Rhondalynn Kolorak, best selling author, wants to share with you 2 things that you should never do/include in your sales or marketing message, if you are serious about attracting more listings and getting more buyers to sign on the dotted line.
To prove my point, I’m going to share with you two examples of what NOT to do.
I saw a billboard recently on a major freeway. It read “Texting While Driving KILLS”. Then down below in fine print were the words “For more driving tips, text ‘SAFETY’ to 79191.” You are probably laughing or at least smiling right now because this is an obvious case of sending a mixed message to your audience. And you’re right, I’m sure it is very clear to you why this message is particularly ineffective.
But the sad part is – this type of miscommunication (or presenting too many or conflicting ideas) is polluting your sales pitch and marketing flyers every day. To get more customers to say “yes”, you must stop making this costly mistake.
Spend some time reviewing your website, your last eNewsletter, email or brochure. What exactly are you asking your prospect to do? Did you make the mistake of trying to communicate too much on one page? Did you ask him/her to email you, join your database, visit your blog and check out your latest listings or videos?
Chances are, you got really excited about the properties you already have on offer or what you can do to sell theirs and you made the mistake of trying to tell your prospect everything in one go. And I can understand why you got so excited but the truth is, you probably confused/overwhelmed them and most of them walked away without deciding.
What you did may not have been as blatant as “For more driving tips, text ‘SAFETY’ to 79191.” However, the end result was the same.
If you want to get more listings and buyers, you need to focus on communicating one clear message in each interaction with your prospect. If your message is clear and there is only one action that they could take, you will find that the number of people who step forward and take that desired action will go up exponentially.
Now that brings me to my second point.
The second mistake I don’t want you make is to use words or sentences that are confusing. Take for example this sign I saw outside a motel – “Free Wifi Starting at $59.99”. I think the motel owner who put up this sign was either in a rush or ran out of space because he clearly forgot to include a few important words.
What he probably meant to say was “Free Wifi. Rooms starting from $59.99”. He only forgot two small words but those simple words made the difference between a message that was clear and one that made absolutely no sense at all.
Now you may not be offering free wifi with to your next buyer or seller but I bet you may have used or at least seen terms like “price on application”, “best efforts”, “ negative gearing” or “fee simple”. While they may mean something to a trained real estate agent, these words mean nothing to the reptilian brain (the part of your customer’s brain that decides and takes action). That part of the brain is 45million years old and it struggles to process and understand complex words, numbers, symbols and graphs that contain too much information.
If you want to speed up the sales cycle and make it easier for more customers to list or buy one of your properties, you need to make your message simple. Choose words that are clear and easy to understand. As Einstein once famously said, if a six-year old cannot understand it, you need to re-think how you explain what you do. Complete your thoughts and sentences – don’t make it difficult and give your customer the easy out – “I need to think about it”. If your customer has too think too hard to decode your message, he/she simply won’t make a decision, or worse, they will buy from your competitor.
Today is a good day to step back and be honest with yourself – is there a chance you might be confusing or overwhelming your potential customers? Is your message clear and succinct? If not, now is the best time to go back and re-write your materials. If you want to get more listings and buyers, the solution is elementary – you need to simplify what you are asking them to do and use language that is easy to interpret.
