Selling with Sandra - how to smash that glass ceiling

How to Handle the Competition

July 20, 2022 Sandra Carder Season 1 Episode 14
Selling with Sandra - how to smash that glass ceiling
How to Handle the Competition
Selling with Sandra - Top secrets revealed.
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Show Notes Transcript

Episode 14 

In this episode we talk about how to handle competition in any sales environment.
Including:- 

  • Know who your competitors are.
  • Why you must NEVER speak badly about the competition.
  •  Tips for winning business from the competition.
  •  How to leverage off your competitors success.


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Hey, Hey, are you in sales you know how to smash that glass ceiling. Do you want to make more money than you ever thought was possible? You're in the right place. My name's Sandra Carder I've been in commercial real estate for over two decades and I know how to sell I'm going to teach you the habits, the formulas, the tips, the tricks, and the tools that you will need to be a superstar salesperson in whatever field you're in.

So, sit back, relax, tune in and listen to my podcast, million dollar agent and let's smash some glass ceilings together. 

This episode is brought to you by M2 Moringa. 

Hey, Hey million dollar agents. It's Sandra again. Welcome to episode 14. Today, we're going to talk about competition. Competition is not a dirty word, and I'll tell you why competition is healthy.

 

It keeps you sharp. It keeps you on your toes and it brings out the best in you.  it's a super good motivator too. If you've lost a deal because of the competition, you need to put that fire in your belly and get on with it and improve what you're doing so that you're better than you were before. We go through this in episode 12, about how to ride the sales roller coaster.

 

And this happens when you lose a deal or business because of the competition as well. What you want to do is you want to learn from that experience. Whatever the competition did, that was better than you, you want to take that onboard, sharpen up your tools and get on with it again. The number one rule to dealing with competition is know who your competition are.

 

Don't just block them out and pretend they don't exist… They're there. And if there's no competition, you're probably not doing what you need to be doing anyway. Unless you are Apple or somebody like that, this isn't going to happen. There is competition. There's competition everywhere, but you have to learn to embrace it.

 

I know exactly who my competitors are and hats off to them because you know, they teach me things every day and they're fabulous and they're awesome sales people, and you know, why not? There's plenty of pie for everyone. And if I do miss out on a deal because of one of my competitors has done the deal, I think, what could I have done better?

 

What could I have done differently to actually have won that deal? And I could kind of analyse the process and where I let my guard down and why the competitions actually beat me to the punch. And it might be just a timing thing because in sales, timing is everything right. That's a whole another topic for another podcast another day.

 

Find out who your competition is. Find out everything about them. Find out how they operate. Find out where they're advertising their products. Find out who their clients are. Use that to your advantage. If it's working for them, they are doing something right. Learn from that process. Do not put your head in the sand because it's just going to be detrimental to your career.

 

Golden rule: Number two, never say anything bad about your competition. This is really poor form. What it says to the client and the customer is that you have such little regard for your own ability as a salesperson that you have to go for the low blow and attack the competition. I'm telling you my friend, your clients, and your customers will lose respect for you.

 

If you use type of methodology to try and get the upper hand on your competition. What I say is, “oh, yes, I know so and so they're a good operator” and the whole thing just dissipates into thin air. It's not even something that the client thinks about again, but it's funny how people focus on the horrible things you say more so the nice things you say because people, human nature means we are a bit gossipy and we kind of have our ear out for the bad news. It's like the drama it's like watching the news. You're looking for the car crash. If you're saying something horrible, that's what they're going to remember.

 

They're going to remember the horrible things you said. So don't even consider going there. You may have an opinion about somebody, share it with your partner, share it with your closest friends, but under no circumstances, do you share that with your clients and customers? It's should be golden rule number one, but really I put it as number two, but that's just a bit of solid advice from me and believe me, there's no need to do that.

 

There are so many other things you can do to be better than the competition. And I'm going to tell you what those are now. For the record, if you find out that the competition is doing this to you, if they're sledging off against you saying bad things about you, just ignore it. If somebody wants to get into a discussion about it, just say, well, you don't play with dirty tactics.

 

Just be the bigger person, because you will earn way more respect doing it this way, trust me. And if you look at the flip side, it means that your competition's actually threatened by you and there might be. A bit jealous of your success. So just look at it like that. And I always say, if I haven't upset somebody in a day, then I haven't done my job.

 

And I don't mean upsetting the clients and the customers. I mean, upsetting the competition, because if you're doing enough work and you're working hard enough and you're getting enough deals done, someone's going to be upset about that. So, rattle the cage. What do we do to stand apart from the competition?

 

Well, regardless of what industry you're in, there's going to be frequent occasions where you're going to be pitching against the competition. You may be both going for the same listing. They're both going for the same business and you need to set yourself apart from the competition. 

 

The first thing the client's probably going to do, once you've met them or once you've spoken to them and they may have narrowed it down to two or three people who are pitching on the same business is they're going to Google you. It's the world of Google searches. Everybody's Google stalking everybody. What you want to do is you want to have some presence and you want to have some frequency, so that you're coming up everywhere.

 

You want to have your LinkedIn account and we talked about this in one of the other episodes, we talked about the importance of having a good LinkedIn profile. You want to make sure that when you do a Google search, your LinkedIn profile is going to be the first thing that comes up. If you are listing properties or you're doing business.

 

Everything else falls under that. Make sure your LinkedIn profile is absolutely first class. Now we go through LinkedIn profile optimization in episode 10, Go back and listen to it or you can watch it on YouTube. I'll put the links in the show notes below so that you can find it. But again, it's going to come up first when they do that Google search LinkedIn's at the top of the page.

 

LinkedIn are paying for that. Leverage off that, use it to your advantage, what they may or may not do. But most likely will do is look at your Facebook profile. If you've got some images on your Facebook profile, that you'd rather your mother, didn't see, it's something you don't want your clients to see either.

 

Tidy it up. It's time to get serious. I heard an interesting interview with a lady who does recruitment in the real estate sector. It was a podcast interview. And she said that employers, these days, they're looking at your social media, they're making sure, you're part of a team. You play sport, you're a team player.

 

And the other thing was that you, maybe you were a volunteer, you volunteer for something worthwhile. The top of the, the list though, was your Facebook profile. Your employers are looking at it. Your clients are looking at it, clean it up. You may not need to clean it up, but it's important that, you know, you do have a, a good online presence so that you are trustworthy.

 

It's about creating that trustworthiness so that they know that you are somebody that they want to do business with. So clearly you want to have a Facebook page for your business. You want to have an Instagram page, you want to have TikTok Twitter, et cetera. Because when they Google you, this stuff's going to come up and you want to make sure that you're putting comments there, that you want these clients to see, because it's really important.

 

They are going to suss you out. Don't write anything that you regret. Don't write anything that you don't want your clients or employers or whoever you want to do business with. You don't want them to see it. Don't put it up there. You want to have a good online presence so that they feel safe to do business with.

 

What do we need to do next? We've pitched for the business. We're waiting for them to make a decision. What do you have to do now? Your competition's probably doing this, but you need to do it too. It comes down to touch points. A touchpoint is either an email or a conversation on the phone or a conversation face to face or a voicemail that reaches out and touches that client again. 

You need to do at least four touchpoints and ideally eight touchpoints with that client while you're trying to win their business. If you go over that, it's the law of diminishing returns. Too many don't do 9, 10, 11, anything over eight is far too many.

 

You become a pest. So don't do that. You don't want to do that, but you have to make sure that this comes down to following up. You send them an email, “Thank you for your meeting today. It was great to meet you. I hope we can do business.” Then you give them a call the next day or two days later and say, “I'm just checking in to see if you need any more information.”

 

If they don't pick up, you've left a message of the same, then you try again and call them. It could be emailing them something else in addition to what you discussed, but you want to make sure that you are at least four times four is a good number. 

 

I think, the fifth and sixth and seventh time I'd be asking for the business, “can I send you the form six?” if you're a commercial agent or a, a residential agent, you just have to do these things. Your, your competition is most likely doing that, particularly if they're beating you, they've got their touch points down, pat. So don't forget to do this.

 

It's really important in sales that you have that follow on, those touch points. There's a bit of a science to it. It's been said that the most productive time to make contact with the prospective client is 3:00 PM on a Thursday or Friday in the last four days of the month. Now I'm not sure about that because I'm touching pointy people all the time, every day.

 

I'm trying to get in touch with people, and that sounds a bit over friendly, but you know what I'm talking about.  I have noticed though, just between you and me, that most people don't pick their phones up on a Monday, some people pick it up on a Tuesday and usually everyone you're trying to get hold of will pick it up or call you back on a Wednesday.

 

There could be some merit to the Thursday, Friday thing, but yeah, people definitely start to warm up again on Tuesday. I would probably, if I was you, don't worry about doing any touchpoints on a Monday. If you've listened to episode five, which was time management tips, when you're doing your block out in your diary.

 

Don't do your follow up calls on a Monday and maybe we should have spoken about that in episode five, but we do talk about diary blocking. If you haven't listened to it, get onto it, listen to it. It's very helpful. And it would save you a lot of time. How else do we make sure that we beat the competition?

 

You need to make sure that your clients and your customers are satisfied and happy at the end of the deal, because they're going to be your best marketing tool when they tell everyone else about it. If you do the wrong thing by someone, they're going to tell all of their friends and everyone, they know. If you do the right thing, whenever they're speaking to someone and they're thinking about doing whatever you're doing commercial real estate, real estate, you could be selling widgets, whatever they're going to think of you because they had a good experience with you.

 

When I've done a deal just as an example, I'll get my client to pose in front of the building that they've bought. I'll take a photo of them and I'll say, it's going straight to Instagram or whatever.

 

Get their permission. I'll buy them a gift, nice bottle of scotch. If it's a man, beautiful bottle of French champagne, if it's a woman it could be, gift vouchers, it doesn't matter. But what you want to do is make sure that client has a good experience and they remember the last thing you did for them.

 

These people are going to come back to you again, this knocks your competition out of play, it builds a mode around your database, which is another episode that you need to listen to episode number eight. These people are going to bring you more business. Do you think if you've done the right thing and your clients had a good experience that they're going to tell them to go to your competition?

 

No, they're not. You've made sure that's not going to happen, it's so simple. Just keep following through after sales service so important. One of my clients emailed me today and said, “Sandra, thanks for the, all your help.” But we can't find the mailbox key in the settlement package, who do we call now? now that you have done the deal? And I'm like, don't worry about it, I'll get it sorted. Emailed the developer, got the key, got it to the client, happy days.

 

 

You have to do these things, it’s after sale service, it's like buying a car. if you drove out of the showroom with a brand-new car and you never heard from the dealer again, you'd be a bit surprised, but you have to treat everything like this.

 

These people want you to come by, come buy the second car and they want you to tell all your friends about it. And that's what we have to treat sales like too, be that person keep in contact with them. They will buy something else and they'll tell everyone about it. And it's like building that snowball of momentum by doing the right thing.

 

And it's really simple. I kind of feel like all my podcasts are crossing over each other and I'm saying the same thing over and over again, but I know I'm not, I'm just trying to get through to the importance of being a good agent and it comes to knocking out the competition by being the best agent you could possibly be the best salesperson you possibly can be.

 

Don't disappear into the horizon with the money in your pocket and not look back. Make sure you are there treated like a long-term business relationship because they will come back again and they will tell everyone again that you are the guy or the girl to go to. What you can also do when you've got a happy client is ask for a recommendation or a reference that you can either use on your website.

 

If they're on LinkedIn, really important that you send them a request for a recommendation. Now it's really easy, you go into your profile and you send them a request. You have to actually add them as a contact first. And I always ask my clients no matter who they are, customers, clients, tenants, developers.

 

Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Would you mind leaving me a recommendation after I've done a good deal and that will fatten up your LinkedIn profile too. When your new clients are Googling you and they go into your LinkedIn profile, there's some awesome recommendations in there. It all ties together just beautifully.

 

Now, try not to lose your fire. If you do happen to miss out on a deal because of the competition, don't lose your fire. No matter how many times they kick you when you're down, just keep going. It happens to me all the time. Competition comes along and I see things happening and I miss out and I go, “wow, Sandra, get your game on, girl, what are you doing?”

 

And it makes me dig deeper and you just have to use it as motivation. Don't let it dishearten you and if you can see what they're doing and you're clearly not doing it, then start doing it. And it's that simple. If your competition is actually getting to your products or your services. Before you, and you know that they've actually got on the phone and they've been phoning around and they've been doing the time and they're doing the hard work and pounding the pavement or whatever it takes to succeed in your particular industry.

 

And you know, you are not doing that. There is your first problem. Now fair game, if you're both doing the same thing and it just came down to a personality clash, or the client picked the other person because of a price difference and you and you, you just couldn't get around it. But if you are not doing what you need to be doing and your competition's beating you, that is your fault, my friend.

 

You have to take it on as a hard reality. And that's all I'm going to say about that. And finally, don't worry so much about the competition that becomes an obsession. Get out of your own way. And as Tom panel says, “beat them with a smile.” I like that, that's classy. Good on you, Tom. Now, just a bit of personal insight when I'm dealing with my competition and it's been an uphill battle for me working in commercial real estate, because it's such a boy’s club.

 

And I know I said I wasn't going to give it any air time and I'm not really going to do that. But for a long time, I was waiting for an invite to the table for the boy’s club, an acceptance into the club and I waited and I wanted it, but then I thought I'm not even going to ask for an invitation anymore. I'm just going to do my thing.

 

And I got out of my own way and I stopped waiting and I didn't care. I just did it anyway. And now that I've feel like that. It's funny how things can turn around and I am getting that acceptance and I don't even want it anymore, but it's happening anyway. So that's just a little bit of personal information from me.

 

And really it comes down to getting out of your own way, because sometimes your mind's playing tricks on you too like your competition may not be all that. And you might be thinking that, you know what, you're not up to scratch and they're so much better than you. And they might be thinking exactly the same thing as you.

 

They might be more worried about you than you are of them. But you just need to have a healthy respect and keep an eye on it, learn from it and leverage off it. So that's really it. So just speaking of competition, my competition actually emailed me this week. A fellow that I compete against on a daily basis, emailed me to tell me a congratulations on my podcast series and well done.

 

I was delighted. It actually made my day. So yeah, big shout out to that person. If you're listening. Thank you. I really appreciated that. So, let's wrap up this podcast episode 14. Competition, it's not a dirty word. You need to know who your competition are and you need to learn from them, leverage off it, make sure you know exactly how they operate, what they do, where they go, how fast they take to get there and what they do when they get there.

 

Rule number two, never say anything bad about your competition. This is just totally poor form and it will come back to bite. You make sure you're using touchpoints when you are pitching for a deal or business or a listing or whatever you want to be making four to eight touch points with your clients after you've pitched and no more than eight, because that be that's when you become a pest and they'll be like, oh, that person's driving me crazy. I'm not going to deal with them. If they're hard work, now they will be hard work later. So just don't do that. 

 

When you've won the business, you've got the business and it's all wrapped up. What do you do? You make sure that the client has a smile on their face at the end of the deal and everything's gone smoothly and even if you've got a few hiccups, you've iron them out.

 

And the last thing you do is you buy that client a gift or whatever you feel is appropriate for that situation so that they've got a smile on their face. You then ask them for a recommendation on LinkedIn or if they don't use LinkedIn and a lot of clients won't do that some will some, won't a lot of the depends on which generation they're in, but ask for a written referral if they don't have a LinkedIn profile.

 

 You can at least use it on your website anyway, what's going to happen is when you meet a new client, they're going to Google stalk you, and they're going to see what's on your LinkedIn so you can use that last guy to leverage off. It works out nicely. 

 

Also make sure you tidy up your Facebook page. Thank God Facebook wasn't around when I was a teeny bopper. Seriously, I'm glad there's no photo evidence, because we do some silly things.

 

But unfortunately, people, these days seem to put those silly things on their profile without any regard for their career, get it off. You don't want to be Google stalked and have a picture in there that your mother doesn't want to see. Like that's how you have to gauge it. Would mom want to see that? What would she say to me? It's really about just being sensible. 

 

And finally, don't obsess over the competition. They're there. You have to be aware of it. You have to be conscious of what they're doing and make sure that you're doing it better, but don't obsess over it. Get out of your own way. They're probably more worried about you, but you just need to make sure that. If you are missing out on stuff, if you are not as successful as you'd like to be, have a good, hard look at it, because there's a good chance that it's something to do with the competition, doing something better.

 

So really you just have to find out exactly what that is and make sure you're doing it yourself. Easy. So that's it for episode 14, thank you so much for listening. I really seriously appreciate it. And I'm going to ask a big favour if you are listening to this podcast, can you please leave me a rating and a review?

 

Hopefully five stars. I hope you're enjoying it. Someone asked me why I'm not asking for reviews and I didn't realize that they were actually important to the algorithm, to the little magic podcast fairies out there who are going to attract more listeners to my podcast. So please, please, please leave me a review.

 

My begging because I was told to beg anyway, that's it really for me? My name's Sandra Carder. I'm a commercial real estate agent. You can find me on LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook under Sandra Carder commercial agent, keep selling hard. Watch that competition and smash that glass ceiling. This episode was brought to you by M2 Moringa.

 

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