If you’ve been in the real estate business for more than 10 months or so, chances are you’ve heard the classic excuse from potential clients: “After the holidays…”
Sure, you can say “ok” and put them on your calendar to call back in January, but there’s another strategy, a strategy which can help make your holidays much happier.
In this first video in our objection-handling role play series, real estate coach Dan Smith and top producer Pablo Rener show you how to convince someone that the holiday season IS the best time to sell a home.
So the one we’re going to start with first is, we’re going to start one that you get a lot in the fourth quarter of every year. The fourth quarter of every year, maybe even the fourth quarter plus September, you start to get, you start to get what I call the “we want to wait until after the holidays” “we want to wait until springtime” objection. And you’re going to get it a lot. And the closer you get to the end of the year, the more you start to get it. So that’s going to be the objection that you give me when I give you a call. We’re going to pretend that I’m calling you on the phone and prospecting, and that’s going to be the objection you give me, ok?
PR: Perfect.
DS: Perfect. Here we go. So, ring ring.
PR: Hello.
DS: Hi, my name is Dan Smith, calling with ABC Real Estate, and I was just giving you a call to ask: if you could get your price, would you sell?
PR: Eh. Well, you know, we’re thinking about it.
DS: You’re thinking about it?
PR: Yeah.
DS: Fantastic! So, where exactly do you think you’d go, anyway?
PR: Uh, we’re, right now it looks like Arizona.
DS: Arizona! That’s exciting. Ok, so why the heck Arizona anyway?
PR: Retired, we’ve got family there, so we’ve been talking about this for a while.
DS: Just moving closer to be with some family cuz you’re not being held down here anymore? Ok.
PR: Yeah.
DS: That’s good. So, I got a question for you, what’s your timeframe? If it was up to you, in a perfect world, when would you be down there?
PR: We’re going to wait until after the holidays, probably something in the spring of next year.
DS: After the holidays, some time in the spring…
PR: Yeah.
DS: …of next year, ok. So you’re talking maybe 5 or 6 months out.
PR: Yeah, absolutely.
DS: Ok, now, it kind of makes me ask myself: What’s stopping you, since you’re retired and all, what’s stopping you from doing it now?
PR: Yeah, we thought, you know, houses don’t sell during the holiday, that maybe in the spring we’d have a better chance of selling it.
DS: Ok, so it’s a slow real estate market is what you’ve heard during the holiday season?
PR: Correct.
DS: So you’d like to wait until that was all past. It wasn’t slow anymore. And then sell it when it was busy, right?
PR: Absolutely, yes.
DS: Fantastic, and that’s what a lot of you guys and girls are going to get, by the way. So, here we go. I have a question for you.
PR: Ok.
DS: Now I know you’ve heard that it’s slow in the holidays and busy in spring, but what if I told you that you actually got more money in the holiday season and less money in the spring, what would you think about that?
PR: I hadn’t heard that one.
DS: Yeah, right? It kind of sounds like contrarian to what we’d normally think.
PR: Yeah.
DS: So what if I were to ask you this question: Do you think a home shows better during the holiday season, when it’s all decorated and just like really looking good, or does it show better the other times of the year?
PR: Yeah, if you decorate a house nice, I think it would show a lot better.
DS: So, a lot better?
PR: Absolutely.
DS: And if a home is showing better, do you think it increases or decreases its chances of selling?
PR: Probably increases, I would imagine
DS: Probably increase. Ok. I have another question for you, is that ok?
PR: Yeah.
DS: Do you think there’s more buyers or less buyers holiday versus spring?
PR: Absolutely less during the holidays.
DS: Absolutely less during the holidays.
PR: Yeah.
DS: And I completely agree with you, you are right on track with that one. However, do you think the buyers who are out there are more serious during the holidays or during springtime?
PR: I figure the buyers looking during the holidays, they’re probably pretty anxious to move.
DS: Yeah, because they’re not worrying about Christmas trees or turkeys or stockings, you know, like the rest of the world. They’re actually like spending those weekends instead of doing that, they’re spending their weekends, their time out, looking at what house to buy. Maybe trying to be in before the holiday to have their first Thanksgiving or their first Christmas there, right?
PR: Yeah, probably.
DS: So would you rather work with a more motivated buyer or a less motivated buyer?
PR: No, we want to make sure we work with somebody who wants to buy the house.
DS: You want to work with somebody who’s really ready to go, correct?
PR: Absolutely.
DS: So, in the holiday season, we have a more motivated buyer
PR: Ok.
DS: Looking at a property that’s probably showing a little bit better.
PR: Yeah, I would agree.
DS: Ok. Now what about this? Do you think buying a home is a very emotional decision?
PR: Oh yeah, absolutely.
DS: Very emotional, isn’t it?
PR: Yeah.
DS: So do you think buyers tend to be more emotional or less emotional during the holidays?
PR: Oh yeah. Holiday for sure.
DS: Completely, right? So if you’re dealing with a buyer and you’re able to pull on their emotional heartstrings just a little bit more, it’s probably going to help you get the sale made a little bit easier, isn’t it?
PR: It sounds like it, yeah.
DS: And we can do that during the holiday season but we can’t really do that during the spring once it’s past as much, does that make sense?
PR: Right. Yeah.
DS: Ok. You see where I’m going with this so far?
PR: Absolutely.
DS: So far, you’ve got a couple of reasons with why the holidays can actually be a very good time to sell, but here’s the biggest one. I’ve saved the best for last.
PR: What’s that?
DS: Do house prices go up or down when there’s a lot of homes for sale?
PR: They go down.
DS: So if there’s just a little bit of homes for sale, what do prices do?
PR: They go up.
DS: They go up. And do you think there’s more houses on the market during the holidays or during the springtime?
PR: I would say springtime, cuz I know we have friends who are going to wait until spring also.
DS: A good percentage of the population decides to put their home on the market in spring, and all of a sudden you have a lot of competition, which does what to your prices?
PR: That’ll bring them down.
DS: Brings them down because of the competition that’s out there that’s competitive, right?
PR: Right.
DS: While in the holiday season, not very many people are trying to get their homes sold because they’re all sort of waiting. So you have less competition, which is going to increase your price, with a higher quality buyer who’s having their emotional heart strings tugged on, when the house is showing at its best! It’s sort of a perfect storm for you the seller, isn’t it?
PR: It sounds like it.
DS: Ok, so now I ask you what’s stopping you from getting the home sold, and it can’t be the holidays anymore, so, let me ask you this question? Which is a good time for us to at least get together and talk for just a couple of minutes, maybe sometime later this afternoon? Or would tomorrow work better?
PR: This afternoon’s fine, I’ll be home.
DS: This afternoon’s fine, good.
So there you go, guys and gals. See, what I did is I gave him not just one objection handler, I gave him a series of questions to make my point. In this case, it was four series of questions to make four separate and distinct points. Point number 1, 2, 3, 4. The inventory, right, the motivation of the buyers, when does the house show better, and the emotion of the buyers. 1, 2, 3, 4. And then, once I removed all of his objections, once it made sense, he agreed with me along the way, setting the appointment was very easy.
Now, if you go back and watch past videos and watch these seven steps to handling objections, it kind of has them bullet pointed out for you, you go back even further into the ReboReports history and you look at the Jedi Sales Pattern, and you’ll hear a lot of what I did in the Jedi Sales Pattern there as well.
So, thank you very much for tuning in. We’re going to have several of these coming up in the near future that you can continue to listen to. I want to invite you to go to my website to see any of the, to see or register or get information about any of the events I have going on in the future. That site is versatilityinsalesevents.eventbrite.com, spelled brite. I know it’s a long one, but just listen to this again, you can get there. Thank you very much for tuning in, and we will be back soon. And remember, to get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.
