The #1 Sales Skill That Changed My Real Estate Sales Career

All right, you can screw up every other sales skill, but if you get this one down, it'll be a lot easier for you to convert the leads that you're getting right now into actual appointments. And then most importantly, it'll be a lot easier for you to close and enroll new clients. So I wanna talk about the number one sales skill for you to really focus on this year, all right? Doesn't matter if you're in real estate sales or you sell something else, we're gonna focus primarily today in today's video on real estate sales specifically, but this would pertain to any salesperson out there, all right? So I wanna talk about what we already know about human beings. You see, when we think about selling, what is it that has to occur for a sale to be made? Well, we already know that requires a human being to change, to go from what they're doing today to doing something different. So this is human behavior, and we're talking about humans making a change. Well, what do we know about people in their decision-making process? Yes, we already know that people make decisions either to avoid pain or to get closer to pleasure. We already know that's where the bulk of their motivation comes from. However, how do they actually get down to the decision to do or to not do something? Well, there's really what we would call the three rules of influence, and here's where most untrained salespeople make a lot of mistakes, and we'll talk a lot about that in today's episode. So number one, people in general don't believe what you, the salesperson, tells them because of what we already know, which is perceived bias. They believe that everything that you tell them that they should do, you're doing so for your benefit, not for theirs, even if they were to benefit. Most people can't see it because of that perceived bias. You're the salesperson. You're the one who's going to benefit from what it is that you're saying, so therefore, I put this defensive wall up, and I don't believe what you say. That's rule number one. Rule number two is people, more times than not, will believe what other people tell them, so like a third-party validation or a third-party referral, right? That's why the power of referrals works so well. Hey, listen, I worked with this service provider before. He or she did an awesome job. That helps people get to some type of decision, but nothing comes close to rule number three, which is people always believe what they tell themselves, and so in other words, what we're going to uncover or unpack in today's episode is this whole idea of what psychologists call self-persuasion. How do we as salespeople ask questions in a way that help the prospect discover their reasons for change, not your reasons for why they should change? That's a massive difference because good salespeople ask questions that help them to learn about the prospect, but listen closely. Great salespeople ask questions to help prospects learn about themselves, so the whole idea, the whole foundation of the reverse selling methodology and what we're going to talk about in today's video is how do you form the questions in which you ask, because we all know we've got to ask great questions, but what does that mean? What makes up a good question versus a bad question? What type of questions can you ask that would elicit this self-persuasion, where in other words, you're getting the prospect to verbalize their own reasons for why they should or should not do something rather than you imposing your reasons on why they should or should not do something? So let me give you an example because we're talking to mostly real estate agents today. What we often see is with the mainstream scripts out there that have been used for 30, 40, 50 years, these are all questions that, when asked, elicit a lot of rejection, a lot of pushback, a lot of what I would call psychological reactance. You're met with a lot of friction. Why? Because the questions that we're being asked to ask are all designed to, well, elicit your benefit, right? So things like, listen, with the market being the way that it is, up or down, doesn't matter, it would probably make more sense for you to sell now versus wait. That is a script or a language pattern, rather, that comes across for the salesperson's benefit. That'd be the salesperson coming up with their reason on why the prospect should do something. And nobody likes to be told what to do. The second that we feel that our freedom to choose is at risk, psychological reactance goes up. That's the resistance you're often met with a lot of these scripts that are floating around out there in the real estate world. So we need to ask questions that are what we would call of Socratic nature. So when we ask a question that is based around the Socratic method, we ask questions that are solely designed to get the prospects to think and to verbalize their own reasons for change without the perceived bias, without the risk for eliciting psychological reactance. How do we do this? Well, one of the things we can do is we can ask questions that are perceived in a way that are against the salesperson's best interest. So let me give you a really, really good example. Most real estate people, most real estate salespeople, most real estate agents, when they're communicating with somebody who's thinking about selling their home are all presenting the reasons on why the prospect should sell the home. So most people we talk to are ambivalent, meaning they've got a reason in their mind of why they should do something, and they've got a reason in their mind of why they should not. And all too often, the eager real estate salesperson who's paid on commission that the prospect are all aware of, they're making the case for why the prospects should do something now. They're giving them all these creative reasons on why the prospect should sell now. And these are all what we talked about, the salesperson's reasons for why the prospect should change. And when we do that, we have to defend the status quo, we being the consumer in that example. So if a salesperson says, hey, here's why you should do something now, all that that does is elicit all of the reasons why the prospect should not. And the salesperson is to blame. The salesperson is at fault because we are responsible for how prospects respond to us. So if you're getting a lot of pushback, you're getting a lot of resistance, you're getting a lot of objections that are difficult to respond to, most likely it's how in which you're communicating that is eliciting that type of response. So what do we do instead? So rather than present an argument for why the prospect maybe should do something, we're gonna do the exact opposite. All right, this is all backed by research, this is all backed by science, this is all backed by human psychology. And so when we speak in terms of potentially in a way that would go against your interest, prospects don't resist because they don't feel any perceived threat that you're trying to just close a deal or sell them something. Let me give you a great example. So let's go back to the example we just talked about. Rather than you giving a homeowner all these reasons for why they should sell now because of rates, because of home values, whatever else you can come up with, why not present a case for the status quo? Why not ask a question to the prospect that is of Socratic nature and we say, Mr. Prospect, what's wrong with where you live now? Now think about that for a second. Every one of your competitors, maybe even yourself, have tried to come up with some type of fancy script to get that appointment, to get that person to list their house with you, to meet with you now, and you're maybe the first person who presents a case for the status quo. You present a case for why the prospect should do nothing. Well, what do we know? Let's go back to what we just talked about a minute ago. It's almost like this teeter-totter, okay? What happens is when you present an argument for why the prospect should do something, they argue why they should not. So what do we know about reverse psychology? What do we know about self-persuasion? If we present the case for why they should not, this gets the person to verbalize their reasons for why they should. That is how you get the prospects to verbalize their reasons for change, not your reasons for change. So let's go back to the question. Mr. Prospect, well, I mean, I'm looking at the property right now. It looks like a beautiful home. You're in a great neighborhood. What's wrong with where you're at now? Can you just stay put? Well, Brandon, we'd love to stay put, but reason one, reason two, reason three, reason four, now who's doing the selling? Now the prospect is verbalizing to themselves all of the reasons why they, in this case, should make the move. Well, we've got to get something bigger. We've got to get something smaller. The baby is due. I'm going through a divorce. We're going through a job transfer. We want to get the kids in another school district by this timeframe. We love it here, but here are all the reasons why I can't stay here. You're the first salesperson who's presented a case that would go against your interest or the perceived interest, because what do you want? You want a listing. You told them to stay put, okay? That's one way to do that, okay? Let me give you another example. So when we're prospecting, we're calling expired listings for sale by owners, probates, absentee owners, just lists of just sold calls. We're trying to make a case for why this person should meet with us. We're trying to set the appointment. It's what I've been asking you to do for the last 10 years, right? Well, there's a way in which to do it that would allow you to get more prospects to do exactly what it is that is in their best interest, which is to perhaps meet with you. When you are presenting all the reasons why they should meet with you, what's happening to you often? Approach our sales conversation in a way that gets the prospect to start verbalizing their own motivation for buying or selling a house rather than trying to pressure them using our reasons. I think what you will find is not only do the conversations get much, much better, but you start dealing with a lot less rejection, a lot less resistance. Your hesitation to prospecting and calling your leads actually starts to dissipate because you're not having to deal with all of the conflict that you're probably dealing with right now in your lead generation or your lead conversion efforts. And so if you want more help with this and you want to see kind of how these language patterns come together, I'm going to put a link right in the description. Download my brand new script book. You can kind of see some of this stuff come together.