Have you ever seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross with Alex Baldwin? The movie refers to the ABC in real estate – always be closing.
The sales industry has certainly come a long way from the suit-wearing 1960s stereotype, with new challenges and developments constantly updating and improving how people approach closing sales.
Real estate professionals have years and years of experience in closing strategies to use as examples of what to do and what to avoid.
Going for a close is an important make-or-break moment for real estate professionals, and you definitely don’t want weak closing techniques to keep you from making a property sale. While that final moment before you put your closing skills to use can be slightly daunting, you can feel lost or even very nervous.
Every real estate professional will have his or her own strategy for transforming all their relationship building into a solid close. Your closing strategy of choice will depend on your personal history of success, your personality type, and most importantly, your client.
At the end of the day, however, you want to feel confident and prepared. These six powerful closing strategies in real estate sales are the most common strategies to close any deal:
1) Ask – Decision – Close Strategy
As a real estate professional, you know how to answer customer questions and how to give information in ways that will inform and educate. An effective closing strategy is to ask a question in response. If the customer asks, “Does this come in grey?”, you may answer with another question like, “Would you like it in grey?”.
In doing so, you can measure the customer’s interest and get a greater sense of his or her values. When the real-time comes to assist the client with a decision, the real estate professional needs to ask a decision closing question. An example can be, “John, with your approval today, we can get you the keys by this Monday?’’ In here you let John think if he is ready to give his approval and move to the next step. It is very powerful and productive to keep your clients moving in the sales process.
2) Summarise Close
Summarise Closing Tactic is one of the most powerful closing strategies. It allows you to reiterate the customer’s interest in purchasing, with the intention of re-stressing the value and benefits.
By summarizing the previously discussed benefits into one attractive statement, you allow prospects to visualize the true value of the deal. When all the benefits are lined up and are presented in a short time with lots of value, the client will make more sense of the money that has to be paid.
Use words like, “And on top of this you get…” and ‘’That’s not all, also you will get access to…”.
3) Scarcity Close
There is a time and place for aggressive selling tactics, but the Now or Never Closing Strategy is a popular technique because it can be highly effective.
In the Now or Never Closing Strategy, the real estate professional makes an offer with a special benefit that adds enticement and urgency to the sale. Special discounts or explaining how the offer won’t last can help someone make their final decision.
A fair warning, don’t use this to aggressively, as it can also push the client away. It has to come naturally and as a simple incentive for clients to make fast decisions.
4) Trusted Opinion Close
During your real estate career, you will encounter many challenges along the way. Real estate can be a very struggling journey. When you’re in the closing stages of a sale, one challenge you might encounter with your client is the value of the property.
Buyers eventually want the best price, as this will improve their investment return. By offering your personal opinion, you convey trust and soften the reply if your customer objects. In this matter, you need to build a solid and strong relationship with your clients. This will make them listen to your opinion.
Also, always make sure to back up your opinion with proof. Words don’t give much certainty to clients. However, if you have proven data on pricing, value or interest from the market, you will have more to build on.
5) Objection Close
It can be hard to get a good conversation going if your customer isn’t telling you everything.
If you are confident that your property or project is the right solution for your client’s needs, but still can’t make that final sale, then asking specifically what objections he or she might have will allow the customer to raise any final objections without giving a concrete “no.”
Every client has a fear. Fear of you, fear of making the wrong decision, fear of going in big debt, or even fear of failing. Your job as a real estate sales professional is to help and assist your clients to remove this fear. And sometimes it boils down to asking what the real fear is. What are you afraid of Mr client? What is the worse thing you see happening Mrs client?
6) Incentive Close
Not our most favourite one, but sometimes it does help to bring that client to the closing side. Offering an extra incentive to make the sale more appealing is a strong way to close a sale.
In doing so, you add urgency and motivation to the sale. As with all closing strategies, you want to consider your own personality and the personality of your client in order to gauge whether this tactic will come off as earnest. Make sure that any incentive only comes with a client’s decision. Without this decision, the incentive will not happen.
BONUS
7) Pros and Cons Close
The pros and cons list works especially well with analytical personality and character. Going through the positives and negatives—with emphasis on the positives—allows you to walk through the decision-making process with your client and guide them to the best decision.
Many properties have loads of information and clients can get in an analysis paralysis stage. Simply meaning all the information is overwhelming them and freezing them to make a decision. Helping them to make simple pros and cons list will get back structure in the information. This way they have a better overview of the deal and make a confident decision.
Here you have it! 6+1 great strategies to close any deal in real estate! Make sure you practice all of them in role-plays with your colleagues.
Oh and if you want to learn more closing techniques and get some additional training on closing, make sure to visit our FREE platform PURE → Propcoach University Of Real Estate!