Winning Business in the Property Sector

Patrick Forsyth

• Publisher: Estates Gazette
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781135330057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Commercial Law
• Index: Law

This book reviews a variety of aspects of the specific task of selling successfully as it applies to those working in the property sector. It provides guidelines and approaches that will enable one to sharpen their sales skills and maximise the results they produce.

Part 1

The New Realities of the Sales Role

“Dealing with customers takes knowledge, time and patience — after all, if sales people don’t have that, they should look for another line of work.”

Lee lacoeca (former CEO of Chrysler Motors)

Introduction

“Dealing with customers takes knowledge, time and patience —

William McGowan

The selling process in context

Selling — the personal interaction between buyer and seller — is a key part of the overall marketing process. In many businesses, including property, it is essentially the final link. In other words, whatever other marketing activity has been undertaken, from sending a brochure or mailing to running a major advertising campaign, and however much interest it has generated, selling must convert that interest — turning it into action to buy.

That said, it is worth emphasising that selling is only as good as the organisation that supports it; many different people contribute not only to an organisation′s image but to the service it offers. Sales people — and, in this sector, exactly who that is may range widely — must use excellence in both these areas as a foundation to what they do, any shortfall in these areas inevitably affects how well they can perform.

Sometimes the sales process consists of a single event — you talk to the client and, all being well, they buy. On other occasions, the nature of the product and a client′s attitude to it mean that a whole series of events must take place. These range from a simple enquiry to a series of meetings and more besides (sending a written proposal or making a presentation, for instance). All of this is important and whatever is done it must be done well; the focus here is primarily on the face-to-face interaction between sales people and clients.

The sales task is to communicate clearly and persuasively, and very often to differentiate an offering from that of competition. It is a fragile process, by which I mean that results can be changed — for good or ill — by small variations in approach. This may even be down to the use of one word rather than another, certainly to one description or another. Markets may be competitive, clients demanding and fickle, and selling success will not “just happen” because you have a good product or the “gift of the gab”. As has been said, in today′s market a key issue is to differentiate, to ensure your approach sets you apart from competition. But of one thing you can be sure:

Selling success can be made more certain if you adopt an active approach, understand the way it works and deploy the correct techniques in the right way.

Think about any skill. Can you juggle with three flaming torches without burning holes in the carpet? No? Maybe not, but there are people who can. What is the difference between them and you? Perhaps only that they have thought about how to do it, understood how to go about it and then practised doing it. Selling is no different.

The archetypal “born salesman” is rare. People who are good at selling, however, are much more common. And the best of them have a secret. They understand the process of buying and selling. They adopt a conscious approach in the light of that understanding, and they deploy an approach that uses well-chosen techniques that are in turn well matched to each individual client or prospect with which they are dealing.

Sometimes what needs to be done is counter-intuitive, in the way that faced with a complaint many people find it almost impossible to avoid making it clear that whatever happened was not my fault even though that is the last thing anyone wants to hear. The overall prevailing standard of property salesmanship is by no means all good, and there is much that is bad or at least unthinking and poorly focused on clients. Many people muddle through thinking that all that is necessary is a personable approach — if people like me they will buy from me — they say. They make sales (provided what they sell is good) but they will never sell as much as they could.

What does all this mean? It means that those who tackle this area and get it right have a considerable opportunity to maximise sales results and thus positively influence the growth and profitability of the business in which they work.

Selling is the most personal area of marketing. It is what you (or your colleagues) do that can guarantee success, and is heavily influenced by what you say and how you say it. The intention of this book is to provide guidelines and approaches that will enable you to sharpen your sales skills and maximise the results they produce. Nothing here is intellectually taxing. Good selling, to a large extent, is common sense. However, it is complex. In a client meeting that lasts even half an hour (and some last much longer), there is a great deal happening and many things to remember. Nevertheless, what needs to be done is well within the competence of most property professionals.

Furthermore, the same solution and approach is not right for every client, much less for every occasion. Rather an appropriate way forward must be found literally day-by-day, client-by-client and meeting-by-meeting. Selling is dynamic and changing market situations demand a flexible approach. The best people do not operate by rote, they do not “script” their presentation and they are always conscious of the fine detail of what they do. Indeed, a specific and individual client focus is essential to everything in the sales process and is a theme of this book throughout its length (it is inherent in the definition of selling referred to later).

It is such an approach that this book examines. It shows you how to:

•View the process of buying and selling.

•Understand and utilise the psychology of human nature (relating to buyer and seller) that is involved — turning theory into practice if you like.

•Adopt the right attitude to what you do, both to increase the chances of getting agreement and foster the professional relationship that you aim to create.

•Deploy tried and tested approaches that give you the best chance of differentiating yourself and your organisation in a crowded market and successfully persuading your clients to buy, to buy again and to buy more.

No fancy gimmicks are necessary; the most important element here is you. You can make your selling truly effective just by the way you go about it.

How to use this book to maximise your personal selling results

There are two ways this book can help you:

•First, it can help you improve and fine-tune your own personal professional selling skills. This applies whether you are a full-time sales person or a property professional with sales among the tasks with which you must cope. It will help whether you are doing this day-to-day or have just a handful of deals to win in a year.

•Second, the messages it spells out may need to be relayed on to those within your organisation who also undertake any kind of selling role; in which case, if you manage those people you surely need to know yourself exactly how they should be operating.

The book is arranged to broadly follow the chronology of events: from preparing for a meeting and getting off to a good start, right through to gaining a commitment at the end, what is called closing, successfully. Thus, it dissects the process and in so doing it may take longer to go through a review of the process than it sometimes does to execute it in real life. So be it. At the end of the day, you will only be able to maximise the effectiveness of your selling by attention to every aspect of it. So, although each part of the book makes sense in its own right, there is a compounding effect here: stage-by-stage the approaches gain in their power as they knit together to help you produce a seamless and natural conversation to which buyers find they respond positively. Thus, the whole is more useful than the parts individually, and you will get the most from the book by bearing this in mind as you go.

There are individual ideas here; things designed to make the description within your sales presentation more powerful for instance. You will also progressively find that the best way to orchestrate your overall approach and manage the complete communication emerges too.

After you have read the book, and perhaps annotated it a bit or made some notes about where ideas seem to suit you best, you can begin to incorporate ideas into what you do. I recommend that you do not try to revamp your entire approach, certainly not all at once. Rather, if there are ideas you decide to incorporate into your approach, try fine-tuning different aspects of what you do progressively. This keeps the process manageable, and prevents you from trying to concentrate on too much simultaneously, thus making it difficult to keep all the balls in the air at once.

With these points in mind, and always with an eye on competitive market conditions, let the review begin.

1 The Challenge of Competitive Markets

Winning business was never easy. Today, in competitive and dynamic markets, it can be downright difficult.

Clients are demanding, fickle and, above all, professional. They know what they want and they do not want anything other than a professional approach from the sales people with whom they deal; no where is this more true than when dealing with people who are also effectively the production resource and will be involved in work that is done after agreement is reached. Competitors cannot be relied on to miss a trick and everything done to develop business must be well chosen to do the job that the market and circumstances demand.

We review a variety of aspects of the specific task of selling all designed to help put you in a position where you can maximise the chances of success.

The nature of selling

There is a danger that selling is undertaken without sufficient care. It can seem easy: if you know what you provide, and it is good, surely all you have to do is tell people about it? Not so, as we will see. This danger is a real one too, but only if you take the wrong view of the sales process. Selling is not something you can regard as “doing to people”. This makes the process seem inappropriately one-way, when it should be a dialogue.

The best definition I know of selling is that it is “helping people to buy”.

This may seem simple, but it characterises the process well. Prospects want to go through a process of decision-making, indeed they will do so whatever you may do. So, the core of what makes the basis for sales technique is a two-way process and both elements start on the client′s side of the relationship. Always, we must consider the way in which people buy. Those buying products and services investigate options and weigh up the pros and cons of any given case (and often, of course, they are intentionally checking out several competing options alongside each other).

How do they do this? They go through a particular sequence of thinking. One way of looking at this, defined by psychologists way back, is paraphrased in seven points. They say to themselves:

1.I am important and want to be respected.

2.Consider my needs.

3.Will your ideas help me?

4.What are the facts?

5.What are the snags?

6.What shall I do?

7.I approve/disapprove.

Each step in the process must be taken before the buyer will willingly move on to the next one. Some decisions can be taken at once while others require a pause between each stage. The core of this process is that the buyer is weighing up the pros and cons of making a decision. The buyer wants to be able to make an appropriately informed decision; they put different points on one side of a metaphorical balance or the other. Nothing is perfect, so what wins is best thought of as what has the most positive balance. Thus, in competitive situations, a case can be won, or lost, on the basis of just one or two small points swinging the balance one way or another.

The process of making buying decisions always follows this seven-stage process. But execution of the process can be complex and reflects the nature of the client′s business; the size of their organisation; the people and functions involved; their needs, and the degree of influence they have on buying decisions — and what they are buying. For example, an organisation considering which architect to commission for the job of designing and building a new warehouse is likely to go through a more complex process than that of an individual deciding where to have their car serviced. Essentially, the higher the price involved the greater the consideration that goes into the deliberations. Selling is best viewed from this perspective. As has been said, it is not something that you do to people — it is the mirror image of the buying process — something that is inherently two-way. This is as important for selling more to existing and past clients as it is to winning new business.

Selling is a process of needs satisfaction and research shows two facts that are extremely valuable to sellers. First, that sales meetings are much more successful when the client′s needs are clearly identified. Second, as a result they are less successful when their needs are only implied. Asking is thus as important as telling.

Nothing is successfully sold unless a client willingly buys. Offering satisfied needs as reasons for buying — more of this later — encourages this but to follow the buying mind′s seven-step process is vital whatever aspect of property you are involved in. There is a need to relate closely what is done in selling to the client′s point of view; this can be done only if it is thought through carefully. Therefore, your sales approach must be planned.

In selling you are in the business of playing a part in clients′ decision-making processes, assisting them to make decisions — the right ones — rather than pressurising them into it. The seller must be, in part, an advisor. Being an advisor simply does not fit with a high-pressure approach. This me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Part 1 The New Realities of the Sales Role
• Part 2 A Foundation for Success
• Part 3 Conducting Effective Sales Meetings
• Part 4 Maximising Results
• Part 5 Afterword — the Way Ahead
• Index