Thirty years ago I asked a very successful sales professional if he could give me one word that would best define a great salesperson. He thought for a moment and then said, “Teacher.” I believe that is as true today as it was then.
The best salesperson is a teacher who simply explains a product or service well. No embellishment, no exaggeration.
The most important way to sell a product is to teach “this is what the product is”, followed by, “this is where it is, this is why it is beneficial, here is its potential, this is when it is available and here is how this particular one works.” There are no tricks in sales. If you think there are tricks, you are a poor salesperson and you should think about doing something else like factory work or rocket science, because selling is not for you.
All of these factors go hand-in-hand with hard work and, most importantly, attitude. There are sales aids that help but fundamentally they don’t make much difference compared to the ability of teaching.
If you teach someone well, they should be able to see a product’s function and how it fits into their world. They should be able to understand its value and make a timely decision on whether or not to buy it. You must be straightforward and honest about the product because if you are wrong or you embellish anything, your reputation as a teacher is shot and you will be out of a job. A teacher, like a sales rep, is all about reputation. Once you have ruined your reputation as a teacher, you might as well leave town. No one will trust you to work with their family again.
I have often thought that one of the best services a real estate salesperson could provide to his community would be to teach a high school course on buying real estate and managing property. It should be mandatory in public school education to know about buying a house and maintaining it. With all the cutbacks that our governments are imposing on education, why not ask a good local real estate agent to come into the classroom and teach something important and meaningful, such as how to acquire and maintain a place to live? A good sales rep, after all, is a good teacher.
I wish I had experienced a good agent’s explanation about how things worked in acquiring and maintaining a home when I was young. I admit I was not the sharpest knife in the drawer when I went to school. Nor am I today for that matter, but I did retain some things from good teachers. I could have learned a great deal from an agent if I had been lucky enough to have one offer a course back in my day. When I came out of the school system I did not know what a hydro bill was or the difference between a radiator and a forced-air system. I did not know what a mortgage was or the difference between renting a home and buying one. I will wager that very few young people today know the meaning of the word mortgage. I doubt that a lot of adults know the meaning of that word either.
Way back when I was young, I was going to rock concerts, I was hanging around and really not learning anything useful when, out of the blue, the most beautiful girl in all of Scarborough, Ont. told me that we were pregnant. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I was still a teenager but right in that instant, I changed from a kid to an adult with a family to take care of. I thought I knew everything back then. Yet I did not know how to rent an apartment or run a household. If only I had learned the fundamentals of how to read a hydro meter at my high school instead of algebra. To this day I have never needed to know about algebra but I still have so much more to learn about buying and operating a house.
Take it from a seasoned old man who still can’t run a household efficiently. You want to be a good real estate professional? Share your knowledge. Give it away. Teach and you will prosper!
Heino Molls is publisher of REM. Email [email protected].
