Posts
By Jim “Gymbeaux’ Brown,
December 30, 2022
I met Vickie many years ago, too
many that I want to admit to. At the
time Vickie and I worked for the same national franchise real estate
company. She began a promotional
campaign that featured a single red rose on a black background. Her business card was black with a single red
rose and if my memory serves me, she had the words, “Simple Elegance” over the
rose. It had to be there, otherwise I
would not have remembered it after these many years. On the occasion of us both attending a
training program, she gave me a tin of cookies and you may have guessed it, the
tin’s lid was black with a single red rose on the lid. To this day, whenever I see a red rose, I
immediately think of Vickie Carlton from Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. http://www.lascolinashomes.com/
The point I want to convey is
this. If you are in sales, sales of
any kind, the number one thing you must do is to first create relationships
with people and you do that by meeting them and then developing the skill of
asking questions and LISTENING to their answers. The questions do not have to do with what you
may or may not be selling, they should be questions about the “probable buyer”,
the “probable buyer’s” likes, the “probable buyer’s” family, the “probable
buyer’s” business, etc. The more you can
get the “probable buyer” to talk about such things, the better you will be able
to build a relationship with this specific “probable buyer”; PROVIDED YOU
ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE ANSWERS! I considered
“listening” to be so important, I wrote and taught a course titled, Effective Listening;
How to Become an Effective Listener, and taught it the agents in my office.
I put the phrase, “probable buyer”
in quotations for two reasons. The term
came from one of the best sales trainers of all time, Jeffrey Gitomer. He suggested that EVERYONE is a
probable buyer, not a customer or a client or as real estate agents often say, “my
people”, and you must learn to treat them as “probable buyers!” If you learn this one fact, it is very
possible if not probable that you will eventually increase YOUR income
by treating everyone you meet as a “probable buyer.” Therefore, a shoutout to Jeffrey Gitomer
for this income producing training tip!
To put this into perspective, I
spent over 33 years in the real estate sales business. Most of my time was spent training real
estate agents in sales techniques and standards of practice. My emphasis was NOT on agents becoming
selling machines but rather I hoped they would become experts on relationship
building and that they would become the best listeners on the planet. No one is ever selling anything if they are
doing all of the talking. You can only
discover that you may or may not hold the keys to satisfy a “probable buyer’s”
needs if you learn what the “probable buyer” actually wants and needs. You do this through relationship building and
being an effective listener and that may require actually taking notes about
what you hear.
Vickie Carlson and Sandra Nichols
may both hate my guts but that doesn’t matter when it comes to their bottom
line. Unless I do illegal things, they
understand that my political beliefs, my personal likes and dislikes, my
habits, my family, my job have very little to do with both of them building
upon our relationships by ensuring that I know they exist, what they do and where
they do it. I may never buy real estate
or know of anyone buying real estate in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas or Montgomery,
Alabama areas but if I did, I know who I would be calling. Therein is my point! Both Vickie and Sandra have maintained either
an active contact such as Vickie’s monthly real estate newsletter and her red
rose, or, Sandra by engraining in my mental grey matter that every time I see a
women’s hat, I think of her. This is
called marketing.
It is critical to understand the
difference between marketing and advertising.
You market to people you know.
You advertise to people you don’t know (it may also touch the people you
do know provided they see it.)
Advertising is often referred to as the shotgun approach. You send out a lot of material in the hope
that someone who needs your service or product, sees it at the very moment they
realize they need the type of service or produce you provide, and then contacts
you. Vickie and Sandra, both know
me. They know what I have done in the
past. They know where I live. They know how to reach me if they need
to. They also know that I know a lot of
REALTORS® and as
such, if they need a REALTOR®
in my area but did not know any, they
may call me to find one. That is simply
good networking and it works.
IMPORTANT POINT! I retired from the real estate business after
33 years on December 31, 2012, over ten years ago. That is a long time to remember people like
Sandra and Vickie who I haven’t actually seen in over 30 years. How many people who are NOT related to
you and who you met over 30 years ago at a 2-hour training seminar can you
remember? How many plumbers can you
name? How many electricians can you
name? How many car salesmen can you name?
CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING!!!! I have just said I retired after 33 years in
the business. Can you appreciate the
number of REALTORS®
I have encountered in those 33 years
considering that I attending as many Conferences and Training Classes that I
could possibly attend all over the country?
The number of agents number in the hundreds if not thousands. In my own hometown of Slidell, Louisiana,
there are easily over 300 licensed real estate agents and prior to 2012, I
either knew most of them or was at least aware of them. Most were aware of me because I was the
Broker for one of the companies in Slidell and agents typically know who the
brokers are. Nonetheless, I have met and
have known (past tense) hundreds and hundreds of real estate agents. Yet, twelve years after my retirement in
2012, only two agents routinely reached out to me to “market” themselves and
their businesses. What does that say
about the hundreds upon hundreds of other agents who claim to be looking for
referral business? How many car salesmen
do you think have reached out to me in my lifetime AFTER I have
purchased a car from them? ZERO! How many plumbers maintain contact with
me? ZERO! How many electricians? ZERO!
How many roofers? ZERO! At one point I had 105 agents in my Slidell
office and after 12 years of retirement, how many have maintained constant
contact with me? ZERO! Maybe everyone does hate my guts and none
want to ever do business with me ever again or accept any referrals that I may
be able to send their way. Maybe it IS
me! But I doubt it. Sales people simply do not understand the
difference between marketing (a hand written note card) and advertising (a
billboard or newspaper ad) and therefore spend most of their budget on
advertising to the masses in hopes of attracting a customer rather than asking
people they already know if they know of anyone that could use their
professional services or buy their product.
If there are 300 agents in Slidell, Louisiana and you are one of them,
what are YOU doing to stand out from the crowd? What are YOU doing to create a mental
note for people to recall you even 30 years later? If you can’t answer these questions, what
exactly are you doing to grow your business and increase the profit number on
your personal financial spreadsheet? And
by the way, I receive a text message on every holiday from a local handyman
who has done work for me in my home.
Suggestion:
You may want to consider purchasing a red rose or wearing unique hats.
Question:
What separates you from the crowd?
If you can’t answer that,
neither can your database of probable
buyers.
You do have a database, right?
