My Third Lesson in Selling
Having moved on from the insurance world to the world of training and development I began consulting with a mega star in commercial real estate. He was the vice chairman of the firm and a brilliant negotiator and consultant. He spoke passionately about New York City real estate and could untiringly debate an issue.
His true brilliance was his understanding of the New York City commercial tenant. He knew their goals and challenges cold, having been in the game for quite some time.
What I most admired was his successful tactic of establishing an advisor-like climate with every tenant he consulted with. He orchestrated and asked brilliant questions in a relational fashion. His questions never put a tenant on the defensive but rather highlighted conversationally what they knew about the process and what they didn’t.
This was his winning technique. He’d engineer 10-20 percent of his questions in such a way that the tenant didn’t know the answer to his question yet was engaged in the inquiry driven by him. The psychology here was to illustrate through essential questions the importance of hiring the right broker capable of understanding/controlling all these unanswerable variables.
The special sauce I took from his technique was to have more pre-meeting homework done than my competition, to understand a client’s potential challenges and verify these challenges through sincere and sophisticated questions.
Try and and let me know.
