Let’s give some thought to how we can make more sales despite the gloom and doom about the current state of the real estate market in many regions.
Reality
The market is your reality. As professionals, we must learn to thrive in all markets, whether booming, static, or down-turning. If you don’t like the reality of this market, ask yourself, “Can I change this?”
You know the answer. So you only have two options: 1. Handle it; 2. Leave the industry.
Belief
Our beliefs determine our reality. If you believe you can make sales, you will make sales, provided you do the right actions.
Don’t listen to people who call it a ‘tough market’. Are sales being made in your area? If so, why aren’t you getting a share of those? Think: what must you do to make sales?
There are sellers in your area who want to sell or need to sell. Find them. Talk with them about pricing their properties so that they sell. The longer they wait in a falling market, the lower the price they will receive. Help them to get moving. Instil a sense of urgency into them. Believe that there are plenty of sellers like this just waiting for you to find them, and then go looking!
Negativity
Have you heard any good news about the real estate market lately? Have you heard anything about the market that you didn’t already know? So why are you listening, reading or viewing this drivel?
The only purpose served by negative market news is to inform sellers so that they understand the importance of pricing their properties to sell quickly. Beyond that, this negativity will eat at your morale.
Turn off the news.
Positive Action
Have a plan. Take positive action and have a plan that will lead you to your goals.
You must know where your business will come from. Examine all the possible listing sources (for example For Sale By Owners – FSBO) and for each source ask yourself, “If I spoke to 50 [FSBOs], how many listings would I get?”
Your knowledge of your ratios is crucial, too. How many potential sellers do you need to speak with from each listing source to get one listing?
If you spoke to 40 people per day for 5 working days, for 20 days a month, that’s 800 people spoken to in the month. How many listings would that give you?
A lot more than you’d get if you didn’t speak to 800 people.
Positive action will give you a feeling of being in control. Try it.
Change Your Tactics
What worked in a boom doesn’t work in a down-turning market. Conversations with sellers in booms are different to conversations with sellers in down-turning markets.
The key to making sales when the market changes is to adapt.
A popular definition of insanity is repeating the same actions while expecting a different result. If what you’re doing now isn’t working, change tactics.
Train Harder
What book are you reading now? When was the last time you attended a sales seminar? What audio or video on sales have you viewed in the past month?
And I don’t mean YouTube and Ted Talks. Professionals use the ‘free stuff’ as a secondary training source, not their primary training source or their only training source.
YouTube and blogs like this are good for topping up knowledge and for getting you thinking, but they are not organised into cohesive training systems, such as Pittard’s Winning Ways – A Smarter Sales Career. Get more of the training you need, not ‘fast food’ snippets from blogs, short videos and podcasts.
Practise More
In my book, Why Winners Win, I say that acquiring knowledge isn’t enough. We must practise what we learn in the field and keep practising until we get it right. In that way, knowledge turns into skill, and skill is what you need in challenging markets.
Knowledge + Practice = Skill
Add to this Competent Action and results are inevitable.
Work Harder
A swear word for some, but winners work – they work smart and hard. Prospect more – put yourself in front of more potential prospects. Business is out there. Believe it. Go looking for it!
A Better Alternative
In challenging markets, it can be easy to wallow in misery, to blame the market, or some external force that’s preventing you from making sales. That thinking and lack of action can send you broke. Even worse, it can drive you out of the industry feeling like a failure.
A better alternative is to take charge. You can’t control the market, but you can control YOU.
You can find sellers who want or need to sell. You can make sales. You can win.
This market could be the best thing that ever happened to you. It’s all a matter of perspective, and of attitude and action.