Bill Zimmerman's Weekly Tip - Prospects Do NOT Want To Be Sold

Today we'll begin with the first of eight "Universal Business Principles" that, if applied to your specific real estate business, will help you improve your success in selling and marketing your services.


Enjoy today's tip from marketing expert and business coach, Dan Kennedy (www.dankennedy.com):

Number 1 - Prospects Do NOT Want To Be Sold


Prospects Absolutely Will NOT Hear What You Are Saying
Unless You Tell Them What They Want To Know!

Most real estate agents are salespeople rather than marketers. A salesperson sells prospects what they have and for most real estate agents what they have is “themselves.” A marketer makes sure they have what prospects want to buy. Where the salesperson is an easy victim to a smoother talker or a hotter deal, a marketer builds loyalty and lifetime customers.

Advertising is ignored by people with great vigor. For this reason, if your ad, flyer brochure or whatever looks, feels and smells like advertising, your prospect won’t even see it. Think of how much normal advertising you are exposed to everyday. The average person is exposed to thousands of messages each week. They defend themselves against all these ads by blanking them out.

Branding and Image ads are a horrible waste of your hard-earned money. The big, flashy, colorful image adverting used by most real estate agents features big pictures of the agents, lists of designations and vague, same-old promises of service, quality and integrity. In these image ads, you can’t tell one agent from another and neither can the prospect. Take a look at them. The majority all are offering, promoting and boasting about the same thing, i.e. how great the agent is and why you should use them. In short, they are trying to SELL the prospect. They look like ads and read like ads and thus they get blanked out because…prospects don’t want to be sold!

Empty, meaningless, same-old boasts are seen for what they are… sales tactics. Image advertising focuses on the agent making statements like…I’m #1, Million-dollar Producer, I Sell a Lot of Houses; I care about you, list with me and on and on. There are several things wrong with ads like this. First, they offer no benefits for the prospect. They don’t tell a complete story, don’t make a specific offer, no call for action from the prospect, and give the prospect any reason to buy. Plus you can not measure or track the results of the ad.

This may Sting a Little Bit…


Your Prospects Don’t Care About You. There’s a dangerous myth out there started by media salespeople that says once you get your name out there, people will seek you out. This is old, old-school mentality. The stuff first taught when you first get into real estate. The harsh realty is your prospects don’t care at all about you. Even though you are a terrific, honest, hard working, ethical and caring agent, in the prospect world, no one really cares about you, remembers who you are, can clearly remember what you said and has any time for you.

Image advertising is ineffective as a marketing tool. EFFECTIVE MARKETING talks to and about the prospect. It gives them real benefits, a non-threatening way to get information, and compelling reasons to call you to get it.

What’s in it for me? All of us, including your prospects have the same radio station going on in our heads: WIFM (What’s in it for me?) To be effective with marketing, you must get inside their head and figure out what they want to hear and then play it for them. If someone’s a country music fan, you’re not going to convince them to listen to a hard-rock station. If you want them to listen to you, you better play country.

The Purpose of Your Marketing is NOT to Promote Yourself,
But Rather to Attract Your Prospects…


…This is a Big Difference


Most agents think the purpose of marketing is to promote them, but this just isn’t true. The purpose of marketing is to ATTRACT prospects. You won’t attract prospects by SELLING to them. But you can attract them with EFFECTIVE MARKETING which baits them with something they want so that they call you to get it.

If You Want to Catch Deer, You Don’t Put a Block of Cheese Out…


…Gotta Use The Right Bait for The Right Critter!


With effective Direct-Response Marketing, your focus is not on you, but rather on your prospects’ needs, so that your prospect is motivated (not manipulated or sold) into action on their own volition.


Your Partner in Greater Success,



Bill Zimmerman

http://www.foridahorealtors.com/