Now this is just stupid selling…

A few minutes ago I did a Google search looking for homes & land in my area. I gave up after clicking on just a few search results, and here’s why:

The first Google search result I clicked on wanted me to register just to do a search. Unbelievable! I quickly clicked my “back” button, and moved on to search result #2.

This one allowed me to do a search, review the results, and click on the “more details” link. I did, and guess what? I hit a page telling me I had to register before I could view details on that particular home.

No thanks. Time to move on to #3.

And so I did. This one let me search without registering, but I couldn’t view the search results unless I did.

What the hell is the matter with these people? Especially at a time when the real estate market is dead, you’d think real estate brokers would have enough sense to use their brains when putting these sites together!

Unfortunately, common sense is uncommon. They fail to realize this one basic truth of selling:

Anything that isn’t helping your sale is hurting it.

Think about that for a minute. Anything that isn’t helping your sale is hurting it. That means unnecessary words, unnecessary steps of a sale, unnecessary product details or brochures, unnecessary proposals, and on and on.

This is where the notion that “he who speaks first at closing time loses.” We all know that after you ask for the sale, you keep your mouth shut until the prospect says either yes or no. If you open your mouth first, you nearly always lose the sale, because anything that isn’t helping your sale is hurting it.