All too often we are seeing most sales demonstrations based on facts and features. As sales professionals, we have a tendency to think our customers are going to make logical decisions. The real problem is that customers make purchase decisions based on emotions. How often are emotions logical?

How would you rate your own performance? You have to be careful about how you answer that because of an interesting phenomenon called the superiority bias. We have a natural tendency to overrate our abilities.

Think of how much easier it would be to get a buyer’s attention if you were able to offer all your home plans and options for about 50 cents on the dollar.

Many people, including me, feel addicted to perfectionism. This creates a real problem because it compels us to linger in the “planning” stages and never really get anything accomplished. This isn’t work ethic, it’s wish ethic.

I’ve often said that if we understand the way that a buyer buys, we can reverse engineer our sales presentation to make it easy for them to do just that. So the question we have to ask here is how has the pandemic changed the buying behavior? If we can answer that question, we’ll get a better clue as to what we need to be thinking about along the lines of selling behavior in the future.

We provide sales training because we want to improve sales results; we all understand that. What we forget is that training is education and maybe inspiration, but it’s not behavioral change. Just because they have learned how to do something doesn’t ensure they will go out and immediately execute on what they’ve learned. So let’s tackle that now!

All of a sudden our sales team must be more than order-takers. They actually have to sell! Now, I’m not saying everyone out there has forgotten how to execute in order to help our buyers make the best decision possible but I think you’ll agree the majority of sales professionals will struggle to get back up to speed on some of the basic skills required to achieve the customer’s mission.

Do I need a great market to be a great salesperson? Are you prepared for whatever market is coming along? It’s safe to say that it’s not going to get any hotter than what it’s been over the last couple of years. Let’s assume that we’re going to see the market soften. When? Again, tough to say, though it does feel like there are markets out there that are already feeling like a little bit of the bloom is off the rose.

We are in a very strange market (and have been for a while), but there will never be a market where the customer experience doesn’t matter. Yes, you may have 15 prospective customers for every home that you have for sale now, but this will eventually change. A negative customer experience now can yield a very vocal detractor later. Weekly progress photos help to increase transparency, reduce customer anxiety, and increase satisfaction scores.

As a sales professional, two of the greatest gifts you can give yourself are accepting mentorship and providing mentorship whenever and wherever possible. Here are 3 ideas to help unlock the power of mentorship.