Blog
Getting Over the Hump
I am receiving more and more questions on how to help today’s buyer go ahead and buy. In other words, how do you help prospects who really like your community and a home in your community to go ahead and make a buying decision? This morning I received a similar question from a friend of mine at Kiawah. The following are parts of my reply to her:
“Thanks for the email. It is tough out there in this economic and ‘negative news’ environment to convince the buyers to pull the trigger and then not get ‘buyers’ remorse’ when they get home.
“In answer to your question, there isn’t one thing that I use that is a magic bullet, but it’s a combination of 10, 15, 20 things that I do from the initial contact and throughout the presentation and tour that cumulatively results in a sale. As I mentioned to the team when I was there last Wednesday, my plan for the day was to cover the buyer side in the afternoon, and deal with the sellers and listings in the morning. However, the discussion and presentation was going so well on how to price properties to the market, I felt if would have been a mistake to stop in the middle and start talking about buyers. Chris mentioned he wanted me to come back and cover the buyer side. We just haven’t set a date.
“In the mean time we know that most people buy based on emotion and they justify it through logic. On the surface it sounds like you are doing a good job on the emotion side while they are there, and then they get home and start “thinking” and get cold feet. Most trainers would say you need to give them more logic and I agree with that. However, where I may differ from some, is that I feel we need to do a better job identifying what is truly important to the buyer and WHY they want to buy. Many times there is an emotional WHY and if this is the case I feel we have a higher probability of facilitating a purchase.
“For example, with my pancreatic cancer, if I were a prospect, price appreciation would mean nothing to me, but time with my family would be a major factor. Thus, I would be more inclined to buy regardless of the unemployment rate or other negative news! But this requires the sales professional to ask great diagnostic questions to uncover my dominant buying motive and then to supplement it with enough logic to enable me to justify buying.
“I hope this helps. When I get back up there we will work through this in detail like we did on how to deal with sellers and listings.”
Fully understanding the WHY behind their search will allow you close more effectively as you get beyond feature/benefit selling and dial into their personal dominant buying motive.
The key is the cumulative effect of multiple steps you must take in this market to facilitate a purchase. In the old days you could get by with only saying and doing a couple of things because the market was hot and “everybody’s buying!” In today’s market with fewer buyers in the market place, none of us can afford to miss a true buyer when we have one. Continue to sharpen your skills and you will get your share of the business.
Posted on 09/29 at 12:25 PM
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