When customers are increasingly saying ‘not now’, the answer isn’t to push harder. It’s to reframe the conversation and help them see the risks of every option.
‘We don’t need to sell, we can just wait.’
‘It’s ok, we’re not in a rush to buy right now.’
How many times have we been hearing this stuff recently? With what feels like a majority of investors sitting out of the market right now, the level of apprehension and inaction we’re facing on the front line is really high.
A lot of that is down to the common reactions from the current nature of media narratives, coupled with the understandably higher levels of anxiety that owner-occupier customers tend to face a lot more naturally on both sides of the transactional fence.
It results in a lot of ‘don’t need to sell’-type remarks, which represents the defending of a position despite an underlying reality that is clearly providing a strong motivation to push on, even with all of the negative press telling customers to not make a move.
Can they be blamed for doing that? Absolutely not, and for those agents that have a dig at customers for not telling us the whole truth about their situation right away … how about you earn their confidence first, instead of acting with an arrogance that gives you an odd belief that you have some divine right to their situation.
However, for those that are trying to generate some momentum but being faced with the apathetic comments above, I’m sure that a lot of our tried and tested scripts are simply not having the cut-through that brought them success in the past.
Now it’s not to say that the fundamentals of those scripts are wrong all of a sudden, but we need to acknowledge the sheer volume of noise that is causing their procrastination (or aversion) to make a decision requires us to sharpen our abilities to keep them focussed on keeping their world turning.
What this calls for is an injection of perspective, and below are prime examples of how certain situations can become fruitful if we were to reframe our standard approach to them.
Not needing to sell
This defence mechanism tends to pop up whenever there’s a difference between buyer feedback and the owner’s ‘hoped for’ price level.
The important thing to recognise when this happens is that our conversation has slipped into a ‘transactional’ space.
A lot of the time, because we get caught up trying to make said transactions happen (especially when they’re harder to come by), we bring everyone’s focus on the single thing that plenty are being told not to do, instead of using the sale as a way of bringing their goals to pass.
When that happens, essentially what we generate is a false sense of security which can end up being so detrimental. We make ‘not selling’ the safe thing to do, versus selling which (in their minds) carries all the risk.
Now we know that this isn’t the case, but until we help our owners understand that based on their situation, whatever we say will fall on deaf ears.
So instead of doing what we normally do, namely:
- Show them crappy comparable sales
- Tell them that buyers aren’t making offers
- Highlight the ‘damning’ statistics
- Point out the rising volume of properties on the market
What we need to do is have a conversation that helps our owners to see the consequences of any action or inaction that they decide to take. I like to refer to these as ‘What if’ conversations.
Where the reframe needs to happen
The information that you’re providing to them in evidence of why they need to do something like take an offer, reduce the advertising price or shift strategy isn’t necessarily wrong, but the way in which you’re delivering it is likely to be.
Why? Because the majority of agents think that information = reason…and it just isn’t for owners!
You deliver these bleak stats to owners, and then say ‘and that’s why you need to take this offer’ like they are expected to be able to process the information in a well-acclimated manner, fully understanding the impact of these numbers on their lives.
Giving people information by itself does not mean that you are helping them, and the reframe comes in the form of looking past the information to help owners see what could happen as a result of the information you’ve provided.
The data itself is only half of the story, but right now we’re delivering them as answers rather than the clues that they actually are.
So having delivered the information, we need to set up this next part of the chat by then working through the various ‘what if’s’, because you can guarantee that they will be racing through the owners’ minds!
But before you begin, you must remind the owners that every potential path carries a risk, and then by talking right through each step based on why they are selling you get to spell out the relevant risk by using the information as supporting evidence, rather than the main act.
‘It’s not a ‘safe versus not safe’ decision Mr & Mrs Seller, it’s risk versus risk and my job is to work with you to figure out the path of least risk by playing out the various ‘what if’s’.’
Paying attention to behaviours, not just numbers
I had a chat with a young agent the other day who had been doing some cold prospecting, and he told me that of the five meetings that he had secured, one listed but the other four were no good.
Upon asking him why the other four were no good, he told me that they said at the start that they weren’t selling, but he had managed to gain decent engagement during the conversation.
When I asked him how he had managed to get in the door in the first place, he told me it was off the back of a listing he had secured nearby. The neighbours’ initial reaction was: ‘Oh, I knew they were divorcing but I didn’t realise it’d be that quick!’
Now if Sid was to look at this superficially, he could say that he had made good connections but they weren’t transacting for a while. The fact that he asked if they were willing to sell, and still managed to have a decent level of interaction despite being told no tells me that this lad has got some serious human potential.
But if he were to pay closer attention to the neighbours’ reactions…we could have just found three potential scouts for the area if we don’t stop at the simple script of ‘do you or anyone you know that is thinking about selling?’.
The reframe of this, based on their reactions to Sid’s news, is actually founded in a very basic NLP change that was taught to me by the sensei that is Rik Rushton. Upon hearing ‘no’ to the above question, the NLP hack is to ask that ‘if they were to know anyone in the area that’s thinking of selling, who would they be?’.
But by actually paying attention to the somewhat ‘gossipy’ nature of these neighbours, Sid has a chance to match energy and ask ‘now if you were a betting woman, who would your money be on to be the next one to sell?’.
Same question, but by paying attention to the truth that people like to be right, asking it in a way that gamifies the consideration would appeal to that type of individual because if they ‘knew it’ with this latest listing, they’ll want to be right with the next one too, so chances are they’ll likely give you their tip on who to ask next!.
These are just two small examples from a much bigger range of opportunities to reframe the conversations we have every day. Take the time to step back, look at what’s really happening in front of you, and even the smallest tweaks to your approach can create far more momentum than you realise.
And momentum is something that we all could do with a little bit more of, so while we’re running through treacle at the minute, we should take the chance to make some adjustments that reframe conversations, in a way that will make you stand out as relevant against your competition.