I want to talk to you today about a client of ours who has transformed his business by using effective sales control systems.

For over four years, he and his team have aimed to become the top agency in their marketplace.

But it wasn’t happening and he felt frustrated about his agency’s lack of progress.

After working with him, we found that a lack of systems and processes within the business were the key source of this frustration. In particular, they didn’t have processes in place for controlling his sales or getting feedback from buyers.

We met in our initial game plan session, during which we ran with every new client and implemented our whiteboard processes and Sales Flow™ system.

Then in our weekly sprint training sessions we fine-tuned all the questions they had along the journey.

After just four months, their business became market leader after four years of trying. They moved from 8 to 10 sales a month to 25 to 30. Same market, same number of listings, same people with a different internal system.

Their story teaches us that controlling your sales and mastering your feedback processes leads to results. In this article, I’m going to talk about a couple of aspects to effective sales control that sit inside our ‘Sales Flow™ system.

There are two tiers of accountability that you need to create within your sales management process outside of the sales person doing his role. The leader of the process. This is the member of the team, likely you, who’s responsible for putting the process in place. This person needs to take an active role in making sure the process runs as smoothly as possible. The administrative team within your business. These are the people who are responsible for putting together all of your key reports.

If either of these tiers fails to stay accountable, the entire process falls down.

There are going to be times when the market gets tough and you struggle to get inspections or you may have listings that just don’t get inquiry. These slow periods in your business will prove frustrating. However, they also allow you to increase your market share. To do that, you need to maximise your inspections using a range of follow-up strategies.

Your database of buyers will contain a lot of buyers who’ve indicated a preferred price. For example, let’s say you have several buyers who’ve indicated that they want to spend $700,000. What you need to understand is that most of these buyers will spend more than they indicate. So, what you do is call these buyers to talk to them about any properties you have that are in the $800,000 to $900,000 range. Those buyers in the $700,000 range are going to see more value in that property and with the correct dialogue will turn into an inspection which in turn creates an opportunity for feedback to your clients. The key message here is that you can’t assume a buyer will stick to a price just because they said so.

You need to turn one inspection into three inspections in flatter markets or for those listings not generating inquiry. Let’s say you have somebody who’s inquired about one of the properties you’re selling. Your goal is to get them to view two more properties that you have in your listing pool across the office. It’s going to provide you with valuable price feedback for each of the three properties. This is all information that tells you what the buyer’s market looks like, which you can use to adjust your selling strategy.

What do you do when somebody tells you that they want a property on the north side of town? You exclusively show them properties from that area while ignoring anything in the south. Again, that means you’re missing out on opportunities as you get locked into thinking that the buyer will buy the one they called on. With this strategy, you need to open up dialogue with your buyer. Tell them that you know that they want a property on the north side of town. However, you have this property on the south side of town that has a great kitchen or an amazing backyard. And again, you’re creating the chance to generate more feedback from the buyer.

Each of the above strategies provides you with the opportunity to get feedback from your buyers.

The one key strategy to the above is this…

That you have to manage your listings effectively. That means you have meticulous processes in place for your listings. Combine effective sales management processes with these feedback generation strategies and your real estate business will thrive when the market gets tough or you have listings more challenging to move.