Compassion and Empathy, First, in New Home Sales
Once upon a time, in a former life, I was a licensed Early Childhood Large Center Director.
That means I was a preschool teacher, most of the time.
One of the biggest things I learned in my 5-year stint was to ask: ''what is their behavior telling me that their words aren't?". This is a practice easily fantasized about but much, much harder to employ. It's easy to react to others. It's easy to say, "Johnny hit me, I am going to hit back!" and then you do it.
The intentional teacher takes a second to recognize that Johnny's hitting was really a behavior representing a root feeling. Maybe Johnny has a yet-to-be-diagnosed speech cognition delay and isn't able to say, "back off!" to his peer. Or that he just doesn't know how to confidently communicate his feelings to others yet.
I mean, are any of us really emotionally developed as adults?
In our current climate it's becoming more and more vital to recognize behaviors when working with our leads. I believe this happens when we lead with empathy and compassion for each individual.
I've talked before about how important our thick-skin is as an OSC, if we don't have it, we typically aren't in this role for long. We have to be able to, within reason, take a beating and then smile and redirect the conversation to find a solution.
One of the projects my builder worked on included an affordable housing qualification. It was our job to find leads who made less money-- to find people who most lenders won't lend to. It seems like the exact opposite of what you want in a lead, part of me knew that this was my time to feel like my "sales" job was going to make a difference (srsly, let's get into our hangups about being "sales people").
What I found were a few things:
1) I had a lot clients who were on permanent disability.
2) All of my clients had some kind of struggle in their life.
3) It took way too many attempts to have a conversation, and when I did, it was almost always guarded or they hung up on me, more than once.
This wasn't a situation where I could speak about how exciting buying a home is, it wasn't a time where I could talk about the subject matter and assume they were comprehending what I was saying. Often, I was just trying to get a mother, mid-divorce with a kid, on the phone for a 5 minute pre-qualification screening. There were times that I figured out it was someone trying to get themselves away from trauma by purchasing their own space.
A younger version of myself would react to these people who didn't play by the rules. The sales person I've been taught to be would say, "if they want it, they'll make the time to talk to me". It's hard not to be flippant and dismissive with those who treat you that way, in perception.
But that isn't always the case. I had to stop, several times and say, why isn't she able to get to the phone? Is she with someone she doesn't want to overhear our conversation?
The behaviors my leads were showing me told me a bigger story about their life than their words could.
When we lead with empathy and compassion, we come from a place of understanding. We work to build up to the sale, together, with our lead.* Instead of fitting others into our box, we have to work to find out if our product fit theirs. It might be a great market for sales right now, but that doesn't mean everyone walking in is happy about it. There's probably more stress and anxiety on their part in these markets. They need someone to recognize that.
This is how we win the sale. And, I know what you're thinking:
1) Planning for empathy and compassion makes it seem less genuine when you're trying to get a sale by being that way.
2) It's not our job to be so emotionally involved with each client.
Both of those hesitations are true. And you'll have to develop your own set of boundaries so you know how far is too far. It's not that you make exceptions for behavior, but instead you read the behavior and respond to the cause of it and not the action. It's not always a clear answer, it's guttural.
You also have to understand that putting these ideas into any line of work is where we become revolutionary (ok, that word choice is super cheesy--but it makes sense, soo..). It's where we go from having just a sales job to pay the bills to being intentional people who make a difference, wherever we are. It takes a shift in mindset, before you respond.
Take some time to think about what behaviors trigger your own. Document them and then stop the next time your own behaviors show up. If you can reach the root of your emotional responses you become a participating facilitator who finds the path to the end goal for your client. When you've removed your own ego you've gained trust, and more often than not, you'll find the sale.
#OSC #NewHomeSales #NewHomeConsultant #OSCLife
*I'm currently reading Jeff Shore's Closing 2.0 and this really ties into the concept of agreements--we can get someone off of the fence and speaking honestly by working up from agreement to agreement--I think those agreements come from understanding empathy and compassion. Read it, folks.