4) Prioritize: All things are never equal
o Do you care most about?
§ Location?
§ Rate?
§ Amenities?
How would you like to write a piece of copy that pulls a 100 percent response rate?
In case you are wondering, a typical direct mailing produces a 1–5 percent response rate.
In 1925, Bruce Barton, one of the founders of the BBDO advertising agency, wrote a fundraising letter for Berea College in Berea, Kentucky. The letter, which was sent to 24 people, asked for each recipient to reply with a check for $1,000 ($1,000 was a lot of money in 1925). All 24 recipients of Barton’s letter responded—some even more generously than Barton requested—and Berea College was $30,000 richer.
How was Mr. Barton able to achieve this miraculous feat? He followed the three rules that should be tattooed on the foreheads of anyone who wants to communicate more effectively with his or her customers, colleagues, peers, or husband or wife.
1) Brevity: "About sixty years ago two men spoke at Gettysburg; one man spoke for two hours. I suppose there is not any one who could quote a single word of that oration. The other man spoke about three hundred words, and that address has become a part of the school training of almost every child."—Bruce Barton
—Being brief—concise, not short in length—means learning how to make every word count and every sentence impactful.
2) Simplicity: "I think it might be said, no advertisement is great that has anything that can't be understood by a child of intelligence. Certainly all the great things in life are one-syllable things—child, home, wife, fear, faith, love, God."—Bruce Barton
—Writing simply means knowing your audience and then carefully choosing language they will easily understand. If you want to show off your vocabulary, write for an academic journal.
3) Sincerity: "I believe the public has a sixth sense for detecting insincerity, and we run a tremendous risk if we try to make other people believe in something we don't believe in. Somehow our sin will find us out."—Bruce Barton
—Being sincere means always believing what you say.
Timeless Lesson: Be brief, simple, and clear in all of your communications.
If you want to read Mr. Barton's letter in full, and I highly recommend that you do, please click here.
The following are lessons learned from David Ogilvy’s “The Theory &Practice of Selling the Aga Cooker”. Fortune Magazine called this the best sales manual ever written. Ogilvy wrote this manual in the early 20th Century when he was a door-to-door salesman for the Aga Cooker company.
• Tell the person who opens the door (receptionist, secretary, etc.) frankly and briefly what you are there for.
– It will get them on your side.
– Never get in the door on false pretenses. No one likes a liar.
• Study the best time to call on folks.
– It may be at unorthodox times.
– In general, study the methods of your competitors and do the exact opposite.
• The worst fault a salesman can commit is to be a bore.
– Be interested in the subjects your prospects are interested in.
• The more they talk, the better off you are.
– Pepper your talk with anecdotes and jokes.
– Accumulate a repertoire of illustration.
– Never forget the most powerful phrase in sales:“Let me tell you a story.”
• Avoid at all costs any standardization in your sales talk.
– If you find yourself one fine day saying the same things to a bishop and a trapezist, you are done for.
• When the prospect tries to bring the interview to an end, go gracefully.
– It can only hurt to be kicked out.
• The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will get.
– But never mistake a quantity of sales for quality of salesmanship.
– Quality of salesmanship involves energy, time and knowledge of the product and the customer’s needs.
• Two ways to sell: Attacking and Defending.
– Attacking: For the Aga cooker, Ogilvy developed 12 arguments to attack prospects.
• These ranged from economical arguments to arguments that appealed to cooks only.
• If you can’t attack the prospect with arguments about your product, don’t expect to make the sell.
• If you don’t believe your prospect actually needs the product you are selling, don’t sell it to them. No sale is better than a bad sale.
• Defending: Preparation is everything.
– The ideal aim is to make your attack so thorough that the enemy is incapable of counterattack.
• This will rarely happen.
• Be prepared that your prospect will have a brain.
• Be prepared for any and all objections to your product.
• If you don’t know your product better than anyone, don’t expect to make many sales.
• Defending Against Competitors
– On no account sling mud against your competitors.
• It will carry little weight coming from you, and it will make the prospect distrust your integrity and dislike you.
• The best way to tackle the problem is to find out all you possibly can about the merits, faults and sales arguments of competitors, and then keep quiet about them.
• Your knowledge of your competitors will help you make a more convincing case for your product.
• Defending Against Price
– This is the supreme test of your salesmanship.
• Your voice, your manner, your expression, even your smell, must be controlled and directed to soften the blow.
• Be specific about the price.
• Be factual about the price.
• Be definite about the price.
• Don’t give your personal opinion about what is or is not expensive.
3) Have representation: Here comes the shameless plug
A good broker is worth every penny that your current or future landlord will pay him or her
A good broker:
· Knows the market
· Knows the rates
· Knows the spaces
· Knows the other brokers
· Knows the owners, landlords, and property managers
· Knows what a good deal looks like given the current market conditions
· Takes a complicated process and makes it look relatively easy
· Always negotiates with your best interest in mind
· Saves you time
· Saves you money
· Reads all of the documents word-for-word (you would be amazed at what is overlooked because people simply don’t read the documents. As my sales manager always tells me, “If you want to be an expert, simply read the document”)
I am an MBA. I am also a real estate salesman.
During my two-year stint at business school, I learned very little about the art and science of salesmanship. This past weekend I went to West Meade Wine & Liquor Mart to pick up a bottle of wine for dinner with some friends. I spent about twenty minutes in the store and left with much more than a bottle of wine—I left with an education in salesmanship that I will take with me the rest of my business life. Twenty minutes with an oenophile taught me more about selling than two years at an elite business school. Here are five lessons I learned while buying a bottle of wine that will make me a much more effective middleman.
1) Don’t be a salesman—be an expert: The salesman I dealt with was more than a salesman. He was an expert. During the twenty minutes I was in the store, I never once felt like I was being sold to. I felt like I was taking a Wine 101 course. I learned why it is important to know about ruffino soil when considering a Chianti. I learned about specific vineyards and even learned some of the stories behind the families that produce some of the finest wine in the world. By establishing himself as an educator and an expert, the salesman won my confidence and earned my trust.
2) Questions, questions, and more questions: Throughout our conversation the salesman was asking questions. He was not trying to steer me towards a particular bottle of wine, rather, he was trying to discern my preferences and tastes. He asked ab0ut my favorite wines. He asked how long I had been drinking wine. He asked if I could distinguish between the different flavors in a wine and which flavors I preferred. He asked what I was having for dinner that night. Though I didn’t know it, he was making the sales process very simple by asking me the questions he needed to know in order to sell me the bottle of wine I never knew I already loved.
3) Nice is nice: I know a lot of experts I would never buy from because I simply don’t like them. The salesman at West Meade Wine & Liquor Mart was genuinely a nice guy. People don’t just buy from experts—they buy from experts that they would like to drink a bottle of wine with.
4) Give options, but know the decision: After learning exactly what I was looking for, the salesman presented me with five bottles of wine to choose from. He then talked me through each of them and systematically eliminated all but one. He made me feel like I had several choices, but he knew exactly what bottle of wine I was going to buy.
5) Price is always relative: Of the two bottles of wine that remained after three were eliminated, one was quite a bit more expensive than the other. My expectation was that the salesman would try to convince me that the more expensive bottle was worth the extra price, but he did just the opposite. He candidly told me that the more expensive bottle was indeed a very nice bottle, but it was not worth the extra money. I walked out of the store feeling like I got a good deal.
Whether you are selling real estate or running a publicly traded corporation, these lessons will help you become a better middleman. And to steal a quote from the movie Layer Cake, “the art of good business is being a good middleman.”
