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Leadership Selling®

Detailed Synopsis: Pinnacle

1: Overcoming Sales Reluctance
2: Winning Sales from the Competition
3: Winning Sales Through Trust and Leadership
4: Refining Your Skills: Leading the Plan and Site Selection
5: Refining Your Skills: Handling Objections
6: Refining Your Skills: Closing
7: Refining Your Skills: Keeping the Sale Sold
8: Prospecting

1: Overcoming Sales Reluctance
From the moment you start the Pinnacle level, you will be aware that you are beginning a journey to a higher level of thinking, skills and success.

Pinnacle begins with a look at the fascinating topic of sales reluctance, and what steps you can take to overcome your own reluctances which, if not addressed, could limit your success and keep you from reaching your full potential.

Three specific reluctances are addressed in detail:

• Role Rejection: Having mixed feelings about being a salesperson.
• Yielder: The tendency to believe that you are in the position of weakness with your customers, and therefore must give them whatever they want in order to make (or save) the sale. This sales reluctance causes you to yield the position leadership to your customers.
• Oppositional reflex: Being difficult to work with, for customers and co-workers alike.

Each of these tendencies is described, along with its potential danger as a sales reluctance. Then we explain what you can do to overcome each tendency.

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2: Winning Sales from the Competition
One of the most exciting aspects of new home sales is competition. The key to a competitive spirit is not merely the desire to win—it is the desire to compete, to embrace the joy of competition.

A competitive spirit inspires the pursuit of excellence. This lesson explores ways to develop and enjoy a competitive spirit in a wholesome way. We describe attitudes and skills that help you develop the following advantages through which you will win sales from your competition:

• Selling with greater energy than your competition.
• Developing better relationships with your customers.
• Providing your customers with a better experience.
• Having a better knowledge of your market position and your competition, and giving a better explanation of your market position and competitive advantages to your customers.

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3: Winning Sales Through Trust and Leadership
Having discussed the value of a competitive spirit in the last lesson, we now use that competitive spirit to help you establish a position of trust and leadership with your customers more effectively than your competition. We discuss the following ways to gain this advantage, and provide illustrated examples:

• Displaying the right demeanor to your customers.
• Displaying “sincere curiosity.”
• Being responsive.
• Being aware that you are not just selling, you are competing for a sale against other opportunities available to your customers.
• Providing guidance and reassurance as part of your leadership.
• Keeping things simple.
• Using third-party endorsements.
• Making sure the “absentee customer” stays in the picture.
• Handling objections with empathy, counseling, reassurance and resolution.
• Keeping the sale moving toward a conclusion.

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4: Refining Your Skills: Leading the Plan and Site Selection
This lesson builds upon the ideas and skills introduced in Apex 6. While Apex focuses more on what to do and say during the demonstration stage of the sale, Pinnacle digs deeper into what questions to ask in order to get feedback from customers. You can use this feedback to keep them moving forward in their decision process.

Closing is all about decisions. Your goal in the demonstration stage is not just to demonstrate features and benefits, create interest, and show your advantages, but also to lead customers to a decision. Asking questions helps you establish a “decision-making rhythm” with your customers that will make your final close easier when the time comes.

This lesson also teaches how to use your position of leadership to keep customers on track, and to help them sort through their choices in order to complete their decisions.

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5: Refining Your Skills: Handling Objections
Apex 7 gave a brief overview of handling objections in the context of moving toward the close. At the Pinnacle level, handling objections merits a lesson of its own.

After reviewing the process for handling objections outlined in Apex 7, this lesson gives examples of specific objections, and shows how to apply the process to handling these objections.

Finally, we explain when and how an objection should be addressed before a customer encounters the issue.

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6: Refining Your Skills: Closing
Here we discuss how to overcome some of the anxieties salespeople have about closing, anxieties that can prevent them from closing with confidence if they’re not sure of the customer’s intentions. These anxieties can be caused by the following concerns:

• “The customer is making such a huge decision.”
• “The customer is spending so much money.”
• “How do I know the right time to ask?”
• “What if I do it wrong?”

We then go into the greatest depth with the one anxiety that outranks all the others for many salespeople: “What if the customer says ‘no?’”

Once again we teach thought processes as well as a variety of techniques for what to do when you’ve reached the point where it’s time to ask for the sale, but the customer still isn’t completely comfortable saying “yes.” Our goal here is not only to teach you how to handle this situation, but also to eliminate all feelings of anxiety you may have about encountering it.

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7: Refining Your Skills: Keeping the Sale Sold
Pinnacle 7 picks up where Apex 8 left off by digging deeper into the concept of maintaining the buyer’s enthusiasm, loyalty, and commitment between contract and settlement. We emphasize the value of staying in touch with buyers proactively and consistently throughout the post-contract period. We also discuss ways to manage the commitments they have made to you as well as the ones you have made to them.

Then this lesson moves on to explain what to do if a buyer becomes angry during the time between contract and settlement, and how to handle buyer’s remorse.

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8: Prospecting
Prospecting is an opportunity to give yourself a pay raise. In this lesson we focus on three avenues of prospecting.

• Realtor Outreach. We offer a variety of suggestions for attracting Realtors to your community. Then we provide tips for how to make a presentation to a Realtor office at a group meeting.

• Prospect Follow-up. We approach prospect follow-up not as an intrusion, but as continuing a relationship—a way to make sure your customers feel wanted. If you can make your customers feel that you want them more than your competition does, it is one more competitive advantage for you. The goal of the follow-up is, of course, to generate a return visit with an appointment. We explain how to prepare for a follow-up phone call, and how to execute it. Then we touch on other forms of follow-up, and how to create a system for organizing your follow-up.

• Asking for Referrals. We emphasize the importance of asking for referrals. We discuss how to develop the right attitude about asking for referrals. Then we suggest several ways to do it.

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After completing all eight lessons, your team will complete a graduation assignment, and then celebrate their achievement with a Graduation Ceremony.