Why Glengary Ross is the Worst Sales Training Ever for Realtors
SUMMARY
Glengarry Glen Ross is the worst sales training ever for Realtors because:
1. It portrays real estate sales as self-centered, not client-centered.
2. It’s high pressure which causes high resistance.
3. It implies you have to to be a jerk to be successful.
Here is the YesMasters approach that gets “Yes” without the BS:
1. It’s about the clients’ best interest, not yours.
2. It values strong leadership that inspires good decisions for the seller.
3. It’s a cocktail of high skills with a heart for the people you serve.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
You want to go out on those sits tonight and close, close, it’s yours. If not, you’re going to be shining my shoes. You get their names to sell them. Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it because you are going out.
A,B,C, always be closing. When I started real estate back in 1998 it had just been a few years since the movie Glengarry Glen Ross had come out where Alec Baldwin gives this famous, fire-breathing speech to a room full, I say a room full, a handful of washed out sales guys, real estate sales guys that were not cutting it. And he made this famous.
A,B,C. A, always, B, be, C, closing. Always be closing. Always be closing.
And then he proceeds to rip them up for not being able to take a lead and close it.
Because only one things counts in this life. Get them to sign on the line, which is dotted.
And I remember when I first started real estate, I heard this over and over. And somebody says, “You want to really get good at closing? You want to learn to master a hard closing? That’s where all the success is. Go watch the movie Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Well, back in 1998 you couldn’t just get on Netflix, or on Amazon Prime, or whatever and just dial it up, so you had to go find it. Well, I couldn’t didn’t find it for a long time. It was years later. It was three or four years before I ever actually saw the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross. And, when I saw it I just remember thinking to myself, “That’s what they want me to be like?”
Put that coffee down. Coffee’s for closers only. You call yourself a salesman you-
That guy is a jerk. That guy is absolutely horrible. Who in the world would want to be like him?
Because we’re adding a little something to this month’s sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize, a set of steak knives, third prize is you’re fired. You’re laughing now? You close or you hit the bricks.
Well, he was successful. He made a lot of money, so that was it. And, it just kind of floored me that that was being held up to us as that as the way to do sales. And, I believe, and I developed this over time, I believe that Glengarry Glen Ross is the worst sales training ever for realtors.
I want to talk about why that’s the case, and how the right way to do sales really should be done. So, why do I believe Glengarry Glen Ross is the worst sales training ever? Well, there are three reasons, and there’s more than three, but I’m going to give you three main reasons.
Number one, because the approach that you see, this ABC approach, the way it’s portrayed in the movie is it’s self-centered not client-centered. It’s all about getting the deal done. It doesn’t matter that the people aren’t motivated. It doesn’t matter they can’t afford to make this move. None of that matters. What matters is, you get their lead. Your job is to get them to sign on the dotted line whether they want to or not.
Sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you going to take it? Are you man enough to take it?
And, so it’s all about getting something for you, not serving a client. And, I believe as a real estate agent you are actually an agent for someone else. An agent is someone who acts on behalf of another. That’s what an agent is. Then you have legally what we call a fiduciary responsibility to your client. Fiduciary is a relationship of trust. It’s a relationship of good faith, and that’s not what was portrayed in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Second reason, and because it’s high super intense, high pressure, which just causes high resistance. In other words, it’s all about overpowering somebody and getting them to say yes because they can’t so no, because you’re overpowering them.
You want to work here, close.
And the third reason is, because it implies you have to be a jerk to be successful. I mean, I think the worst message from that movie was that if you really want to be successful you got to run over people. You got to be a jerk, or other words you can think of to describe that.
You know what it takes to sell real estate? It takes brass balls to sell real estate. You want to go out on those sits tonight and close, close and it’s yours. If not, you’re going to be shining my shoes. You get their names to seal them. You can close the leads your given? You can’t close … Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it because you are going out.
It’s totally countered everything that I believe about what your responsibility is as a real estate agent. So, I want to share with you what I believe, or what I look at as what I call the YESMasters approach. The way I train, and what I believe will help you get better results, and help you get more yes without the BS, without the bait and switch, without the blatant sales tactics, without the hard-core closing that well help people who want to work with you, ane help them make good decisions.
So, here’s what I call the YESMasters approach. Number one, is it’s about the client’s best interest, not yours. That your highest responsibility is to serve their best interests, and when you do that, and you do it well you’re going to have lots of success.
So, it’s kind of like to borrow a line from President Kennedy, from JFK … Ask not what your client can do for you, ask what you can do for your client. And the more you serve them, and the more value you can add to them, the more successful you become.
The second key is, that the YESMasters approach values strong leadership that inspires good decisions from the seller, rather than high pressure. So, I look at it as leadership skills versus sales skills. And, good leadership skills is, how do inspire somebody to make a decision that three months or six months later from now, they are going to thank you for helping them make that decision? That, my friend, is good sales.
And it’s sales you can feel good about, and sales they’re going to feel good about, because you helped them make a decision that they were like, “That’s what we needed to do. And, thank you for helping us make that decision when we were scared, when we were uncertain, when we had cold feet.” That, my friends, is something you can feel great about, and something you can build your life doing. Right? I look at it as, it’s serves people rather than squeezes people. And, this idea that you have to squeeze people to make a lot of money is just total not true. It’s total BS.
The third thing about the YESMasters approach is, it’s not an amateur approach. It requires a cocktail of high skills with a heart for serving people, and helping them get the results they want. So, it’s taking a high level of skills.
The difference between high-pressure sales, hard-core closing, is not that that requires skills and what I’m talking about doesn’t require skills. It’s that one is skills with a heart, and the other one is skills with no heart. It’s all about the money.
And, I believe that when you take high level of skill, and you match that with a heart, you’re unstoppable. Because, people want to work with you and people will hire you, because they want to hire you, and because they trust you, and know that you can help them get a better result. And I believe it’s not only what our industry needs, what the real estate industry needs, but it’s what the sellers and buyers want today. It’s what our clients want.
And, I want to know from you if you agree with this. If you agree with this make sure, of course, you give the video a thumbs up. Put your comments down below.
And, I also want to let you know that if you want to master that kind of selling, the kind of selling that has high skills, and has a heart that actually allows you care about people, and to serve people’s best interest and get paid, and make a lot of money because you add a lot of value to people’s lives. And, I want to invite you to come join me at my next training camp where you will learn the skills. You’ll learn the strategies. You’ll learn the mindset. You’ll learn the scripts. You’ll learn the systems. Everything that you need that work today to help you get more yes, without he BS. Now, we got the link in the description below. Just click on the link. Get all the details, and then register, and I’ll look forward to seeing you at my next training camp.
If you have any questions, or any thoughts, or anything you’d like to say about this, I want you to post them in comments. Make sure you give the video a thumbs up if you like it. And subscribe to my channel if you haven’t done that yet, so you get notified of my next training, which will be up next week. And, I’ll look forward to seeing you soon.