Straight Talk – Tom Panos

With over 30 years in the real estate industry and a Masters degree in Management and Coaching Psychology, Tom Panos has established himself as one of Australia’s leading sales trainers. He teaches agents across Australasia how to attract business, not just chase it… and now he shares his insights with the Mentored community.

Mark Bouris said, “We’re in tough times. There’s no doubt about that. But life and business goes on. We all need to be equipped with a bit of grit and toughness, as well as the skills to sell, because without both, you’re going to have an even harder time getting through this crisis. If there’s one person who’s a master of selling, and has a healthy dose of resilience to boot, it’s my good friend Tom Panos.”

“Tom is without a doubt the No.1 Real Estate Sales Trainer in Australia, and a longtime survivor of cancer,” said Bouris.

Mark asks Tom about resilience – having battled cancer, Tom has a fair bit to say about perspective. They also discuss the keys to making a sale, the common problems for business owners trying to sell, and much more.

The Art of the Sale

Make it easy for someone to say yes.

That is Tom’s key message to anyone who’s trying to sell a product or service they believe in.

People shouldn’t hesitate if you’re selling “something that’s good for them. And for that reason, you shouldn’t be scared to say ‘hey have you got any of this?’ Because if I think that that’s good for you, I should make it easy for you to say yes.”

Tom believes that the biggest issue is those who struggle to sell, is that people don’t have belief in themselves or their product.

“When you believe in what you’re selling…it’s like electricity. It goes from one person to another. Having belief is critical.”

How do you influence others?

Tom discussed an important influence in his studies: Influence, by Robert Cialdini.

“As part of his PHD, this guy would go in undercover and go through sales training programs for insurance companies, real estate companies, and he would go off and become a candidate and a graduate.”

“Then he went off and he studied ‘why is it that some people have the ability to influence another person?’ There’s around five or six techniques, when used with good intent, you can become a super-sales person, a trusted adviser. If you use  them with bad intent, you’re a conman.”

“Some people use it to rip a business partner off, or rip thousands of people off, others use it to become a $500 million broker.”

Some of the techniques discussed by Tom include:

Social Proof –

“If you go do an inspection on a property at 4pm, and they see there is another buyer sitting outside at 4:15, and another buyer at 4:30, all of a sudden, the original buyer says ‘This property is valuable’. That’s social proof: what others are doing.”

Scarcity – 

“People want what they can’t have.”

“That’s the power of an auction. You’re at an auction and someone says ‘$1 million’. They’ve got the bid, they’ve taken the property away from the other bidder.”

Authority –

“Why do we see some of these TV commercials where companies are selling tooth paste, and a guy with a white coat is on looking like a dentist? It’s an authority figure.”

“In an auction, automatically an auctioneer gets put up on a pedestal. Ironically the real estate agent has done all the work, but when you’re the centre piece in a crowd, you look like you have the authority.”

“TV does it as well. Televsion gives you automatic authority.”

For Tom, no matter what industry you’re in, you want to be known in the market place, and have what Tom titles eminence: “Someone who has superiority amongst their peers.”