Dr. Dmitry Kireev. 13 most critical bargain killing mistakes of real estate agents

Work of the real estate agent is connected with everyday dialogue with potential and valid clients, therefore his profit directly depends on skills of communication and management of communication.
Despite of rather wide range of the books describing laws of the communications, methods of influence on the opponent and sales technics, many agents make typical mistakes in communication with the client. These mistakes lead to loss of constant clients, absence of new ones, to falling of profit of the owner of business and agent's depression.
The purpose of this article is to describe some of such mistakes and help some readers to look in a new way at the process of communication with the client.

So, let's begin.

Mistake №1. An absence of precisely formulated purpose of a meeting.
If you do not know, where you are going, you will not come to the right place for you. Frequently during the communication with the customer agents spend a lot of time, forces and words, with no result. This can be connected with the wrong formulation of the purpose of a meeting.
when I say "the correct formulation" I mean an unequivocal and clear representation by the agent of a final result of negotiations which would arrange him. In an ideal meeting there  should be three such results : best of probable, minimally admissible and average which it is usually realized. I will describe the statement of the purposes at greater length in one of following articles.
And now analyse how precisely you imagine a desirable outcome of a meeting before its beginning.

Mistake №2. A sad kind.
Any sale, excepting the sale of a coffin to grieving relatives, should not occur with a sour mine. Nobody wishes to buy from sufferers and longing philosophers.
If the client would like to have a little cry over a sight at you, a maximum, that you will sell him is a handkerchief. If you read this article, I suspect, that sale of handkerchiefs is not in your field of interests.
Force the client to become sad, give him a role model and you will not see him again. And his friends too.
Often this mistake is connected with any unpleasant events in your private life which spoil to you mood. Showing the despondency to the client, you strongly reduce the chances to close the transaction.

Mistake №3. An absence of preparation for a meeting.
If the client in advance has made an appointment with you, and you have not the full information on offered variants, chances to close the transaction fall promptly. The fact that you do not appreciate your and your client's time and you can't answer simple questions, hardly will not serve as a reason to work with you.
Thus the impression of your incompetence will amplify after some time. And in three hours the client will remember you not as an agent who has forgotten some unimportant details but as a person who did not know  what he was speaking about at all. Think about the rest of following.

Mistake №4. Uncertainty in utility of your offer for the client.
Try to sell a snow to penguins. Or sand to Tuaregs. Do not wish even to try? And why?
If you are not assured that your offer is the necessary thing for the client, he will feel it and will leave to other agent. Attempts in style of « I understand that you don't need it, but, maybe, you will buy it anyway» are doomed to a failure.

Mistake №5. An absence of the offer precise and clear for the client .
If the client does not absolutely understand, what you offer him, and  you are too lazy to waste time on preparation of the offer accessible to understanding of the pupil of an elementary school, I suggest you to look for the luck in another business. You will not earn your million here.
The educational level of your clients can be not high enough to allow them to operate with terms of theoretical economy which you have got at the university. And the language of hints is not understandable for all.
Very few people will want to purchase from you the thing that is not clearly for them. Even if you know, that your offer is a limit of his dreams twice cheaper than he counted.

Mistake №6. An absence or lack of the information on the client's needs.
Tell the client all about all offers you have, let him choose which one is the best for him. Or offer him the variant you wish to get rid first of all. Or simply that you would like to offer for any reason at present. What is the difference, what is necessary for him?
And feel surprised by the low rate of closing of transactions, despite of persuasiveness of your presentations and your eloquence. The client doesn't need to hear the four-hour story about things that do not suit him.
Following kinds of mistakes are not always so obvious and demand some special necessary for development skills from the agent. If you are not going to leave your business this year and you plan to develop and increase your efficiency of working with clients, I recommend you to spare some time to acquaintance with the Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), even superficial.
It is a lot of interesting and useful information about the NLP on the website of the Namibian NLP Center http: // www.nlpnamibia.com.

Mistake №7. An absence of matching.
If you are not arranged under a pose, rate and loudness of speech of the client, if you speak with words of other representative system you have not enough chances to establish an atmosphere of unconscious trust which sells much better than logic reasons.
And you can spend a lot of time and tons of eloquence, but the transaction will not be closed only because the client does not feel himself comfortably at an unconscious level.

Mistake №8. An absence of attentive observation.
An attentive observation or calibration (a term of NLP) allows you to notice the client's reactions to your behaviour and words. If you do not trace the reactions, you can come very far in an incorrect direction during a meeting. So far, that the client will have time to combine the opinion about you and your firm, that will kill not only this bargain but also your reputation. And he will share this opinion with everyone who will want to listen.
An attentive observation over reactions allows you to notice quickly if something does not go the right way, and the course of your negotiations causes the client to feel the emotions you don't need. And the earlier you will notice it, the more time you will have to correct a situation.

Mistake №9. An internal focus of attention.
Making the presentation for the client, the agent often forgets, whom the presentation is intended  for. It leads the client to expect patiently or not really for the ending of presentation only to say goodbye and never come again.
Especially often it happens to beginners and usually accompanies the previous mistake and results from it.

Mistake  №10. A "forehead-to-forehead" pose.
During the evolution process the human being has studied to control many instincts, but an observation over animals frequently can give a lot of new in understanding the nature of human communication.
Animals place their bodies frontally to each other when they are ready for the fight. And your client, a human being with all his thousand-year history of development, will subconsciously be going to repulse you if you sit frontally to him. And thus if you look in his eyes, having a head inclined forward, don't be surprised, if your client will bite you. Just as a preventive measure.

Mistake №11. A negatively painted words and themes using.
Tell the client a story about an accident, catastrophe or bankruptcy during a pause in negotiations. Add some heart-breaking details. Be surprised, why he suddenly remembers about some urgent things to do, and he cannot continue a meeting.
The emotional background of conversation strongly depends on discussed themes. Observe those from people you know who usually speaks about the negative events happening in his or someone's life. In what side does your mood change after a meeting with such people?

Mistake №12. A disregard of the personal space of the client.
The personal space is a zone around each of us, intrusion in which is subconsciously regarded as an aggression. This zone is different for everybody, but for most people it is extended forward (30-40 cm) and back (1,2-2,5 m). Sideways this zone is usually located close to a body (10-15 cm).
If you like to touch the opponent during the communication process, your gesture of arrangement can be interpreted incorrectly, and you can lose the contact and the client. 
The moving of subjects on a table can bring the same consequences. Be ready, only having moved a phone or an ashtray in a direction of the client, that you will feel cooling-down of an atmosphere of your conversation. And in the further you will need to apply considerable efforts to return a comfortable condition to the client.

Mistake №13. An absence of verbal matching.
Communicating with the client many agents, especially beginners, forget that negotiations are the joint actions directed on the search of the decision, satisfying both sides. And it is necessary to create at least a visibility of the fact that you think like your client and share his sights to make the client subconsciously believe you .
If you, carrying on a secular conversation in pauses between blocks of your presentation, will uphold the point of view on everything which will be opposite to the opinion already combined by the client, and especially if you will defend and prove it, you will lose the contact.
It does not mean, that it is necessary for you to agree with all that your client says. Simply remember, that dispute on any theme which is not even concerning to your bargain, can kill the sale. Especially the dispute  won by you.
To reassure superstitious readers, I shall add the small bonus more pertinent to female-agents.

Mistake №14. An appearance much better, than the client has.
Your appearance should speak that everything is allright in your business and private life. Speak, don’t shout. It is difficult enough to look at yourself impartially, but you should make it to avoid finishing of the transaction with a failure only because the client tries to calculate provisional weight of jewelery on your body instead of listening to details of your carefully prepared presentation.
It is far from all the mistakes made by the agents during the communication with clients but, having avoided these 14 ones, you can increase an amount of happy clients, improve your chances to close the bargain even if not all of your conditions satisfy the inquiries of the client, and leave only pleasant reminiscences about you even if the bargain was not closed.
Guess whom the client will return to next time? And whom will he recommend to the friends?

On all the questions mentioned in this article, and also on any of the enquiries connected with techniques of negotiating and sales, or with the interpersonal communications, you can recieve consultation, having sent me an e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and having addressed to the form of a feedback on a site www.nlpnamibia.com or having sent me a letter to the address of: P.O. Box 86065 Eros, Windhoek.
Good luck!
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