How To Get Buyers Off The Fence And Into A Home

Want to take your 4:2 selling skills to a mastery level? Learn more about the three-day live sales training experience with Jeff Shore, The 4:2 Formula Academy. Learn more here.

by Jeff Shore 

The 4:2 Formula is a modern, customer-focused selling strategy that has one main goal:

To help salespeople shorten the buying cycle through a shared, mutual purpose with their customers.

The 4:2 Formula provides a proven strategy for building trust, understanding your customer’s current dissatisfaction and moving them with urgency toward their future promise.

I’d like to make a slightly preposterous claim:

If you know your clients well enough, they will show you how to sell them a home. I believe this because I’ve seen it work over and over again, all around the world.

I also suggest that one of the biggest problems salespeople face is having been taught an approach that centers on the product rather than on the prospect.

All too often, the sales presentation is nothing more than a massive assault of features and benefits.

At the core of this issue is a lack of understanding about why our clients are standing in front of us in the first place.

Dismantling the Critical Path

If you’ve been in the real estate industry for any length of time, you’ve probably come across this “Critical Path” sales method: greet, qualify, demonstrate, close.

It seems as if every sales guru in the real estate industry has a variation of the Critical Path method—one that’s guaranteed to make you a top producer.

If only it were that easy! I’m here to refute that method.

You see, your clients don’t operate in a vacuum.

They can’t be fenced in by a method that doesn’t allow for one of the most important factors of selling: that you’re dealing with human beings who operate on emotion.

The problem with the Critical Path method is that it’s both linear and overly simplistic. More important, it’s not customer-focused.

I want to talk about how the buyer wants to buy.

Why Do People Move?

As we think about creating a buyer-centered sales presentation, let me ask you an important question:

What is the single most motivating factor in a home-buying decision?

Your instinctive answer is probably “finding the perfect home.”

Or perhaps you think it is convenience, good neighborhood, great location, or the alluring features and amenities a home has to offer.

The fact is this: location, convenience, neighborhood, and even the features of a home are not the most motivating factor in a home-buying decision. It goes much deeper.

Dissatisfaction

If you understand this as part of the homebuyer’s mindset, you will have a significant leg up on your competitor. You will learn things about your clients that most salespeople will never know.

People don’t buy homes unless they are dissatisfied with their current living circumstances.

There is something in their lives that isn’t working for them now and they need a fix.

They need a solution to their problem.  Your job is to give them one.

And the only way you can do that is if you know—really know—where their dissatisfaction lies.  And that’s an answer you’re going to have to earn.

The Dissatisfaction/Urgency Connection

In the decision to move, there is no
more powerful factor than dissatisfaction. Not only does dissatisfaction prove to 
be a powerful motivator, dissatisfaction is also the driving force behind urgency.

Clients who are dissatisfied with their home have an emotional thought pattern. They need to move and they needed to make it to happen like, yesterday.

So it can be said that the higher the degree of dissatisfaction the homebuyer has, the higher their urgency is.

Conversely, the lower the dissatisfaction they have, the less urgency they will have to make a change, if at all.

If you can provide a solution for their dissatisfaction, you win the sale.

The Power of Trust

So, you’re probably thinking all you have to do is pinpoint your clients’ dissatisfaction and you’ll be home free. Sounds easy, right? Well, there’s just one small problem.

Your clients don’t come in wearing 
their dissatisfaction on their sleeves.

I
 mean, it’s not like they just walk into
 your office with big scowls on their faces, lips twisted in disgust, and unload their problems on you.

No, they don’t want you to know how dissatisfied they are because they don’t want to come off as desperate, needy, or worse, failures.

Until they trust you, the dissatisfaction they feel is strictly personal, not something to be discussed with a real estate salesperson.

As far as you’re concerned, they’re happy to give you one of their standard lines such as “we’re looking for a home in a good school district for the kids” or “we just want to downsize.”

Trust is the key that unlocks the door to understanding their dissatisfaction. And dissatisfaction is the key that unlocks the door to urgency.

Want to take your 4:2 selling skills to a mastery level?

Then considering joining me at my three day, live sales training event, The 4:2 Formula Academy, where I’ll be your personal sales coach and show you how to master the 4:2 selling strategies.

The 4:2 Formula Academy is an intensive real estate sales training series and certification program that equips real estate sales professionals with a core set of modern selling strategies. Click here to learn more.

 


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About the Author: Jeff Shore

Jeff Shore is the Founder and CEO of Shore Consulting, Inc. a company specializing in psychology-based sales training programs. Using these modern, game-changing techniques, Jeff Shore’s clients delivered over 145,000 new homes generating $54 billion in revenue last year.