Binders of Promises
Thu, May 9, 2013
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." -- Barack Obama
"Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined." -- Mitt Romney
While not as public or televised, the battle you wage against your opponents in the kitchens and living rooms of your prospects is not very different than, let’s say, the fierce presidential debates that play out before an election. While you may only be fighting for the right to represent and assist a specific family in the sale of their home vs. the right to represent and lead the entire nation, the strategies you must employ if you want to win are not so very different. In both cases, you have a small window within which you must make your case and earn the trust and confidence of your listeners. And, as with the presidential debates, you’re not presenting in a vacuum. Instead, your listeners will be comparing what you say against what other agents they’ve interviewed have told them. They’ll be judging your answers and looking for something they can connect with. Even before you start, they’ll be asking themselves “why” they should give you a hearing at all. Your every statement will have to pass the “who cares” test. Your credibility will be analysed and measured both in and of itself, and against your competitors. [caption id="attachment_331" align="alignleft" width="300"] The battle you wage against your opponents in the kitchens and living rooms of your prospects is not very different than a presidential debate[/caption] Leading up to the last election, it’s not very likely that Obama or Romney took the stage without hours of preparation, vigilantly wording their pitches and anticipating all objections. But even more than that, outside the specific focus of each debate, each had to work tirelessly to position themselves in the public consciousness. Interestingly, depending on who you’re presenting to, and who you’re competing against, sometimes that can lead to hedging a bit. Regarding one of the presidential debates, it was said that ‘to an extent both tried to be the other. Obama sounded firm and assertive, kind of like a Republican, and Romney tried to ensure that the female vote, which [had] apparently risen for him [despite his binders of women fiasco], [didn’t] go away, but tried not to sound like a war-mongering Republican." [USA Today Oct 23,12] The reality for you, however, is that you must work hard to carve out your positioning so that you don’t have to keep selling and re-selling yourself to your prospects. If you have successfully connected yourself with a highly meaningful consumer benefit, much of the selling will already have been accomplished for you before you step foot in the door. A critical part of what I’ve just said, however, is that your positioning must hinge on a meaningful consumer benefit. In a previous article, I played with the idea of WIFM (What’s in it for Me – with “Me” being your prospects) suggesting that you also have to think about WIFY (What’s in it for You … in other words, how you must make sure that as you build your business you end up getting what you wanted in the first place – i.e. lots of both money and freedom). But you can’t have WIFY if you don’t have WIFM. If your prospects don’t understand and believe that you will benefit them more than any other agent, you won’t win their business, and without your prospects’ business … well, in short, you don’t have a business. An important part of my success was the fact that I created a very meaningful and compelling positioning. We call this a USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Your USP is your elevator pitch – the 60 second description of what you offer that will intrigue your prospects so much that they will clamber to get a hold of you so they can find out more. My USP was simple: “If I can’t sell your home in 120 days or less, I’ll buy it from you myself.” This simple statement hit all the right hot buttons. It was very easy to understand, and it promised sellers that if they listed with me, their home would sell. Period. What else do prospects want? Well, they want to sell for the most money they can, and I went on to assure them that this would be the case when they called me up to ask me about it. “Your home sold at a price acceptable to you or I buy it.” Importantly, your USP answers the following question: “Why should I do business with you above all other options, including doing nothing or whatever I’m doing now?” For many of you, this question is difficult to answer because you’ve never thought of things in these terms. But if you want to succeed at real estate, without having to sell and re-sell yourself every time you get face-to-face with a prospect, you must find an answer. You must decide how you will position your business in your prospect’s mind by developing a USP that is unique, specific, relevant, believable, focused and concise. Just like presidential candidates do. You voted for one or the other because of their positioning – because of what they made you believe they stand for. When it comes time to choose a leader, you put your tick beside the name of the man who you feel will do the best job for your country. This is how prospects also decide your future, so you need to be clear about what positioning will compel them to choose you. P.S. You can test drive my ideas and systems absolutely free by signing up for Free Weekly Training which includes live weekly webinars, a monthly newsletter and priority invitations to free half day training events. This Free Weekly training will expose you to inexpensive and highly effective methods of lead generation (with no cold calling) -- what I call “Reverse Prospecting”, where qualified prospects actually hunt you down rather than the other way around, and then how to follow these leads through to maximum GCI via proprietary lead conversion and prospect presentation systems. This is the easiest way for you to find out with no risk or obligation what my system is all about and how it can help you profitably grow your real estate business and vastly improve your quality of life. JOIN MY FREE WEEKLY TRAINING PROGRAM HERE