certificate coursesReal estate certificate courses that don’t teach you how to close sales in the real world are not especially helpful. Selling is a process and it shouldn’t be thought of as a dirty word. The stereotypical used car or time share salesman leaps to mind. This is not the model you want to pattern for long term success in the real estate business. It does no good to browbeat or trick a customer into buying a certain property and then suffer poor word-of-mouth for the next decade and never have a chance to sell to them again as a repeat customer.

The most important thing to remember about sales (that many certificate courses forget to mention) is that customers buy from people they like. Period. End of story. You absolutely must cultivate a positive, sincere relationship with your customers. When they like you, they won’t quibble over details. If they don’t like you, every differing detail is magnified to the size of the Grand Canyon.

The second idea to keep in mind is that a sale is not simply a transaction but an opportunity to develop a lifetime relationship. It’s much more expensive to go out and find new customers than to have a satisfied customer come back to you for more business or, better yet, refer someone else to your services. It’s worth the extra time and energy to create good will that keeps them coming back.

The last Big Idea is that people buy when they’re ready, not when you need to make a sale. Don’t intensely push a property because you desperately need the cash to make a car payment. You’ll not only lose that sale but any more they might have returned for over the years if you had not acted like a jackass on the first one. Even if a hard sell technique works once, you’re doing your credibility and business so much more long term damage. It’s simply not worth it.

The process of selling is incredibly difficult. Don’t let any of the other certificate courses tell you different. At AIPIS we realize that if you don’t know the right way to sell in real estate, nothing else much matters.

The AIPIS Team

Accredited Income Property Investment Specialist

Flickr / Wesley Fryer