New Year's Resolution? How about better selling?

The Modern Estate Agent blog is back in action today, following the Christmas break. Happy New Year to you all!

To kick off 2010, I'm excited to introduce our first guest blogger, Kim Tasso. Kim is the founder of Practical Marketing Consultancy and has more than 20 years of experience in advising small and medium sized firms on business development. She is also a respected journalist and author.

"It's that time again, when we make out a list of good intentions that we aspire to keep as the New Year breaks. It's helpful to remember that if we keep on doing the same thing, then we will achieve pretty much what we have always done. So time to do something different perhaps?

Estate agents and selling are almost synonymous. But perhaps sometimes for all the wrong reasons – and one of them is bad selling! When the pressure is on to achieve targets and keep up in a flagging market – or even to take advantage when the market starts to lift – it is easy to revert to old, inward focused sales techniques that have served us well in the past.

So perhaps your New Year's Resolution might be to learn about some new and more strategic approaches to selling? Don't dismiss this aim as trying to teach an old dog new tricks – we can all benefit from an injection of new ideas.

So here are some thoughts on some recent books that you might add to your list to improve your sales performance in 2010:

Smarter selling – Next generation sales strategies to meet your buyer's needs – every time (Keith Dugdale and David Lambert)

Don't be put off just because this was on the best seller list – the principles do apply to professional services. There's a lot of stuff that is grounded in psychology, NLP and basics on non verbal communication. The methodology is SHAPE - Surface Hunt Adjust Paint Engage.

Hope is not a strategy – The 6 ways to winning the complex sale (Rick Page)

The emphasis is on competitive positioning, politics, power and team selling situations. The methodology is RADAR – standing for Reading Accounts and Deploying Appropriate Resources) and the six keys are 1. Link solutions to pain (or gain) 2. Qualify the prospect 3. Build a competitive preference 4. Determine the decision making process 5. Sell to power and 6. Communicate the strategic plan

And then there are a couple of old favourites that have really stood the test of time:

The new strategic selling - the unique sales system proven successful by the world's best companies (Stephen E Heiman, Diane Sanchez)

Strategic Selling is a leading sales framework focusing on the decision making unit. Although the “blue sheet” approach was found to be a little cumbersome by many professional firms the ideas on the sales funnel, buying influences, mode and dumb bells are good.

SPIN-selling (Neil Rackman)

Neil Rackman, a research psychologist at Huthwaite Research, analysed more than 35,000 sales calls over a period of 12 years. The focus of the research was the use of open and closed questions in complex sales situations. The result was the SPIN TM approach which provides a consultative and diagnostic approach to complex selling situations. SPIN TM describes the types and order of questions (Situation, Problem, Implication and Need payoff) to be asked during the investigating stage to convert implied needs into explicit needs.

Creating New Clients (Kevin Walker, Cliff Ferguson, Paul Denvir)

Whilst Cliff remains a friend, he is no longer with the Pace partnership but the work on the pipeline model – Prospecting, Promoting, Projecting, Protecting and Pruning – was a great foundation for sales in many professional firms.

Of course, there are also the chapters on selling and account management in my 2009 book published by EG Books “Growing your property partnership – Plans, Promotion and People”.

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous New Year! 2010 has got to be better than 2009!"

Kim Tasso
http://www.kimtasso.com/

If you're planning for the year ahead, my post from December last year might be of interest: Achieving your estate agency goals in 2010