RISMEDIA, July 25, 2007–Industry veteran, speaker and author Jim Remley earned his real estate license at the tender age of 19. Within two years he had proven himself a young superstar, listing over 150 properties in 24 months and ranking in the top 1% of Realtors nationwide. He continued his charge by opening his own company at age 23, and now Jim’s “All State Real Estate” is one of the largest independent real estate firms in Southern Oregon; 16 branches strong and growing. With experience like that, you can bet Jim’s encountered every objection a client can dream up.
After coming up against the same objections time and time again, Jim soon realized that he needed a strong response for every single objection that came his way, one that he would believe himself if he were the client. So Jim set about developing the ultimate list of powerful counters to the most common industry objections, and now, years later, he’s done just that. In fact, he devotes an entire chapter to mastering objections in his new book Real Estate Presentations That Make Millions, by providing scripted responses to “Ten of the Most Common Seller Objections Agents Face.”
But it wasn’t always that way. Jim recalls, “When I was a young agent out there selling houses, I was like everybody else; I wanted that ‘yes’ in a client meeting. So I’d go through my presentation, carefully explain everything in the book my trainers had told me to prepare, and I’d get to the end and then I would pose a question to the client. I’d say ‘Based on what I’ve talked to you about today, does it sound like you want to work with me?’” Jim pauses for a moment and then laughs, “And about half the time they’d say no!”
Encountering the “no” oftentimes more frequently than the “yes,” Jim knew he had to re-evaluate his approach. What was it that he was missing? What did he fail to explain?
“The danger for us as agents is that as we’re going through our presentation, and I’ve had this happen many times, you’ll see the clients’ eyes sort of gloss over because they’ve stopped listening. And that’s not what you want to have happen. You want the client engaged, listening, you want them to have that internal debate and be struggling with the decision, because it’s a big decision. The way you know if they’re struggling, or rather trying to work their way through it, is that they ask a lot of questions; they’re going to have concerns; they’re going to have objections. Those are great things to have–we want those. As real estate agents we tend to run from objections, when really we should be running towards them.”
Jim contends that objections are really just the clients’ way of getting to the “yes,” and that it’s an agent’s job to pave the way for the client to get there by answering each objection in a straight-forward, knowledgeable manner. Ironically an agent enables a client to do that by encouraging the client to say no. Jim explains, “My partner and mentor Dick Calafato taught me a very powerful way of approaching client questions. Dick said when you hear a client saying “no” what they’re really saying is, “I don’t K-N-O-W enough to say yes.” Just this subtle shift in perception can enable an agent to shift his or her thinking and approach the objection in an entirely new way. By being confident in their answer, a good agent enables the client to move past their questions and concerns, to feel comfortable and confident with their decision, and in so doing, to get to that elusive “Yes.”
Hear Remley identify and answer some of the most common seller objections in this week’s RISMedia/iSucceed Business Development and Training Call, Objection Master: How to Turn A Potential Deal-Killer into A Deal-Sealer Hosted by iSucceed’s own Kelly Kelley, the interview will be available for one week only at www.isucceed.com/rismedia.
Every Wednesday the RISMedia/iSucceed Business Development and Training Call presents profitable real estate strategies and introduces agents across the country to the full 30-minute iSucceed Weekly Counseling Call, available only at www.iSucceed.com – the most comprehensive online provider of real estate tips, tools, secrets and success strategies, directly from North America’s 175 most successful real estate professionals.
