With scripts and strategies to overcome them

Let’s get started.

For each of these objections, I am going to give you a simple, uncomplicated strategy to overcome that objection, some will have scripts, others will have a strategy. I don’t want you to get bogged down in the details of a specific objection, My goal is for you to learn the process to overcome them. 

For you all wanting to cut to the chase.

I believe that people are normally wanting to sell their house because they have a problem and they think, selling their home can fix that problem. 

Strategy 1. Overcome the objection quickly and revert back to your original script.

Strategy 2. Get as much information as possible and follow up. 

It is easy to get confused, sometimes you might not be getting the objection you think you are. Sometimes you are actually just getting a condition. 

So what is a condition?

Oxford Dictionary defines it as:

con·di·tion

/kənˈdiSH(ə)n/

noun

the state of something with regard to its appearance, quality, or working order.
“the wiring is in good condition”

Often times a condition, is something that is true. The reason that seller said they can’t meet you at 2pm on Tuesday is because….. They just can’t meet you at 2pm on Tuesday, they have a doctors appointment or just something else going on.

It is really that simple. They have something going or happening and what you are proposing just does not work right now. 

About 4 years ago, I had a seller I was talking to about selling his house. We met at the house, the husband and wife really liked me. They already were moved out and the house was vacant. It looked great! But they had a couple small unfinished projects, that probably would have been a big deal for buyers getting financing, but nothing major.

A few weeks go by and we set another appointment to put the house on the market. A few days before we were going to meet,  a storm blew a tree over on the roof of the house. The sellers fortunately had insurance, but it was going to take a couple weeks to get it all cleaned up and the roof repaired. They canceled on me. 

A couple of weeks later we schedule another appointment to put the house on the market. The husband gets sick and gets admitted to the hospital. They canceled on me again!!

Now for most agents, they would take these cancelations as the sellers not wanting to work with them and they are just wasting their time. 

I kept following up, I eventually listed their home. I sold it and made $5,000 in commissions. The people wanted to work with me, they believed in me and they were not jerking me around…. They just had something called “life” happening to them. 

Difference between a Condition and an Objection

The difference is a Condition is something that is real. It is valid and often can be quantified. An Objection is often nothing more than a smoke screen. Some story they are telling you today to get you off the phone or out of their house. 

What do you do when you get a condition?

You wait and you follow up. Normally the only thing that can overcome or cure a condition is time, concern and a helpful heart. Following up with the potential client because you care about their situation and you want to help them.

When you get a condition on the phone like “I can’t meet tomorrow at 2pm” don’t overthink it. Just ask another question such as “Will you be at work then?” let them answer and offer another time. 

So why do people use objections? Why can’t they just be upfront and just tell us what they are thinking? (lol) This is about as mysterious as asking your significant other “What do you want for dinner?”. No one knows, but from my experience, I have a few ideas why I think sellers are giving real estate agents objections.

1. The agent does not know their scripts and they have not practiced them at all. So the phone conversation had no purpose and had no point. They got so off track during the conversation that they talked for 30 minutes about something as arbitrary as “what is your cat doing today?”.
   
   The agent hung up the phone and never really even asked a closing question or anything about the property that was for sale. They basically just said “hey, let me list your house.” then just talked randomly when the person said no.
   
2. The seller just isn’t ready yet. This happens. Sometimes, they put a FSBO ad on craigslist and they do actually want to sell their house. But they have no plan at all for showing the home to anyone. They have work, a spouse, kids, dog, 10 unfinished projects and they have no clue where they would go if someone showed up on their door step with a bag of cash to pay their asking price.
   
3. They do not have enough information about the service they are being offered or they were just misinformed about how real estate agents work.
   Imagine that, very similar reason we give lead generation companies objections. We just don’t know enough about what they are doing for us.
   Believe it or not, I have been on listing appointments, where the reason why they hadn’t already listed their home with an agent is, they didn’t know how agents worked. I have had people that didn’t know we get paid on performance. Most of us are not asking for a commission check upfront.
   
4. They did not know how hard it would actually be to sell their house on their own (or how costly). With only around 50% of Americans owning homes, the percentage of Americans to actually go through the experience of selling a home is pretty small. I would be willing to bet your average seller has probably never worked with an agent to sell a house or at least they have not sold a property in the last 5 to 7 years, in the state they are in.
   
   I think this is often why sellers start our very strong, “hey we are selling ourselves” is their motto. Until they realize marketing on your own is tough, buyers “stretch the truth” about finances, attorney charge a lot of money and people never want to come see your house when it is convenient. Oh and I forgot, everyone calling from craigslist is looking for a “Rent to Own”.
   
5. The agent before used an “A SOS” script. The agent they talked with before just was a bad or rude. They only cared about making a commission check. They never answered their phone. They never had any showings or feed back. They just assume other agents will be the same.
   
6. It just was not a good time. This is different than “I am not ready”.Sometimes when you call a seller it just isn’t a good time. Just like the examples in the last chapter. They had a million things going on, talking to a real estate agent for 5 minutes just made it a million and one things. 

I am not telling you these are the only 6 reasons sellers are giving us objections, but I think this sums it all up pretty well and shows you that often an objection has very little to do with you.

On a basic level we all react a certain way to certain things. We all give objections.

I defined what an objection was at the beginning of this book. 

We are a society that we are continuously being sold to. All of us have our “go to” objections we use when we are confronted with these sales pitches. 

Here are some examples.  

1. The gas station clerk asks you if you would like to buy a candy bar with your drink purchase. 
2. The department store cashier asks you to sign up for a store credit card.
3. The Insurance person cold calling you to sell you have health insurance. 
4. The Real estate lead company calling you asking if you want to subscribe to their lead service.

I could keep going, but you get the point. You were probably thinking about your “go to” objection while you were reading them. 

Here is the reality of those examples and your objection.

1. You don’t dislike the gas station clerk. They are probably a nice person. Maybe you are on a low carb diet? Maybe you just didn’t want a candy bar? Whatever your reason is, just because you didn’t buy a candy bar today, does not mean you won’t buy one during your next visit.
   
2. The department store cashier is probably a nice person. Maybe you just didn’t want a new credit card? Maybe you were worried you would get turned down? Maybe you were in a hurry? But next trip to that store, there is a possibility, you could say yes.
   
3. The insurance salesperson cold calling people about health insurance may have the best rates and coverage in the industry. You probably won’t know today, because when he called you, you had a million things going on and you just didn’t have time to talk…..so… you hung up on him… maybe said “don’t call back”. It wasn’t that you didn’t need health insurance, you just didn’t have time and were frustrated.
   
4. The real estate lead generation company calling is something we deal with all the time. We would all love an extra deal a month, right? But they always call at a bad time and sometimes I don’t even understand what they are selling.

In each one of these examples, we used a go-to objection. These objections had nothing to do with the salesperson, the product/service or really anything. Some of the objections we give have far more personal reasons that we say no, than true disagreements with what is being offered.

Objections are a numbers game. The more people that come thru that convenience store door and are asked “would you like to add a candy bar for a dollar?”. The more candy bars they will sell. Maybe it is 3 out of 10 buy? If they had 100 people come thru the store. That is 30 more candy bars sold today and an additional $900 in revenue for the month! 

So the store has a conversion ratio of 3 out of 10 people buying a candy bar. I am almost certain a certain percentage of the 7 out of 10 non-buyers, think about a candy bar later and go back to the store to get one for a dollar. 

Everytime you hear an objection like “Bring a buyer and I will pay you 3%”, make them an offer for full representation (we cover this in more detail later in the book). You will always have a certain conversion rate, then an additional conversion rate from your follow up. 

Lead sales companies follow this same model. They call us, because most of us want more leads. A certain percentage will schedule a demo. A certain percentage will buy as soon as the demo ends and then an additional percentage will buy from their sales follow up. 

Generally, when sellers seems angry, short or frustrated on the phone, it is typically not you. It is often the personal situation they are in. 

The biggest problem most real estate agent are having, overcoming objections or just sales calls in general, is they think there is going to be a magic bullet, phrase or some sort of (insert the latest BS piece of technology) that is going to work 100% of the time.

Nothing works 100% of the time. If we really want to get honest about conversion numbers, the odds of you making 1 random phone call, setting an appointment, showing up and listing the house, is very small. 

If that is what you are hoping for, you will starve to death. 

BUT….There are so many agents that expect this and think this it is realistic. 

It is not.

I blame Hollywood. Everyone has watched movies like Boiler Room, Jerry Mcguire and The Wolf of Wall Street. 

All of these movies contain, what I would call, “Asshole Sales Objection Scripts” or in short “A SOS”. Which is exactly what it is.

Wikipedia defines “SOS” as morse code for a distress signal. The sales people using these scripts are in distress mode. I have heard it called “commission breath”. Typically, it is just desperation. They will do or say anything they think would lead them to a commission check. 

 These ‘A SOS” scripts are  where you tell your buyer/seller something that is just completely out of left field that really is just offensive or belittling. 

One of the best sales scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street, is an example of this. You see Leonardo DiCaprio (Jordan Belfort) has a guy on speaker phone and everyone is crowded around him. This guy clearly does not want to buy the stock he is being pitched.

All of a sudden the character, Jordan Belfort, delivers a well rehearsed line that is really just offensive and this guy on the phone goes from a complete non-believer to a believer and buys. 

There is only 1 place, I know that “A SOS” scripts work well and that is Hollywood. 

There is one thing you have to accept when prospecting sellers, I like to use this professional baseball analogy:

No one in baseball bats 1.000.

If you got on base 4 out of 10 at bats consistently, you will be a Hall of Fame player.

If you got on base just 3 out of 10 times consistently, you would be paid A REAL LOT OF MONEY

We are working in an industry where if you listed 3 out of 10 properties you went on listing appointments for and went on appointments consistently every week, you will take a boat load of property listings and make a lot of money. 

However, our game has one unique advantage over playing baseball. If you strike out or you blow the listing appointment or you just are really bad at the whole process, you can still follow up and have a chance at listing that seller’s property. You can get a “do over” and go back to bat again.

I wrote this book based on objections I have received and objections that were crowd sourced from my group coaching and my Facebook group Real Estate Agents that REALLY work. 

This is a book of scripts and strategies to overcome objections. It is not “A SOS” scripts, its real life stuff.

I hope you enjoy what I have put together and I hope it makes you a ton of money!