by Donald Davidoff | Mar 24, 2017 12:00:00 AM
It’s spring, and as the twist on the old saying goes, “a young man’s [or woman’s] fancy turns to thoughts of baseball.” Truth be told, my thoughts turn to the Stanley Cup playoffs and whether my Washington Capitals will finally evade years of misery to take the prize…hey, if the Cubs can do it, why not the Caps?
Despite my preference for hockey, the baseball metaphor works better for the point I want to make today. For the past month or more, all baseball teams have been engaged in Spring Training. It always amazes me how much time athletes spend on preparation and practice versus actual playing time. Compare that to business where we spend precious little time on training and almost no time on the repetition of practice. Heck, we rarely even provide true coaching to our associates.
I recognize that this isn’t a perfect analogy and the economic realities of business production mean we can’t dedicate the same 50+% of time to practice; but surely we can invest a little more time than we have been.
With the high season coming upon us, there’s no time better than now to take our site associates through a bit of “spring training” for leasing. It’s a great time to brush up on sales (and service) fundamentals, share stories and practice together.
In that spirit, and to make it easier for you to begin a sales spring training exercise, we’ve developed a new webinar you can implement with no impact on your busy training teams. It’s off the shelf and ready to go.
We call it “Connecting with Today’s Renter” and it addresses 5 key points every leasing agent needs to know to improve their sales performance. These include:
1. Understanding the need for a modern sales approach.
We discuss how the sales environment has changed and what that means to sales associates in how they approach prospects. The internet (and especially Google) really has moved us from a caveat emptor (“buyer beware”) to a caveat vendit (“seller beware”) world. Are your agents ready for this?
2. Learning how to authentically sell to informed prospects: The days of manipulative sales tactics working are over.
Informed prospects can see through these. It doesn’t mean old school sales tactics won’t generate any sales, but it does mean leasers can generate more sales at higher rents using contemporary tactics. Are you teaching your sales associates to “always be closing” or to “always be helping?”
3. Understanding and selling to the three things all customers value.
Deep research by the world-renowned research firm IDEO uncovered the fact that all rental housing prospects are looking for the same three things. And our sales associates typically ignore one of them. Do you know what they are?
4. Learning how to align with the customer’s physical and emotional journey.
IDEO also identified five stages all prospects go through; and more interestingly, they identified how the prospect’s emotional journey is almost the exact opposite of the sales associate’s journey. Do your sales associates understand and appreciate the emotional journey their customers are going through? More importantly, are they actively altering their tone to match and connect better, realizing that they are often feeling the opposite emotion?
As with all things D2DS, we don’t just talk theory. We bring it home with practicable “things I can do right now with my next prospect” ideas. These aren’t manipulative tactics; rather they’re proven principles and techniques your sales associates can use to connect with, and positively influence, prospect decisions.
If this new sales improvement product sounds interesting to you, please contact me immediately at donald@d2demand.com (or call me at 303.588.1389). Even if you don’t want to talk to us, ask yourself what you are doing for your team’s “spring training.” Your favorite baseball team is doing something, shouldn’t you?