questions and Sales- Scripting

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