The Five Things Sales Teams Should Be Doing, And Time Wasters to Avoid
There is too much wasted time in real estate sales
This is because there are so many periphery tasks in our business.
Why should salespeople get stuck helping new owners pick out marble countertops? Why should they sit at a desk robotically dialing the phone hoping to find a pulse in their pipeline? Those tasks are productivity killers and your marketing ROI will surely suffer.
The sales team is a real estate developments most valuable asset and they should be free to focus on only those tasks that will enable them to make sales, nothing else.
Top 5 Things Salespeople Should Be Doing
1. Spending time with prospective buyers who are on site.
Face to face engagement is top of the list. This is the best time to build rapport, answer questions and move a prospective buyer from merely interested to truly engaged. When a potential new owner is on site, no matter how far along in the sales process, everything else takes a back seat.
2. Having meaningful conversations with early stage prospects.
Building the sales pipeline is the second most important thing that must be done. Late stage buyers who need answers with detailed questions only reached that advanced level of interest because a salesperson engaged with them early.
Put another way, the less time your sales team spends having meaningful conversations with early stage prospects, the fewer late stage buyers you’ll have opening up their pocketbooks. Focus on building the pipeline first, then close them second. It sounds backward, but it’s not.
3. Working with late stage prospects through their final decision process.
This is third on the list but obviously very important. That said, salespeople should not let the excitement of an imminent closing trump the chance to connect with a new lead who is either on site or actively reading your real estate presentation.
A late stage prospect is already engaged. On the priority scale, they fall just behind a new lead who’s showing interest but not yet engaged.
4. Building relationships with current owners.
The last two are the most overlooked tasks. Those salespeople who build the strongest relationships with their new owners have the most success. Traditionally, owners refer their friends and family because of their love of the property and excellent relationship with their salesperson.
Yes, incentives can move the needle from time to time. “Refer a friend and receive half off of your annual HOA fees” is a good example, but incentives are typically not the real reason an owner makes a referral. Referrals happen as a result of owners being treated like family when on site and genuinely becoming friends with the staff, namely your sales team.
5. Personal growth and training.
Even the best salespeople in the world admit that they can improve. Nobody is all knowing and in my book, improving ones own skills is senior to sitting at a desk dialing for dollars all day long.
Today there is so much information out there that can help everyone improve. I read Medium and load my Feedly account up with great content from really smart people in many industries. I aim to improve myself everyday and recommend my clients do the same.
Sometimes the simplicity of extra effort, a better timed phone call, a better voicemail, a better email or more confident phone delivery can make all the difference in the world. Furthermore, salespeople should shop and study the competition and prepare for what to say when that conversation inevitably happens.
Common Time Wasting Tasks
Here are a few items that don’t make the list that many good salespeople do too often.
1. Dialing for dollars
When consumers request additional information that’s exactly what they want, additional information, not just a brochure full of fancy pictures. Knowing which leads are spending the most time reading that additional information is the secret sauce to eliminating “dialing for dollars” almost entirely.
Someone else should be tasked with these next items, a sales admin most commonly. They are huge time wasters for a salesperson who could be spending their time having meaningful conversations moving prospects towards close.
2. The closing process, document management
3. Interior design consulting, decorating logistics
4. Sending out brochures
5. Coordinating sales visits
Developer Homework:
Sit down and have a conversation with the sales team. Better understand what they spend their time on everyday. Figure out what items should be reassigned to someone else.
A more productive sales team is the key to a faster sale and improved return on your sales and marketing investment.
Clearview Elite creates custom, web-based presentations for real estate sales teams, delivers them instantly and automatically and sends notifications as to which prospects are reading them, when and how often. Watch our video
About Eric: Real Estate Sales & Marketing veteran and founder of Clearview Elite. Driven to make life easier for real estate salespeople. Very lucky husband and Dad, slightly above average golfer, food and wine fan. Lives in Boise, Idaho with wife Julie and kids Nicholas and Grace.
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Eric Pierce
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