All comments are good comments

opinion

opinionAll comments are good comments

I like to say that buying a house is a process of elimination followed by a final compromise. I think that’s accurate. Homebuyers start shopping for a home, narrow down what they like, want and need and eventually make an offer.

I was out last night being interviewed by some first-time homebuyers. They are interviewing another agent later this week. They may choose to work with her or me. We will see. Time will tell. There are few guarantees in this business.

Many homebuyers shop for agents. They read the advertising, ask family and friends for recommendations, maybe come to this blog and search out some others. They try to find a good fit. That process must be tough. Most agents show themselves in the best light possible. Soon or eventually, most homebuyers and home sellers work with realtors that they pick up somehow, somewhere along the way. Sadly, a lot of consumers choose the wrong agent to work with as revealed in ubiquitous “bad realtor” stories.

 

Eliminated

I got eliminated this morning. I’m ok with it. I’m in sales after all. I don’t take it personally. In fact, I like getting eliminated. I’d usually rather get selected, but being eliminated is like winning second prize. It means I was in the race. With more than 1,200 realtors working in Waterloo Region, getting second or third prize is not too shabby at all.

It happens all the time. You win some. You loose some. Often you don’t even know.

I got eliminated online. That makes it easier. I didn’t even know I was in the running.

I blog, tweet, post things to Linked In, Facebook and Google +, Youtube, Vimeo…

If someone trolling around early in the morning, does not agree with what I recently posted and says that they would never hire me as their agent, that’s ok with me. They found me. Picked me up. Put me back down again and continued on their journey.

When I first got the chat widget on this website, I got a lot of rude words directed at me by anonymous angry idiots with nothing better to do. I ignored them. Or sometimes I’d say “thank you for your kind words”. But mostly I ignored them. I found the best approach was to not acknowledge them or encourage them in any way. Besides, if you live in Winnipeg or Mexico City, I don’t really care what you think about me.

 

The best kind of famous is internet famous. 

I like comments, good and bad, rude or nice. I like them because for every one I get I know that there are ten or twenty other visitors to my blog or Linked In or whatever, that aren’t leaving comments. Comments mean traffic and traffic means business.

Sales is like real life but even harsher

I know that a lot of realtors and soon-to-be, want-to-be realtors read this blog. I think that is great. This part is for you.

Like most people, I want others to know me, like me, trust me. I do my best with directness and honesty, in person and in this blog. It’s not easy, but it’s not hard either. It gets easier.

A few years ago I took some really good sales training. It was actually more about psychology than it was about sales. I learned:

When someone is rude to you, it is not about you. It is about them. They have some “pain”. They are trying to make themselves feel better, by making you feel worse.

Great sales happen when you nurture your client, not sell to your client. They’ve seen all those sales techniques before. We all have. They want a guiding hand, not a shove in the back.

Salespeople have find a way to discover the emotional reason why their client wants to buy. If asked, the client will tell you the logical reason, but the real reason in the emotional one.

 

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