What do you really know about selling? If you aren't closing deals, here's a perspective that may help you sell more houses.

Recently, I was talking to a broker who told me he did his own training. What would you think of this topical outline?

He said he taught his new agents:

• How to write a purchaser agreement.
• How to qualify a buyer
• How to prospect for listings
• How to write a listing agreement.
• What to do with escrow checks
• How to use the MLS to develop a CMA
• How to hold an open house
• How to farm a neighborhood
• How to use the telephone
• What office procedures were
• And a “few tricks of the trade.”

New agents coming into this broker’s office would probably be very impressed! But the truth is there are agents leaving the business everyday who have been taught the same thing, over and over and over.

Then I asked the broker a question that slowed him down - “What do you teach them about selling?” He said he teaches them by example.

He wasn’t teaching them how to sell; he was teaching them how to accomplish tasks. Tasks have to be learned, but what's the point if the agent isn't selling anything? Agents need to learn to sell if they are to succeed in real estate, and against tremendous odds. The greatest odds are directly proportionate to their financial capability get through their first six months.

Frankly, and excuse me if I get on a soapbox here, I think our industry should be ashamed of itself for the way we encourage agents to come into the business based on false expectations, then leave them alone to sink or swim.

When a new agent is asked what their first year goals are and they say, “I’ve got to make at least $50,000, what are they told? They are commended and told how possible it is with “hard work”.

I beg to differ with that idea. It is not a matter of working harder. It is a matter of being trained for the task. I can practice my golf swing until my hands bleed, but if I am not practicing the correct swing the correct way, I am only going to get worse and more frustrated. No matter how good I look, the car I drive, whether I have a laptop computer or know how to keep all the rules, I will only get worse.

Learning to do the tasks is important. But if the agent does not know one simple sales principle they simply will not make it in sales of any kind and it is this:

Agents must learn how to reduce sales resistance to themselves and their service to zero percent before attempting to generate sales acceptance to 100 percent and they must know where they are in that process.

This has to do with building rapport, trust, understanding needs, selling services in terms of benefits, and giving a reason for the buyer to buy now, or the seller to list now.

I learned to sell in high school when I began selling shoes part-time in my junior year. People who needed shoes came to me. Unlike you (agents), I didn’t have to prospect.

My manager, Mr. McKee, took me in the backroom of the store my first day and looking down at me through his glasses on the edge of his nose said to me “Son, I want to teach you something about selling, and I don’t want you to ever forget it."

Do you think he lectured me on hard work? Did he begin showing me the inventory and how to up-sell with socks and shoe polish? Did he show me how to run the cash register and track my sales? No.

Here's what he told me:

“Get their money.”

“You are not here to show shoes. You are here to sell shoes, and there is a big difference. Do you understand me?” Then he told me how to do that. If the customer decided they wanted to “look around” I was to call him over immediately. After he saw that I would do that, he started teaching me the tasks.

It’s a lesson I never forgot.

To a broker, I would ask this question: “How much do you have budgeted for sales training?” Real sales training? If your answer is zero, and you do not explain to new recruits up front that you expect them to get and pay for sales training, can you really expect them to sell?

Too many times, brokers are so blinded by the need and challenge to recruit, they forget that a greatly improved retention ratio would greatly improve their vision.

To agents, I would make these recommendations:

Published: September 3, 2003

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David Fletcher has been a Florida licensed real estate broker and new homes sales and marketing consultant for 30 years. Along the way, he has sold more than $3 billion in new homes and condominium products for developers and builder/developers. He has been broker of record for 16 rental conversions and marketing consultant in 29 lender workouts for major communities and condominium projects, a featured speaker at the National Association of Realtors, and chaired the Florida Home Builder Association's Sales and Marketing Council. In 2008 he was named a 'Lifetime Achiever' by Keller Williams Realty's International Division. You may contact him at or call him at 407.234.2349.