Why People Buy Your Real Estate Services

In real estate, knowing why people really want to buy or sell homes is important. People might say they need more space or have a new job, but it's their feelings that matter most. They might feel happy or upset about these changes. By asking good questions and listening carefully, real estate agents can understand these feelings better. This helps agents do a better job, no matter what the housing market is like.

A New Era in Real Estate

We’re entering a new age in real estate sales where you’ll be required to sell your value at a level you’ve never had to.

HINT: Relationships

You’ve probably heard this quote before:

“People make decisions with emotion and they validate them with logic."

But what does this even mean? 

Buyers experience two different motivations

There are two types of feelings you want to identify in your prospects. There are external and then there are internal.

External Motivators

More often than not when you’re in a conversation, people will tell you what is going on externally. Your job, whether you are working to identify their core motivation and or their core pain, is to identify how that’s making them feel. 

When you ask people what their motivation is, they might say something like: 

• I have a new job 

• We are expecting a new child and need more space 

• We are getting a divorce 

• We are hoping to downgrade–we have too much space

• Our last REALTOR didn’t market the property well 

While this is good information, it's just what is happening on the outside. We need to learn more about how this makes them feel. 

Internal Motivators

People are either running towards pleasure or away from pain. Mostly all sales decisions then are based on one of these two emotions, good or bad. 

When someone gives you an external reason for wanting to do something, it’s causing them to feel something internally. 

There is something called the emotional ladder. You can see it here:

People are running towards one of these emotions or they are running away from one of these emotions. 

In sales, you’re trying to identify their Big Goal, Big Pain, and how that’s making them feel. 

Most people are moving away from pain towards a big goal. So, as a salesperson, your job is to identify the big pain and how that’s making them feel. 

The importance of identifying a prospect's pain

What you’re selling them is relief of the pain. 

NOTE: That has very little to do with the commission you charge.

You’ve been in pain before, right? You’d pay anything to get out of it. Most people do. And that is the nature of buying and selling that will not change, no matter what’s going on in the market. 

Is it true that some people will not be able to afford your services? Yes 

You can’t change that and neither can I. So we focus on solving problems for people in the market who can. Plain and simple. 

People make decisions with emotion and they validate them with logic. 

The importance of asking great questions!

To be a truly great salesperson, you’ve got to become very good at asking questions and then actively listening for the right pieces of information. Anytime I’ve trained salespeople, I’ve always said, “Internal Pain = Why They Buy”. 

Find the internal pain. It’s the true motivator. 

When you’re in a sales conversation you can accomplish this in a couple of ways. 

Finding the core motivation is pretty easy: What’s your motivation for selling the home? What’s your motivation for buying a home? 

(Response)

“Amazing! How would (big motivation) make you feel? 

You want to remember very clearly their responses as that’s the pleasure they are running towards. 

Questions to find pain: What’s keeping you from buying a new home? What challenges have you faced selling the home? 

(Response)

“I see! How does that make you feel?"

Unless you’ve built great rapport, you will get surface-level answers to this question. You’ve got to ask a few different times to get to the root emotion. Refer back to the emotional ladder for the list of negative emotions to look out for. 

NOTE: This conversation requires a lot of active listening, empathy, and emotional intelligence. 

Final Thoughts

The most powerful force in human nature is emotion. Learn what’s driving people to make the decisions they are making and you can become a lethal salesperson in the best possible way. 

I sometimes like to call this emotional math. The more and more you focus on this, the better you get at it, and the more sales you will make. 

Remember, the market doesn’t get to determine how successful you will be, your mindset will. 

Keep working on improving your skill sets or helping others do the same.