We are in a financial profession. Every salesperson is in a financial profession because our job is to create a funding event. Our job is to create a financial transaction because that’s how we get paid. And most of us are not taught how to speak financially.~ Eric Shaver
Today on the Sales Pitch Podcast, Melissa Kwan speaks with Eric Shaver, managing partner at Kensei Partners. Eric has trained more than 9,000 people globally at huge companies like Google and SAP and has more than two decades of sales experience under his belt. He’s sold for everyone from multi-billion dollar companies to small start-ups and has been consulting ever since the financial crisis of 2008. He’s one of the savviest thinkers about sales around, and listeners are in for a treat as Michelle dives into Eric’s sales philosophy, how that approach applies to real estate and where many sales experts go wrong.
Salespeople need to adopt a new language
Eric points out on this week’s episode that sales is one of the few professions without a degree. As he says, there’s a very low barrier to entry to sales. So without educational credentials, salespeople have adopted the same dialect, or borrowed from their friends in marketing. But that dialect is the wrong one, because it’s the vendor’s dialect. Instead, you have to speak the buyer’s language, a complex process that requires empathy and knowledge of the buyer’s thinking. And to get down to brass tacks, you have to speak Excel, which means you have to speak financially.
Stop talking like a salesperson, and speak in a language buyers understand
So how does Eric’s sales philosophy translate to the real estate world? Well, for anyone selling property, you know there are two things you care most about cash—getting the best price—and time—getting that property off the market as quickly as possible. So a seller wants to know how the agent assisting me measures up along those two vectors, how quickly they move and how well they do at getting the price they want. And to do that, you have to really understand financial transactions, not just typical sales talk. Eric breaks it all down on this episode of The Sales Pitch.
If you learn to speak a new language in sales, you’ll have an amazing story to tell
Eric’s philosophy seems so straightforward: Sellers want a representative who can sell quickly and optimize the transaction, meaning get as much money for the seller as possible. So where are the stumbling blocks? As he tells Melissa on this week’s episode of the Sales Pitch Podcast, the hard path is getting the math right. What is the time to transaction from engagement to transaction? What is the typical margin relative to asking price? How do we get the best price in a cold market? And in a hot market, how do we make sure buyers are actually financially qualified. If you do know your numbers, then suddenly you have an amazing story to tell.
If you don’t want to be treated like the herd, don’t sound like the herd
As Melissa tells Eric on this week’s episode of The Sales Pitch podcast, the philosophy makes a lot of sense, but it can be very difficult to adopt. Eric points out that if you don’t have the math down, then essentially you’re just “selling a smile,” like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. But if you can speak financial language, if you can tell people “here is how well we do with properties in your range,” then suddenly you’re speaking a concrete language that sellers can understand. This is a really eye-opening episode thanks to Eric’s unique perspective.
Here’s What You’ll Learn:
- [0:55] Who is Eric Shaver?
- [4:05] What is Eric’s sales philosophy?
- [5:55] How that philosophy translates to real estate
- [9:50] How to build relationships or rapport
- [11:40] It sounds so simple, but where are the speed bumps
- [15:50] Don’t sound like the herd
- [18:30] It’s better to sound like a financial person who knows sales, then a salesperson who doesn’t know finances
- [20:00] What do the top 1% of salespeople do differently?
- [22:30] Eric’s advice for how to engage quickly at an open house
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