REALTORS: Ditch the Real Estate Sales Scripts To Increase Your Sales

Many real estate sales trainers are fond of repeating the this famous WL Bateman quote at the end of their sales presentation: “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” And yet real estate training has not evolved and kept up with changing consumer behavior. Case in point: almost every real estate trainer today, whether they are an independent trainer or coach, or work for a major real estate firm in their in-house training department, continue to preach the critical need for agents to learn sales scripts. And yet with all this focus on ‘scripts lead to success’, the median income for real estate agents continues to be stagnant and consumers still don’t respect our profession (see the Harris Poll where real estate agents rank at the bottom of prestigious occupations).

The truth is if “real estate trainers continue to train the way we always have, we will keep on getting the same mediocre results we’ve always gotten.”  The truth is that most real estate trainers and real estate brokerage training departments continue to believe in the myth that successful selling behavior and actions are as reproducible as an assembly line. As a result, they promote a set highly specific behaviors and scripts that are supposed to work for any real estate agent that is willing to “work hard” and take the time to memorize the actions and sales scripts, but often lead the consumer to feel that REALTORS Suck (not my words: click here and here).

The training practice of creating repeatable sales actions and creating sales dialogues and scripts goes back to at least  1930s. Early sales training was designed to ensure that everyone on a sales team acted, spoke, and looked the same, believing mistakenly that clients would respond identically to the same scripted presentations and scripts. Sales people were told where to sit, how long to hold eye contact, even how to hand the pen over to the customer to ensure the client signed.

These ‘success scripts’ are not based on any real research but rather on what famous sales trainers of the past taught, but just repackaged for today, based on what ‘should work’, or what worked for the individual who is selling the training. I believe they call that a crap-shoot. That is why in the eyes of the clients we are trying to do business with see these scripted sales presentations and dialogues as fake, sleazy, unethical, and manipulative. I know this first hand because when I tell people I meet I am real estate sales trainer, they blame me for these behaviors even though I do not train this way.

Even worse, these sales dialogues have slipped into popular culture. Remember the movie ‘American Beauty’ where Annette Bening is  getting ready for an open house telling herself “I Will Sell This House Today.” As a result prospects are able to identify these scripted sales techniques and then you lose all credibility. Is it any wonder that 65% of all prospects use the first agent they have an appointment with? They view real estate agents as all being the same, so there is no need to interview more than one or two.

Using sales scripts is depressing because they result in massive amounts of rejection. That is why so many sales trainers include motivation in their training is to ‘inspire’ the agents for whom the scripts don’t work. You are told you must overcome the fear of rejection. You are asked to take a leap of faith that these scripts will work. The truth is the fear of rejection is why I ditched sales scripts early in my career and saw my closing ratio sky rocket from a 10% close ratio to a 70% close ratio with those prospects that were ready, willing, and able to buy.

And finally sales scripts lead to agent abuse. I have heard real estate sales trainers – big names mind you – explain that the reason their scripts aren’t working is because agents are ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’. Real estate brokers and sales managers have picked up on this way of thinking as well. I know because I have to overcome this objection every day with brokers and sales managers that are considering my training.

So what is the alternative then to using scripted sales presentation and dialogues? To start with, throw away the “sales scripts” you have been using. About the only time a sales script works is in cold calling situations where you are playing a number game. But how many prospects respond to cold calls anymore anyway?

For almost all other sales situations, you are much better off in entering into real conversation and acting like a real person instead of some groupie of a ‘real estate guru’ who is determined to follow some script.

This requires that you become a complete real estate agent. You must know your market cold, your paperwork, and how to negotiate on behalf of your client. You must ask questions to understand your prospect’s dominant motives for buying or selling and then be able to demonstrate and validate that you are the agent that can and will help them make a smart real estate decision and not a dumb one. You must demonstrate and validate to them that because of your knowledge and expertise that you will handle their transaction while providing a superior customer experience.

At the end of the day, real estate success is about your ability to build real relationships with those people you are marketing to and those in your sphere of influence. You can’t build real relationships that are based on trust, honesty, and integrity when you are using someone else’s words and acting like someone your not.

Anyone care to argue this point with me?