Don’t Sell Past the Sale: Improve Your Real Estate Lead Conversion
When it comes to real estate lead conversion, sometimes you just need to sit back and shut your mouth. One of the biggest mistakes that real estate agents and ISAs make is selling past the sale, also known as selling past the close. Basically, it means that you keep trying to sell the lead on working with you, even after they already agreed to. You just keep flapping your lips and rattling off benefits of why they should work with you. And pretty soon, the lead is reconsidering whether they made the right choice.
How Selling Past the Sale Hurts Real Estate Lead Conversion
If you’re selling past the sale then you’re persisting with explanation and persuasion to a fault. You most likely have a problem with recognizing when you’ve reached the key point in your pitch when you’ve said all that you need to say. If you keep talking after that point, then you just as likely to talk the lead out of the sale as you are of converting them.
Take this example; you do all your discovery. You figure out your lead’s goal and desired outcome. You qualify them, determine they are worth your time, and you successfully lay out the value you can offer them and how you can help them accomplish this goal. Basically, you effectively you’re your unique value proposition. They bite. The lead says they are willing to meet with you. Amazing.
But then you keep talking. You start hammering home all of the marketing your team can provide. You start saying how many people you work with and how many houses you guys get sold. You keep layering it on after you already sold the lead. The result? You may something that the lead doesn’t like. Maybe they are uneasy about working with an agent who sells so many other houses, because they doubt the personal attention that they will receive. Maybe you just say the wrong thing.
Now the sale is gone. All because you kept on selling and didn’t just stop talking when you should have.
Don’t Be the Only One Talking on Real Estate Calls
Similar to not selling past the sale, the other key to successful real estate lead conversion is NOT doing all of the talking. Most sales people will do about 65% or 75% of the talking on their calls. The problem is that by only letting the lead speak for 25% of the time you won’t be able to understand the full picture of their situation.
Successful discovery, objection handling, and figuring out the lead’s desired outcome all require you to listen. Ideally, you should cut down the amount that you talk to under 50% of the call. Many sales people have the mistaken belief that when they are talking, they are in control. But the opposite is actually true. You’re in control when you are asking good questions to guide the lead and then gaining valuable information from their answers. That information is what you will end up using for your close.
Bumping up the amount of time that the lead is talking is generally related to more successful real estate lead conversion. This is especially true for cold calls, which require heavy amounts of discovery to be successful.
Stop Getting in Your Own Way
Want to convert more real estate leads? Perfect the art of listening more than talking. The thing about sales calls is that most people don’t want to be on the phone with you. And most of them would rather procrastinate than make a definitive decision. Continuing to sell past the sale might just give them an excuse to put off making a decision. And talking too much will prevent you from getting the information you need to close successfully.
Talk less, don’t sell past the sale, convert more real estate leads.
If you’re serious about converting more real estate leads, then check out Conversion University. It teaches you both the conversational framework you need, and you have a coach to practice all of the concepts until you master them.