Selling only happens after you are speaking with a potential ideal customer. If the marketing has been executed well, you should be speaking with a qualified ideal customer.
What happens as other noted sales experts have written salespeople in their desire to increase sales waste a lot of time with tire-kickers, sales leads without decision making authority or who lack allocated budgets. (Think qualified sales leads)
In real estate, the pre-qualification from is a great tool to discover the actual buying budget. The AZ real estate offer/contract requires the AZ Pre-Qual form with submission if a loan is involved.
Ideal customers are those customers where a business has continued success based upon both:
- Demographics (the common statistics or shared characteristics)
- Psychographics (the why behind the buying decision)
Referral marketing is so successful because of the psychographics. People would rather buy from someone who already known and trusted by one of their friends.
For many years, these were only three qualifying factors for salespeople:
- Decision maker
- Want or a need
- Money (Budget)
My father, a professional salesperson shared the fourth criterion of “urgency.” Effective salespeople build and intensify the urgency.
I added the “commitment to take action” as the fifth sales qualifying criterion. Even if you have the four previous criteria, if there is no commitment to take action it’s hard to earn the sale. This is why I believe during the sales conversations there requires an ongoing connection to emotionalize the “what ifs” if a decision to take action is not made.
When the real estate market has low inventory and high velocity, building urgency can be simply through educating the days on market. (Think education based marketing)
For the majority of real estate sales, there is only one decision maker and possibly one center of influence. In real estate, usually this may be the wife or the other significant partner.
One word of wisdom is:
“Make sure you marketing has been effective before you engage in any selling, otherwise you just may lose the sale.”
Graphic Courtesy of Pixabay.com
Comments (5)Subscribe to CommentsComment