We hear all the time about different techniques for closing people in sales situations, and other approaches that are designed for us as salespeople to gain more business with our clients and prospects, too. While some of these approaches can be helpful at times, there's simply no substitute for what I consider to be the most sophisticated sales technique in the world: Rapport.

Building great rapport with your clients and prospects, and having them feel you're totally committed to fulfilling their needs, wants, and desires

But this isn't how a lot of salespeople are operating out there in their own businesses right now, is it?

Oftentimes people get into sales because they see it as a way to make a lot of money. But they then somehow get into the routine of being forceful in their sales approaches, trying to move the client in the direction that's best for the salesperson.

The real joke of the matter is that these salespeople often don't get that their clients sense and know exactly what they're up to. Somehow these salespeople feel that they're not telegraphing what they're doing in any way that can be detected by the client or prospect they're working with.

With this in mind, just once I'd like to be in a clothing store and hear a salesperson say to the customer, "You know, that really doesn't look very good on you at all."

Any salesperson who did that with me would have their level of credibility instantly skyrocket!

But there are so many real estate agents out there trying to steer their prospects towards doing deals that may not be the best ones for the prospects, but they're the best ones for the agents instead.

And once your prospect picks up on this behavior, your relationship with the person is absolutely doomed. Now you've become just someone who presents properties to them, but they know now that they can't trust your judgment and opinion on any of them. They have to determine whether or not the property will work for them completely independent of anything you now say to them.

With this in mind, I had my own experience in my first few years in the business that created an epiphany for me in this arena. I was showing buildings to the President of one of the most famous clothing manufacturers in the world. Whether it be now or at some other time throughout your lifetime, you've probably had one or more pairs of their jeans in a closet somewhere in your home. Now I don't remember exactly what I said to this person, but I definitely remember the reaction and the feeling it produced -- in both myself and my client.

I was showing the company a facility of several hundred thousand square feet that they were thinking of moving into. The President had just toured the facility and was standing by himself looking out a window, wondering if the facility would work for him.

While he was standing there silently thinking, I brought up some selling point about the property and mentioned it as a reason why he should move forward and buy it. And when I did this he just turned his head to the side, shook it, and laughed. I could tell in that moment that my desire to close a large transaction with his company on this property had been blatantly detected, and I'll probably never forget that feeling I had in the pit of my stomach in that moment as long as I live. I realized then and there, some 23 years ago, that I had to transition myself into becoming a completely different kind of salesperson, and that experience has served as a constant reminder and motivating factor for me to have made the transition along the way.

The type of salesperson we all want to work with is someone we like who we feel has their number one priority being serving our best needs. When we both like someone and feel they're committed to serving our best interests, we naturally just feel ourselves wanting to work with them.

The same applies for you, too, in your own real estate business.

As an example, do you think if you were the one looking to buy or lease property that you could sense if the agent you were working with had your best interests in mind above their own? If your answer to this is "Yes," don't you think the same applies with your own clients and prospects, too? Don't you think they can sense if you're serving their best interests or looking out for your own commission?

Sometimes, for whatever reason, we don't feel our clients and prospects share our same intuitive qualities in this arena. And it can cost us big time, too, if we haven't already become the kind of agent who always puts their needs before our own.

So make sure you're a master at developing great rapport with your clients and prospects, and make sure they always understand that serving their best interests is constantly your number one priority.

Once you've mastered this in your own real estate business, people will sense that you're the best choice they could ever make when it's time for them to hire a real estate agent.

Published: December 5, 2005

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Jim Gillespie, Ph.D., is America's Premier Real Estate Coach℠. He has over 20 years of experience in real estate sales and is a past president of three different real estate companies. His FREE real estate E-newsletter with tips and creative ideas to help agents make more money is now read by over 35,000 agents nationwide. You can subscribe to his FREE E-newsletter by visiting RealEstateSalesCoach.com or contact him at Jim@RealEstateSalesCoach.com.