Improve Your Negotiating Skills
Last week, we talked about how to keep your listings.
Now I want to talk about how you can improve your negotiating skills. We can have an increased ratio of closed transactions if we become better negotiators. I think it’s a great idea to review some of the techniques we have talked about in the past.
The best #negotiation tactic I know of on the planet is not to have to negotiate. Share on X
Try to avoid negotiating.
If you don’t have to negotiate, that is where you want to be. The best way to overcome that necessity is to review the steps to handling objections because the need to negotiate comes about when there is an objection.
Steps to successfully overcome objections.
First of all, at your next office meeting, get a whiteboard or a flip chart and gather everybody around. Make a list of every seller objection you have ever heard from a seller during a listing presentation and during a listing appointment, and write them on the flip chart.
Knowing these objections takes a lot of the pressure off because you can prepare a great response. An objection is really just a question in the mind of a customer and it’s unanswered. You have to find the answer to that question to move on and get beyond the objection and alleviate the need to negotiate with them.
The next one is the hardest one for real estate professionals. Pause. Be silent. When somebody pauses on you, don’t get sucked into babbling away and giving away the whole store. Just…pause. Many objections will go away in the silence that ensues.
Next, repeat and acknowledge. Steven Covey said in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that we need to seek first to understand before we can expect to be understood. When you repeat and acknowledge an objection to a client, they now know you have listened, and more importantly, you heard them. Repeat the objection back to them.
Isolate the objection. You want to make sure that before you start addressing their objections that you have the whole list of them.
Then deal with the objection. Find a solution to the objection. What kind of solutions do you have? And, what kind of solutions can you add as a Luxury Real Estate Agent?
The last step is to close. Sign the paperwork that authorizes you to go to work for your client.
These steps will work most of the time, and they will alleviate the need to have to negotiate with anyone.
