Sales Misadventures #3: Assuming answers can trap you

When an overly enthusiastic real estate agent gets trapped by answering a question, the Real Results Guy can’t help but give feedback.

Last Sunday afternoon my wife and I were looking at open houses. We are looking to move soon and decided it would be a good idea if we started scoping out the neighbourhoods we want to live in to get a feel for what’s expensive, what’s a deal, etc.

One home was being shown by a *very* nice real estate agent. She was polite, friendly and helpful. Her only flaw — she talked too much. While not a deadly sin, talking too much if you are in the sales role is NOT helpful. In my training session I call it the sign of the inexperienced sales person.

The exchange below illustrated how you can get caught by talking too much:

My wife: “Are we far from the highway?”

Real estate agent: “Oh don’t worry, you are not that close.”

My wife: “Erm.. okay… But I *need* to be close, I work downtown. How many minutes away are we?”

Real estate agent (backpedalling): “Oh! It’s super fast,  I could show you shortcuts!”

You see how making an assumption trapped the agent into a corner? How she was forced to backpedal  and recover?  She was so anxious to promote the house, she was in full-on “deal-with-objections” mode.  This happens when you are under pressure to make the sale.

Instead, she should have spent more time clarifying the objection to get to the real desire, in this case, that we have easy access to a highway.

Here is how the exchange could have gone:

My wife: “Are we far from the highway?”

Real estate agent: “Interesting question. Why do you ask?”

My wife: “Well, I work downtown and need access to a highway”

Real estate agent: “I understand. Actually, you are only 8 minutes away.”

Once the real problem has been identified, dealing with it is child’s play.

Sales lesson: Get to the bottom of the objection before rushing to deal with it.