The Art Of NOT Closing The Sale – Part I
(This is Part I of a two-part series)
If I get another e-mail promotion from a sales trainer telling me I need to learn “28 Guaranteed Ways To Close The Sale”, I’m gonna barf!
When I became a Realtor® 37 years ago, it was all about how to use sales manipulation to entrap people and get them to sign on the dotted line.
There was the alternative choice “close” ~ that’s the one where you ask them if they would like to buy today . . . or tomorrow, with the underlying concept being that the client was toast if they so much as twitched.
Kinda like “Gotcha Sales:101″.
Then, there was the “feel, felt, found” technique for isolating objections.
Unfortunately, this one is still in use today.
It goes like this:
“I can understand why you feel that you want to think it over, Jim and Mary”.
“I’ve felt that way too”.
“However, I’ve found that . . . blah, blah, blah”.
Enuf to make you gag, isn’t it?
Manipulate people, trick them, and “close the sale”.
And we wonder why Realtors® aren’t regarded as professionals?
In my early days in real estate, Tommy Hopkins was the king of tricky closing tactics, along with Zig Ziglar, Cavitt Robert, and other sales trainers of the day.
I still remember sitting in a packed Sunnyvale hotel conference room in a 1974 Tommy Hopkins seminar, thinking I would become successful if I could just learn all of those tricky sales techniques.
In later years, it was Mike Ferry and a new generation of “motivational speakers”.
Some of them are still around, spewing their techniques as a road to riches for anyone in sales.
(continued tomorrow)
July 19th, 2009 Posted in Inside Real Estate
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