I often suggest to salespeople that they get away from what I call the “Hat Syndrome”. This occurs when I see myself with a “Sales Hat” on my head, and I see my prospect wearing their own “Buyer’s Hat”. As soon as my perspective is about our roles, it diminishes my ability to see this relationship as between two people. I launch into my sales role, and I expect my prospect to act like a typical customer.

The entire notion speaks to the concept of an adversarial relationship, which we know of course is counter-productive to our purpose. Instead, I rather like the idea that I can come alongside my prospect with a partnership mentality. I can see myself as the “Assistant Buyer.”

This mindset relies upon the concept of having a shared sense of purpose. The customer has a goal – a dream – and I am committed to making that dream come true. When I see myself as an Assistant Buyer it changes my behavior. I concentrate more on thinking how they think. I anticipate their needs. I get them more involved in the emotional side of the experience.

When I see myself as an Assistant Buyer….I change their world!

I have a brutal stretch of travel coming up. That’s not a complaint; I feel entirely blessed to have a full calendar and a host of incredible clients! But I do know that I need to rigorously manage my project list or I’ll quickly find things are slipping through the cracks.

Recently I made a master list of everything that is coming up for the next quarter and I assigned dates to all the sub-tasks. To tell you the truth, it was a grueling and painful exercise, but it forced me to come to grips with the realities of my schedule.

What I did not expect was an interesting and powerful side benefit. The due dates are lined up from here to the end of October; I can see that. But with everything lined up neatly I can also see the opportunities to get out front of some of the actions. And that is exactly what is happening. I am proactively racing ahead of due dates…and it feels great!!!

All this to say that I am re-learning a lesson you would think I would have learned by now: being ahead on stuff feels great; being behind stinks!

Want a quick feel-good opportunity? Line up your to do list and assign dates. Don’t be aggressive – feel free to string it out. But then get to work and get ahead. You’ll feel more productive, more successful, and more in control of your own schedule.

It’s all about protecting our mental well-being. When my mind is right I am in a much better position to change someone’s world!

I’d like to hear your thoughts on something. Many new home salespeople feel that they could sell anything. Is that you?

If you couldn’t sell homes and you wanted another sales job, what product or service would you want to sell? Forget qualifications, geography, lifestyle, or any other hindrance. Just jot down your preference in the box below.

If you couldn’t sell homes, what would you want to sell?

Chime in, folks!

As I get older I deal more and more with a question that I find very valuable: How do I continually move from success to significance? This might be one of the most important introspective questions I can ask. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I consider myself to be successful. Business is healthy for me, I have an incredible wife and three great kids, a wonderful church, fantastic friends… all the things we hope for when we say we want to be successful.

So now what? How do I continually move from success to significance? I have only so many years on this planet and I want to make an impact in the people around me. I want to be significant in people’s lives.

And that’s where you come in. When you think about it, I just defined your very calling. Selling homes is not about contracts and sales technique. It’s not even about the home, really. It’s about making a difference in people’s lives.

This Independence Day, stop and think about that wonderful phrase “The American Dream”. Owning a home is a vital part of that dream, and you are blessed each day to make those dreams come true for people.

Talk about changing someone’s world! How cool is that!

As an expert in the area of sales and sales management, I admit that I see the world through a sales lens (forgive me – occupational hazard). But so much of what makes for an excellent sales process also makes for great interpersonal relationships. After all, effective selling depends upon strong connection skills.

That being the case, the one piece of advice I have offered to salespeople more than anything else over the years has its origin not in sales but in the study of interpersonal communication. The advice is given by Stephen Covey in his classic book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey suggests: “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

This principle is at the core of effective sales, and it is paramount to healthy relationships. Covey points out that, “most people don’t listen with the intent to understand – they listen with the intent to respond.” So true.

The direct application of this concept (both in sales and in life) revolves around a critical life skill: childlike curiosity. Most people are just not curious enough about the lives of those around them. I know I’m guilty. I tend to get self-absorbed with my own problems, concerns, goals and dreams. This precludes me from becoming deeply interested in the person I am talking to. This is a shame, because everyone has a story tell and everyone has something to contribute.

The issue really comes down to one critical skill, both in the sales arena and in our work relationships: the ability to ask good questions. Curiosity demands questions; just ask any 4-year-old. Curious people are more about being interested in others than about being interested to others.

Let me offer a direct application here. One curiosity question that is most definitely worth developing is the phrase: “Tell me more about that.” This simple request encourages people to go deeper. It gives them permission to open up. And it is the basis of a deeper understanding. “Tell me more about that.” “Can I ask you to go a little deeper there?” “Talk to me. I want to know more.” Find a way to encourage the other person to share on a deeper level.

This communication tactic works because the really important points that lead us to understanding are not typically found at the top level of a conversation. Even though we might ask the direct question, “How are you?” when we see someone, the response is typically shallow, and in many cases inaccurate. The follow-up questions – the “go deeper” questions – challenges the other person to share what’s really going on.

You can take the two most disparate people on the planet and put them in the same room. As long as one of the two is about understanding more than about being understood, they will find common ground somewhere.

In your day-to-day relationships, start practicing the principles of understanding and childlike curiosity. Take an interest in other people, and you’ll change their world!

I love this quote from Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code.

“If you don’t feel that frustration, that failing and fixing sensation, you’re not stressing your skill circuits.”

Huh? What’d he say? Let me break it down.

The “skill circuits” refer to the mental muscles where your skills reside. As you develop a skill you are actually making the mental muscle stronger. But as in any other type of training, this means we are first stressing the muscles in order to make them stronger.

This mental stressing can lead to frustration, but it is a very healthy and necessary frustration. It is the type of frustration that occurs when we work our muscles (in this case our mental muscles) to the point of failure.

I can do about 60 push-ups before I reach the point of failure. Those last ten or so are brutal. I’m straining with everything I have to pump those out. When I’m finished I tend to collapse. I have to; I don’t have the arm strength to push myself up so I go down. This is a picture of pushing to failure, but in that failure comes strength training. That is, the failure today makes me stronger tomorrow.

I wonder if we are often self-limiting because we simply choose to avoid even the potential for failure (and the subsequent frustration). Perhaps we’ve got that wrong. Perhaps the key is not to avoid failure, but rather to fail successfully.

What would successful failure look like in your world? Think on that for a while, and consider some of the ways that you can push yourself to the point of frustration in order to get to a healthier fix.

Change your own world, my friends. Change your own world.

Starbucks charges more than twice what you’ll spend for coffee at other stores. It’s a fact that has got to drive the leadership at Dunkin’ Donuts and 7-Eleven up the wall. I mean, come on – is the coffee really that much better?

Of course, Starbucks is not charging twice as much for coffee, are they? No – they’re charging for the experience, the brand, the feel, the vibe. They throw in the coffee at no extra cost.

The “experience premium” is evident in businesses all over the world. There is an argument to be made that Six Flags has far better roller coasters than Disneyland, or that the beds in a Westin Hotel are better than those in a Ritz-Carlton.

Now consider your own sales office experience. Is it really that different from the sales office down the street? Will the customers notice a significant change in the environment when they meet you? What can you bring to the table that would justify a premium?

Understand this principle, as espoused by Dan Ariely in his excellent book Predictable Irrationality. The author points out that we cannot assess and evaluate without a context, without a comparison of some form. We evaluate a home against other homes we have seen. And we evaluate people against other people we meet.

Your service and customer care is ever being compared to people around you, whether you like it or not. This is good news. It means opportunity to stand out and really make a difference if you are willing to go out of your way to stand out.

How much value do you, personally, bring to your community offering? How can you enhance the customer’s experience with your positive energy?

This is how we change people’s world each and every day.

Anecdotally, it would appear that May was something less than a banner sales month for most homebuilders in the country. The expiration of the federal tax credit seems to have taken some wind out of the “sales sails”, especially in the early weeks of May. Many builders and salespeople are left scratching their heads over what to do now. The most pessimistic are wondering how to recover in this post-tax credit environment.

They might be missing something. Check the traffic numbers, folks. While the sales pace may be off, the traffic numbers have not really declined. That makes no sense whatsoever. If the tax credit was why people were buying, and the tax credit is now gone, shouldn’t the prospects be staying put at this point? Why are they still visiting the sales offices around the country?

Moreover, in my direct conversations with sales professionals it is clear that prospects have little interest in bringing up the topic. That is, the tax credit is yesterday’s news!

It is time, my friends, to forget that the tax credit ever existed and look instead at the realities of buying a home in 2010. Here’s a fact: the present buying opportunity is nothing short of phenomenal!

How strong is your “Why Buy Now?” argument? And I don’t just mean in its content, because it’s not about simply getting your facts right. I am more concerned about the delivery, about the passion and energy that goes into an urgency discussion. As a sales professional you must communicate that argument with energy and enthusiasm. The prospect must be left to believe that they are the smartest person in the world for buying when all the conditions are so favorable.

Are you prepared with this? Do you have work to do? Get this right and you might just change someone’s world!

Excerpt from Tough Market New Home Sales by Jeff Shore

In a strong market, the sales process is almost surreal. The conversation is heavily lop-sided; the salesperson does the talking and makes the decisions while the customer just goes with the flow. Sales counselors can seemingly do no wrong. They are in a zone, and they are in control. In fact, when a market is white-hot, customers might purchase homes that do not truly meet their needs just so they do not get left behind. In these cases, sales counselors can sell a home to a customer without really understanding that customer’s needs, wants, and desires.

In tough markets, salespeople have a new demand placed on them – they must truly and deeply understand their individual customers. In this more challenging environment, sales professionals cannot get away with making assumptions; they must really get to know and understand the prospect, and they must do so quickly. In a tough market, customers have less patience; their fears affect many aspects of the sale, including their own attention spans.

Most salespeople simply do not question in a strategic way. They have not sat down and planned the questions that they intend to ask during the sales presentation. If they did, the same questions wouldn’t come up in every sales conversation. These “same” questions tend to be checklist-type questions that cover bedroom count, price range, qualification ability, and so on. The answers to these questions are important to know, but if salespeople stop here, they are ill-equipped to advance the sale because they do not have a deep understanding of their prospects.

The problem with this kind of “just-the-facts” approach is that these questions don’t yield particularly productive answers. They are typically close-ended questions that generate one-word responses. If a salesperson asks ten close-ended questions about bedrooms, price range, etc, he or she is only going to receive ten isolated pieces of information. However, the salesperson that asks questions that are strategic and open-ended might find that the answers yield a much deeper understanding of the customer.

For example, a sales counselor might ask, “How many bedrooms are you looking for?” This is important information to ascertain, but the question is closed and brings about a one-word answer: “Four.” However, if the question is posed as, “Tell me what’s most important to you in a new home. I want to be able to point you in the right direction,” the answer will be something like this: “We’re looking for a one-story because I have a bum knee. We need at least three bedrooms but preferably four, so I can have a home office. We’d love to have a big kitchen that opens to a family room. And a three-car garage would be wonderful if we can get it.”

Note that the open-ended question elicited seven significant pieces of information. That’s the beauty of it. We learn so much more when we do not limit the prospect to a one-word response.

What does all this have to do with selling in a tough market? Plenty. As sales counselors, we need every advantage we can get in order to stand out and not be eliminated from contention. When we know our customers at a deeper level than our competitors do, we will discover why our homes and our location meet their very specific needs while the competitor does not. Then, if we get caught in an incentive battle with a different community, we have the upper hand. If customers take the competitor’s incentive, they also have to take the competitor’s inferior offering!

Right now, this moment, you have an uncomfortable task on your to do list. It’s a phone call you don’t want to make, or an unpleasant task that needs to be completed. Stop right now and ask yourself these two questions:

1)    What is the worst possible outcome of doing this right now?

2)    How will I feel when this is behind me?

The chances are that the “worst possible outcome” is really not that bad. No one is going to take a swing at you. You’re not going to endure undo torment. The worst case is typically not that bad.

When it comes to question two, this should be a great motivator. Think of how great you’ll feel to knock that task out right away. Good news: you’re only a couple of minutes away from actually feeling that.

Do it! Right now! This minute! Tackle the tough stuff first and see how much better you feel.