6 Common Unintended Consequences in Leasing for 2010

1. Overdoing the “friendly” part of sales can frequently backfire on us. Residents don’t trust disingenuous people. Customers realize you don’t care about them that much.

2. Asking prospects intensive qualifying questions can put them on the defensive. No one likes being backed into a corner.

3. In order not to push customers, we frequently don’t introduce everything to our customer. This guarantees they will be looking at your competitors to find it.

4. Pushing for a close is so 1950’s. Again, no one likes being backed into a corner. When this happens, customers bring out the heavy artillery loaded with plenty of objection bullets.

5. Don’t most of us already know that talking poorly about the competition always cheapens us and ironically gives more credibility to our competitors?

6. Selling to a non-decision-maker (e.g. recommender, information gatherer) makes us feel good because it’s easy and we feel we’re making real progress. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re in fact wasting our time and alienating the real decision makers because: a) They don’t think we’re smart enough to figure out who the real decision makers are, and b) They think we perceive them as unimportant.