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| Bob Hafer,
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Wow! 2007 is half over
Before we get into July's selling strategies I thought it might be worthwhile to reflect on the first half of 2007. Are you satisfied with your sales results? Are you on target to achieve your annual sales goals? Or maybe a better question to ask is do you set goals?
As I travel around the country it amazes me to learn how few salespeople set goals. Maybe the reason is that salespeople don't fully appreciate how important an exercise it is. After all, salespeople are eternal optimists. Many salespeople believe the next sale is just around corner. What follows might help you appreciate its importance.
Goal setting
Setting goals is at the heart of professional success. You set goals to take you from where you are now to where you want to be. Without goals you have nothing to plan, organize or aim for. And one way to define success is the progressive realization of your worthwhile, predetermined goals.
As you work through the following goal setting process, it is essential that you write down your goals. When you write out goals you accomplish two things: thinking and planning. Both are essential to goal setting success.
The process
Think of your most important sales goals at the moment. Make a decision on what you want to accomplish with each goal. Summarize it in a short, concise sentence. And then give each goal a deadline.
Go through each goal in turn, checking and writing down the following points:
- Think in the positive; move toward what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid. “I want to make one sale per week for the remainder of 2007 is positive.” “I do not want problems with my mortgage company is negative.” You cannot achieve a negative. Write down what you want, not what you don’t want.
- Make sure you can measure your success. How will you know when you have achieved each goal? What will you see, hear or feel when you have achieved a goal? If your goal is to sell one house per week, then you will want to see the sales agreement, hear confirmation from your buyer and feel elated by your success.
- Check the resources you have that will help you achieve the goal. Who can you turn to for help? What personal qualities and skills do you have that will help you?
- Now think more in detail. Who exactly will be involved? When will it happen? Where will it happen? How long will it take?
- Explore the consequences for yourself and other people. Will other people have to help you and can you count on that? Will it mean you have to work an extra 4 hours per day? Are you prepared to do that? What will you have to give up to achieve your goals?
- Now look at the goals you have set and ask yourself what has to happen for you to achieve these? What prevents you from achieving these goals now?
Check each of your goals through the SMART format. Is your goal:- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timed
Napoleon Hill, a great motivator and teacher is credited as saying, “The problem with people is they don’t want to think”. However, if you make the commitment to think and set goals, you will be rewarded with additional sales and income.
Remember it is never to late to set goals. Yesterday is over, tomorrow is only a promise, the rest of your life starts today.
Send to a friend
Before reading the next two articles I have a favor to ask. I want you to send this newsletter to 5 people who you feel will benefit from the ideas and principles included. My goal is to send this newsletter to at least 1000 people monthly. To achieve this goal I need your help. At the bottom of the newsletter you will find a ‘Send to a Friend’ button. Just click and follow the easy introductions. Thank you in advance for helping me and your friend achieve their goals. It is appreciated!
The Robert E. Hafer Seminars
To learn more about Robert E. Hafer seminars and workshops and purchase Building Results – The Ultimate How-To Guide For New Homes Sales, visit click here, email Bob at Send Emailor call 972-795-5926.
Good Luck and Good Selling!
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Home buying criteria
The next two articles provide questions that uncover home buying criteria. The six discovery questions listed help you to understand exactly what criteria is important to your prospect. With this information you are able to provide solutions that align with your prospect's decision-making criteria.
Throughout my newsletters I consistently remind you of the importance of aligning with your prospect. When you uncover what is important to someone you bring yourself immediately into alignment. Both you and prospect are moving in the same direction at the same time.
The questioning process I reveal breaks down walls of resistance because your sales presentation becomes a conversation between two people who have a similar goal – you want to sell a house and your prospect wants to buy a house.
Selling is not supposed to be hard. It’s made difficult because people don’t ask the right questions. Asking good questions is the foundation of communication. Build a good foundation and you will build a good presentation.
Six key decision-making categories
In order for new home prospects to make a purchase decision they must agree that what you are offering satisfies the following six key decision-making categories: home, homesite, community, location, financing and builder. Your questions must center on these six key categories. The responses you receive represent your prospect’s decision-making conditions; when you’re able to satisfy those conditions you move closer to earning the right to ask for the order.
The following questions are designed to uncover decision-making conditions. It’s important that you ask the question exactly as it is presented. Do not change the wording. If you change the wording you will change the response you get.
Think of these questions as a recipe for success. If you had a recipe for a great tasting chocolate cake, you wouldn’t change the ingredients because it would change the taste. That is exactly what will happen if you change the wording of these questions.
Yes, I am asking you to memorize the questions but the result will be worth the effort. Words are important and they mean different things to people based upon their past experiences. The questions, asked exactly as worded, will compel a meaningful response.
Ask decision-making questions
The discovery question I’m suggesting will uncover everything that is important to your prospect about the home, homesite, community, location, financing and builder. So relax, you only have to learn one question.
“For you, what is most important about …?”
To complete the sentence just add the word ‘home’, or ‘homesite’, or ‘community’, or ‘location’, or ‘financing’ or ‘builder’. Here is an example adding the word ‘home’:
“For you, what is most important about the home?”
Now take a moment and examine the question.
- The question focuses on your prospect by starting with the words ‘For you’. You and I both know people pay attention when a question focuses on them?
- The second key word is ‘what’. Questions that include the word ‘what’ do not lead your prospect in any specific direction and can not be answered with a simple yes or no.
- Another key word is ‘most’. When you use the word ‘most’ you are directing your prospects to think hard about what is ‘most’ important to them. You want to uncover the exact criteria needed to satisfy your customer. The word ‘most’ provides the ‘most’ important criteria.
- The question includes the word ‘important’ which causes your prospect to reveal what is important to them. People do things for their reasons and in their own way. Remember some things people say are negotiable. For instance, if your prospect says. “I would like to have …” you can rest assured what you heard is negotiable. But if your prospect says, “I need a three-car garage” you better be prepare to provide a three-car garage or provide an acceptable alternative.
- The question includes the word ‘home’ because you want your prospects to bring to mind pictures of what they are thinking about. Unless you know what your prospects have ‘in mind’ you cannot provide the right solution.
Think about it, this question focuses your prospect on what is important. It lets your prospect know that you want to understand exactly what buying condition you need to satisfy. Most importantly, it puts your prospect on notice that your sales presentation will focus on their needs rather than your own needs. And those are the ingredients for a successful sales presentation – a sales presentation that earns you the right to ask for the order.
Peel the onion
Hold on, you are not finished yet. Be sure to read the next article to learn how to uncover if there is anything else you need-to-know about your prospect’s decision-making conditions.
Send to a friend
Before reading the last article I have a favor to ask. I want you to send this newsletter to 5 people who you feel will benefit from the ideas and principles included. If you have already done it, thank you. If not, please do so now, your friend will appreciate it. My goal is to send this newsletter to at least 1000 people monthly. To achieve this goal I need your help. At the bottom of the newsletter you will find a ‘Send to a Friend’ button. Just click and follow the easy introductions. Thank you in advance for helping me and your friend achieve their goals. It is appreciated!
Robert E. Hafer Seminars
To learn more about Robert E. Hafer seminars and workshops and purchase Building Results – The Ultimate How-To Guide For New Homes Sales, visit click here, email Bob at Send Emailor call 972-795-5926.
Good luck and good selling!
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Seek first to understand to be understood
In Stephen Covey’s best seller, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he provides salespeople valuable advice. He writes “Seek first to understand to be understood.” Those seven words can mean the difference between success and failure. When you understand someone, you earn the right to influence that person.
In the second article I gave you six questions you can ask to understand a home buyer’s decision-making criteria. If that is all you did you would learn some of the things that are important but if you really want to dig deep and discover all the criteria then you need to ask a second question.
The second question, “Is there anything else?” is designed to help you ‘peel the onion’ back and learn more about your prospect’s wants and like-to-haves. It’s a simple question but very effective because it asks your prospect to think harder.
This question is designed to uncover conditions of which your prospect may not be consciously aware of but either may want or would like-to-have. If you’re able to deliver either wants or like- to-haves, you separate yourself from your competition.
Most new-home salespeople simply ask one discovery question and begin immediately to pull out brochures that satisfy what they think they heard. But when you ‘peel the onion’ back, you discover your prospects’ buying motivations. When you understand buying motivations, you’ve discovered the key that unlocks the doorway to the sale.
Buying motivations
When you ask the question “Is there anything else?” you begin to uncover what is really motivating your prospect to consider a new home. Always remember that your prospect will usually describe the home they want in terms of style, size, price and features. However, what they want to achieve with their homes rarely is apparent.
Ultimately, despite all the facts and features you give your prospect and all the specifications they give you, there will be one or two major motivations that trigger the decision to buy or not to buy. Buying motivations are emotional and difficult for most people to adequately express. It takes careful listening to uncover these buying motivations and correctly interpret them.
There are four primary buying motivations to listen for:
- Family
- Investment
- Convenience
- Prestige
One or all four of these motivations may be hidden in your prospect’s responses. It’s important to listen for what motivates your prospect.
Purchasing a new home is never easy. The purchase initiates many changes in a person’s life – and most people avoid changes. By understanding what motivates your prospect, you can begin linking together all the reasons purchasing a new home will make life better. Asking good discovery questions helps you understand what motivates your prospect, and that’s like having a road map to follow that leads you directly to the sale.
So, start today to ask every prospect you meet the following two questions:
- For you, what is important about … (home, homesite, community, location, financing and builder)?
- Is there anything else?
You will be amazed at the type of information you hear. One of the keys to new home sales success is asking good questions and listening completely to the response. Do both things well and you position yourself for additional sales and income.
Send to a friend
Thank you for reading the Building Results newsletter. I hope you find the ideas useful and will put into practice what you feel will benefit you. If you feel my newsletter will benefit some of your peers, please forward. If you have already done it, thank you. If not, please do so now. I know your friend will appreciate it. My goal is to send this newsletter to at least 1000 people monthly. To achieve this goal I need your help. At the bottom of the newsletter you will find a ‘Send to a Friend’ button. Just click and follow the easy introductions. Thank you in advance for helping me and your friend achieve their goals. It is appreciated!
Robert E. Hafer Seminars
To learn more about Robert E. Hafer seminars and workshops and purchase Building Results – The Ultimate How-To Guide For New Homes Sales, visit click here, email Bob at Send Emailor call 972-795-5926.
Good Luck and Good Selling!
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