Why Your Leasing People May Be Struggling

Provided as a professional courtesy by Rob Foellinger. President, MarkeTactics Consulting Group

Have you ever suspected that the sales techniques you've been taught might be just a bit old-fashioned? If so, your suspicions are absolutely correct! In fact, the apartment industry continues to use sales techniques that are at least 30 years behind the times! And, these techniques are becoming less and less effective with each passing year.

As I continue to research the latest sales approaches used in other industries, the biggest difference I find between our outdated selling model in the property management industry and the latest sales technology is that the new strategies are designed to help the prospect clearly recognize the important, yet often obscure, advantages and disadvantages of the various communities in their market.

In addition, leasing people trained in the new sales approach actively assist prospects in analyzing the benefits of each community. This requires that leasing people possess a crystal clear and accurate understanding of how these communities are positioned in their housing market. As the sales presentation continues, this vital information is imparted to the prospect at the most opportune time and in a form that the prospect can readily use in his personal decision-making process. In order for the salesperson to achieve this level of effectiveness, a strong understanding of how human beings make difficult, risky, expensive decisions is imperative.

Selling is not about memorizing closing and objection-handling techniques or fast-talking prospects into choosing your community. Rather, it is about understanding how prospects make their buying decisions and providing them with the information and guidance they need to make an informed choice.

It is important for us to understand that our prospects are comparison shopping when they look for an apartment. We need to be doing comparison selling. It is not enough for leasing people to be willing and able to talk only about their our own community, they must also be able to intelligently discuss how each of the competing communities in their market compare. Why? Because that is precisely what prospects are attempting to determine as they shop for an apartment. These days, relevant, helpful information is the key to high-performance selling.

Ironically, all of us have the natural ability to be tremendously persuasive. We have all been involved in other people’s decisions throughout our lives. We know how to be naturally persuasive, how to help other people deal with the various important concerns they may have about an issue and how to assist them in making a sound decision. The problem is, traditional feature-benefit sales training with its awkward, memorized closing and objection-handling techniques has trained this ability out of most leasing people. Using more up-to-date selling techniques will help us get back in touch with our natural persuasive abilities. We can sell effectively to even the most sophisticated and skeptical prospects by using these new skills. By mastering these newly-developed selling tactics, we will be able to differentiate our apartment communities in the minds of our prospects and lease successfully in any market environment, even with lots of look-alike competitors. This ability to skillfully differentiate and position our communities will also, in many cases, enable us to avoid being drawn into the seemingly perpetual price and concessions wars which are so prevalent in our industry.

Obviously, it is not possible to adequately describe high-performance sales techniques in a single e-mail article, though I am going to be providing a series of articles on these specific tactics to you in the days ahead. However, I would like to recommend some excellent educational resources for outside study you can use immediately to become acquainted with this wonderful new selling technology. Any of the following books will serve nicely as an introduction to today’’’’s new selling techniques:

"The Power Of Consultative Selling", Bryce Webster, Prentice-Hall, ISBN: 0136862705.
"Relationship Selling", Jim Cathcart, Perigee Books, ISBN: 0399516441.
"Stop Telling, Start Selling", Linda Richardson, McGraw-Hill, ISBN: 0070523681.
"Non-Manipulative Selling", Alessandra, Wexler and Barrera, Fireside Press, ISBN: 0671764489.
"Conceptual Selling", Miller, Heiman and Tuleja, Warner Books, ISBN: 0446389064.
"Soft Selling In A Hard World", Jerry Vass, Running Press Publishers, ISBN: 1561382981.
"Guerilla Selling", Gallagher, Wilson and Levinson, Houghton Mifflin, ISBN: 0395580390.

Today’s sales techniques are not just another repackaging of old selling techniques. Rather, they are a newly-developed, very effective approach to selling. It is likely that, in the next five years or so, virtually all apartment industry sales training will rely, at least partially, upon updated sales techniques to compete effectively. How can I make such a prediction? Because, that's exactly what has happened in other similar industries.

When you choose to begin incorporating some of these new ideas into your sales and marketing efforts, you will be among the first to do so in our industry. And, I can assure you, there are enormous competitive advantages to being first.