In our last blog post about One Team, One Experience I talked heavily about alignment. If the move from online to onsite is done well, it should feel natural from the buyer’s perspective. Exciting, even. The OSC should be building anticipation, not creating confusion. It should sound more like: “I’d love for you to meet my good friend; they’re going to have a much better handle on those specific house questions and help you take the next step.” That is a handoff. Not:…
We Are All on The Same Team
Marketing, sales, and online sales are all on the same team. We need to put that into practice, especially when it’s easy to slip into a scarcity mindset. Recently I heard two different stories that inspired this blog post. One was of someone at leadership level disparaging OSCs and what they do…because numbers are down. The other was of salespeople disparaging OSCs and what they are doing…because numbers are down! In the first case, I…
OSCs Are Driven When You Give Them the Right Car
An OSC is going to be just as driven as a sales agent to create sales for the company as long as you give them the right vehicle to do so. That vehicle means having the right: Company Support Pay Structure Tools Training Company Support – The gas that fuels the car Energy is everything. The tone set by the leadership of the company can make or break a program. This role needs to have…
Don’t Say I Don’t Know: An OSC’s Guide to Building Trust – Scenario Three
The past couple of posts have explored how to build trust and not use the words, “I don’t know.” It’s not that we are trying to be dishonest when we don’t know the answer check out Scenario One for situations where we just may not know the information because we are new, or we haven’t committed something we SHOULD know to memory. Or that we are trying to be deceptive when we haven’t been given…
Don’t Say I Don’t Know: An OSC’s Guide to Building Trust – Scenario Two
In part one of Don’t Say, “I don’t know.” We attacked a scenario that’s easy to fall into if you are a brand new OSC, or even when you have been doing this for a while, but there may be things you just don’t know. Saying “I don’t know,” is the quickest way to kill trust with a new home buyer and have them rudely asking for someone who does know. But in scenario two…
Don’t Say I Don’t Know: An OSC’s Guide to Building Trust – Scenario One
As I got going writing this up, I realized it was waaaaayyyyy too long for a single blog post. So here’s part one of three! As an online sales counselor, whether you are new, or you’ve been doing this a while there are questions you simply can’t answer. Either because you don’t know the answer, the information doesn’t exist, or it’s not your question to answer… I’ll explain these scenarios in a three part series,…
Understanding Emotions… Not Playing on Emotions
It’s often said the buying a home is an emotional purchase. While of course budget, location, and timeline for needing or wanting to move is important, there is a deeper psychology that comes into play when purchasing a home. At its core, owning a home begins with the foundational levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This motivational theory in psychology from American psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s 1943 paper, “A theory of Human Motivation,” published in the…
Online Sales Counselors, Sinking Ships, Mindset, Mindshift, Energy, and the Customer Experience
Did that catch your attention? I’m going to tell you a story here. Right now, there is a lot of scarcity mindset going around. I hear OSCs concerned about not getting enough leads, or not setting enough appointments, and for some of them they equate this with not making enough money or even being fearful of losing their jobs. This, in turn stresses them out because they can’t pay their bills, which is understandable, but…
Why Do You Need Executive Coaching with an Online Sales Program?
Whether you are setting up a new online sales program, or working on auditing, improving, or revamping an old OSC program, whoever is going to lead the OSC program or team, needs to be on the same page and understand how to communicate goals to the entire company. I’ve said it before, training an OSC cannot happen in a bubble. The leadership of the company, marketing, and sales teams all need to know what to…
What Does “When in Doubt Send It Out” Mean?
Yes, we all want to be setting appointments. Especially if your leads have slowed down, but we don’t want to set just any appointment. We want to set strong appointments that will convert, otherwise we aren’t doing what OSCs are supposed to do. You may have heard the term, “When in doubt, send it out.” But what exactly does that mean? It doesn’t mean short-cut your job as an online sales counselor and bypass the…
Five Things Leadership Should Know About Online Sales
Sometimes the people at the top don’t understand what Online Sales is, what Online Sales Counselors do, and why this role and the program are so important. 1. This is not a “Catch All” position – The online sales program isn’t a place to dump all the odds and ends in the company. An online sales counselor is not a closing coordinator, they are not the social media manager, they are not the graphic designer,…