I’m not an overly educated person. I am quite accomplished in selling and in selling real estate.
My successes as an entrepreneur are directly attributable to my having studied Sun Tzu And The Art Of War, and I am producing a multi part Podcast Series called Sun Tzu And The Art “Success”.
The first in this series of Podcast Entrepreneur training (they are designed for straight commission sales people) is targeted to real estate sales people as I haven’t seen a more needing target market.
I’ve made millions selling real estate in the past decade, specializing in residential condos in downtown Toronto. Before that I sold condos for developers at their sales sites and was known as a “top gun” (politically correct word for “high pressure salesman“) dating back to the early 1980’s.
My entrepreneurialism hatched from my lack of formal education thus professional selling constituted a “life line” for me and for that I am grateful. These “Success Training Programs” and designed to give anyone who is dependent on selling themselves (it’s not just sales people who have to sell you know) an increased chance at being successful.
There are lots sales “gurus“, offering sales training but unfortunately, most of these courses are being delivered by people who are not successful entrepreneurs, but rather by academics who’ve taken other courses and are now regurgitating what they heard there.
Success doesn’t work like that folks!
If anyone had “instincts” for selling, that would be me. I tried community college with my friends after high school but dropped out as I needed money having come from a rather dysfunctional broken home.
I quickly became an overnight success with Olivetti Canada selling typewriters. Fortunately for me, they invested in professional sales training courses for me which taught me a conscious awareness of “selling” and gave me a foundation to what proved to be a lifelong profession.
I then was promoted to sell their “computers” (actually just very basic programable calculators for surveyors, engineers but they were “state of the art” back then 1960’s).
In the 70’s I decided to become an “artist” and returned to school to learn photographics arts but the Ontario College Of Art courses were booked so I ended up at Ryerson which was a technical school and that didn’t work out.
I was fortunate to come across an ad by a Fortune 500 company (“Dun & Bradstreet”) looking for straight commission sales people to sell their mailing labels and, as unsexy as selling mailing labels was, I figured that it would give me personal credibility and immediate income.
They also invested in a continuing course of education in psychological selling and again I shot to the top, quickly expanding my product line from mailing labels to intelligent market research studies where Fortunate 500 companies could find out, confidentially, what their existing clients thought of them, and then using D&B’s databases identify companies that matched their existing clients, and have D & B conduct a confidential market study (participants would not know who they were talking to) to be able to identify opportunities.
D & B always wanted me to train new sales people and I discovered that I actually enjoyed working them, but D & B, the corporate Galiath, was also very tight with the cash and I wanted to drive Mercedes Benz’s, wear expensive suites, and live the good life that seems to be achievable only through entrepreneurialism.
I worked as an independent sales trainer and recruiter for quite some time and ended up being called in to recruit and train a sales team for Canada’s infamous Reichmann Family who had failed with three sets of salespeople trying to sell condominiums above the Queen’s Quay Terminal on Toronto’s harbour front.
I was so impressed, I took the job myself and have remained involved, off and on, in the Toronto condo and real estate scene for almost four decades, culminating on my having launched simplycondos.com is 2000.
Today, I’m retired from day to day real estate, I own rental income properties and am semi-retired, and quite frankly . . . . . bored!
So I’ve decided to go back to my roots, where I enjoyed myself the most, and train people on how to become successful, by sharing how I’ve done it!
The first in the series is for real estate sales people, most of whom, with all due respect, haven’t got a clue about professional selling, entrepreneurialism, or running their own business!
Most of the major brands (Royal LePage, Coldwell Banker, ReMax, Century 21, etc.) have what they call sales training (some even refer to it as success training), but they all rely on antiquated “canned” material that is general and generic to selling but not on how to be successful selling real estate.
One company (listed above) actually charges recruits for the courses (they waive the fees after a certain time period) but if the recruit wants to quit working at the company within that time period they take them to court to collect the money.
And yet, I just read up-to-date statistics that stated that 90% of the Toronto Real Estate Board (“TREB”) transaction each year are transacted by ONLY 10% of its members!
There has never been anything even closely related to the approach that I’m going to take. I’ve trained lots of sales people in the past, but not specifically in real estate as when I am working I adhere to a “Lone Wolf” mentality.
You’ll find that in selling because anyone that I help will ultimately be a better equipped competitor of mine down the road. I did recruit one novice real estate girl to handle all of the business that my web site simplycondo.com (40,000 “Hits Per Day” at its peak) generated that I did not want to service.
I kept all high end leads and passed on my lower end leads from the site to her after I had trained her in how to handle my clients.
She immediately shot to the top of the company she was licensed with at the time and has continually earned a six figure annual income for a decade now, while simply working my leads. She has just become a mother of two and has become a manager at an Oakville Royal LePage corporate office.
I have started writing scripts for these Pod Casts and will have them available on simplycharles.com in time for Christmas this year. If you are married to a salesman they will prove an invaluable (and entertaining) Christmas stocking stuffer (that shows you care).
Selling is hard! It’s hard because most people that enter the field never thought that they would end up their and are therefore ill-equipped to adjust to the “real-time” demands and educational requirements (which really are not available out there).
I’m opening with the series “Sun Tzu And The Art of Real Estate Selling” because real estate selling is a very unique profession within the overall world of selling.
You see, real estate actually “sells itself“! You can’t use “high pressure” sales techniques to move someone into buying something that they do not want, like you pretty much can in many other disciplines (life insurance, for example).
That’s why conventional sales training courses, books, web sites, blogs, etc. miss the point! They are usually regurgitations of academic courses taken from somewhere by somebody claiming them as their own, but they are based on actually success stories materialized by the person giving you the training!
I see this as an opportunity for me to give back and genuinely help others. You’ve got to do the tough slugging which is to digest what I’m teaching you in these pod casts and then go out there into the real world and execute what I’ve taught you.
There are no scripts to learn, memorize and/or rehearse. You are going to be taught what you have to do, and what you have to know, to make yourself successful.
You will want to have you notebook (physical or computer) to take notes. Anyone taking the complete course is entitled to one-on-one mentoring to follow, but you have to complete the course and submit all required completed material.
This is an investment on both of our sides! I accept my responsibility to be accountable to you at the end when you skill-set should have improved significantly! The beauty of real estate (and the sales industry in general) is that you are not required to risk very much more than what you’ve already put into the game.
You’ve made the investment in time, energy and resources and gotten a real estate license. You should place a value on each component as you’ve launched your own entrepreneurial business (“YOU” Inc.).
I’m not here to give you the key to your success without you making the investment! The small course fee is less that a single rental transaction so don’t be foolish enough to let this vital training pass you by.
I can assure you that it is nothing like anything else out there.
I’m Charles
First Service Residential
First Service Residential