286: A Better Way To Do Sales

Today’s episode is all about winning at sales. To be honest, this episode was inspired by a recent interaction I had with a former coworker and how I’ve just seen people do it all wrong in sales and not have success. Many Realtors overcomplicate sales and relationships—they overthink everything. If you want to have success, you have to build relationships and treat people the right way. Make sure you’re checking in for special life events—anniversaries, birthdays, the anniversary of the sale of their home, etc. Keep building that relationship…which was not my experience with my former coworker, let’s call her Jessica. Jessica and I worked together at a local bank in Lancaster. We weren’t best friends—there was a lot of competition between us as customer service representatives. Jessica was one of the longest tenured customer service representatives at the branch, but I had a lot of success with sales. I was able to persuade banking customers to expand their banking relationship with us—to sign up for more accounts, open credit cards, apply for loans, mortgages, etc. I advanced pretty quickly through the financial institution, which fostered a lot of jealousy in Jessica. Jessica advanced through the bank despite having an attitude. I also went through a couple of promotions at the bank before losing my job there. Someone must have liked her because by the time I was in real estate, Jessica was an assistant branch manager, and she wanted my business. I remember her inviting me to one of her branches and wanting to swap business cards since I was in real estate. Since we had never been friends, I figured she was extending an olive branch. When I met with her, she had a stack of her business cards ready to give me and asked me to hand them out to my potential clients—so she could help them grow their banking relationship. I said sure, expecting her to take a stack of mine to hand out to banking clients as well. I offered her my cards and told her I’d be happy to help any of her banking clients when it was time to buy or sell a home. Keep in mind she had handed me a stack of 30 cards, had them all in a stack ready to go when I arrived. When I offered her a stack of my business cards, she took three. Three cards. In that moment it was clear that nothing had changed with her. She wanted me to help her build her business but wasn’t interested in referring anyone to me. I was reminded in that moment that she wasn’t trying to build relationships; she wasn’t extending an olive branch. She only brought me in to pitch her banking services and for me to provide free advertising to my clients. I wasn’t going to do that. That’s not how sales works. That was three years ago, but just the other day I noticed on LinkedIn that Jessica had been out of banking for a couple of years but had recently gotten a branch manager role at another bank. I thought to myself, “I bet she reaches out to me”, and sure enough, within 24 hours I had a call from Jessica. It was literally the most awkward conversation—she talked all about her new bank position, never asked about me, my family, or how my real estate business was going. She was using the call as an opportunity to pitch her services—not build relationships. I listened to her spiel for five minutes and got off the phone. Jessica will often say that she doesn’t know why she’s not having success in banking. Many of you will say you don’t know why you’re not having success in real estate. Are you building relationships? Are you caring about those relationships with clients, with other business partners—or are you doing things like Jessica? Are you caring about the relationships around you, or are you just using people to try to grow and expand your business? Think about it and remember that success in real estate is all about relationships.

Resources

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Podcast edited by Kenny Carfagno.

Show notes and blog posts are created by Jennifer Harshman and RealtorEmails. John Schuchman is a licensed REALTOR® in Lancaster, PA, with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Homesale Realty and a part of the Andrew Welk Group. The opinions shared on this show represent the opinions & values of John Schuchman and do not necessarily represent the opinions & values of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Homesale Realty. The opinions & ideas shared in this podcast do not guarantee or promise any results of success to the listener.