If you work for the bank, you sell their mutual funds.

If you work for a Volkswagen dealer, you sell Volkswagen cars.

Even a used car salesperson must sell the vehicles that she has on the lot.

 

Traditional salespeople have to sell a specific item or a set of items with a specific set of characteristics to the client.  If you can’t get the client to see that this is in their best interest, you don’t make a sale.  It doesn’t actually matter if it’s in the client’s best interest or not, you will try to sell it to them because if you don’t, you likely won’t have a job for too long.  Imagine a financial planner at a bank telling all of his customers that the bank’s mutual funds are designed to benefit the bank and not the customer and that they would be better off to invest in Real Estate or some ETF’s managed by Fidelity.

 

So – what do we sell?

 

I’ve heard people say, we sell ourselves but that doesn’t seem right. The customer is interested in trading in real estate, not in us.  We are a means to their end.

 

I think what we sell, and what people buy from us, is the services that we provide.  We sell our skills, knowledge and expertise in trading real estate.

 

It’s our negotiation skills, our micro market knowledge, our understanding of human emotion and psychology and the network of professionals that we have access to.   It’s also our ability to build a strategy that will get the best outcome for the client.

 

Master these things and you won’t have to “sell” anymore.  People will pick you because they know that you will get a better outcome than the alternatives.