How to Win the Sale With Your Action, Not Your Words
“Let me know if there is anything we can do for you.”
“I’d love to work with you on this exciting idea.”
“Call me if you think of a way I could help you out with this new venture.”
These are all statements that were written to me about a year ago, when my husband and I decided to take the social media plunge and announce on facebook that we were making plans to move and were in need of real estate input. At that time, we had a notion that we would like to find a funky old church to remodel and turn into a family home. (I know, I know…but it’s a cute little pipe dream, isn’t it?) Anywho, several real estate professionals wrote back, with the above statements or something like them. While we appreciated the responses, in the end, statements such as these are meaningless and even slightly off-putting. Let’s break them down real quick:
“Let me know if there is anything we can do for you.”
Uh, I am a writer/editor/artist/mom and my husband is a record producer. We don’t even know what we don’t know about the real estate industry. So, how exactly are we supposed to tell a real estate professional what they can do for us? As Jeff says, this is basically asking the customer to do the sales professional’s job.
“I’d love to work with you on this exciting idea.”
That’s nice. It is also a dead-end statement. I didn’t know how to respond to this, so I didn’t respond at all. Well, maybe I responded with a smiley face… I don’t remember. In the end, no action of any kind resulted from this comment. The real estate professional who wrote this may as well have written, “I love avocados and jazz music.” I would have definitely responded with a smiley face to that comment.
“Call me if you think of a way I could help you out with this new venture.”
This was the silliest comment of all, but, I tried to assume the best. I guessed that the person who wrote this was putting it out there as a kind of filter statement to see just how serious we were. We were entirely serious but we were not willing to call an acquaintance who worked in real estate and say, “We don’t really know what to do or what we need, but maybe you do?” It was a meaningless response and put the ball in our court in a way that did not motivate us to contact the person who wrote it.
And then there was Katie. We met Katie several years ago but were only acquaintances and as far as we knew, Katie worked for a company that had nothing to do with real estate. Unbeknownst to us, things had changed for Katie and she had become a real estate sales professional. Everyone else who commented had many more years of sales experience than Katie had.
Here’s the thing: Katie did something.
Before she responded to us at all, Katie took action. Her very first response to my fb comment/plea was a description of what she had already done! After reading my post, Katie looked for properties in our area which were like what we thought we were looking for, she surveyed her colleagues about the realities of remodeling a church building, and she looked up zoning information for us. Then, she sent me a private message telling me what she had done and what she planned to do next for us, if we wanted her to move forward. We did! We were impressed, happy, relieved and totally sold on Katie because she had done something. She was up front about the fact that she was relatively new to the industry but her actions completely outweighed any fears we may have had about her inexperience. Katie had already done what we did not have the knowledge or means to do, so we were convinced that she would continue on in the same vein. And, she did!
Since that time, Katie has walked us through the process of adapting our plans to reality and this month, Katie will receive her first commission check from the sale of the land she helped us purchase, on which we will build our new house. Katie will receive another check when she helps us sell our current home, and I am certain she will receive many more checks after that from the crowd of folks we have already recommended her to.
We are excited about our future and are certain that we would not be at this point if it were not for Katie! She patiently and professionally led us to the place we want and need to be.
Katie changed our world because instead of responding to our need with words, she took action. Katie did something.
