What could you, as a real estate agent, learn from the con man who sold the Eiffel Tower twice?

In the good old days (the 1920s) there was a man named Victor Lustig who was a smooth-tongued criminal who went from one scam to another, always looking for a way to separate people from their money.

He was involved in many scams throughout his career. But the scam that would make him famous throughout history involved the Eiffel Tower.

In 1925, Lustig, who was always looking for a new scam, was in Paris and noticed a newspaper article describing how the French government was having a hard time maintaining the Eiffel Tower. Being the cheating consumer that he was, an idea popped into his mind. Why not sell the Eiffel Tower?

The first thing he did was have a forger create official government stationery and personally “appointed” himself to the prestigious position of Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs. Letters on official-looking letterheads were then sent to five different scrap iron dealers; they were deliberately vague and simply invited to discuss a possible government contract.

When everyone arrived at the meeting, and after entertaining the men for a bit, Lustig made the surprise announcement that the government was indeed scrapping the Eiffel Tower.

He noted that the tower had been built in 1889 and was never intended to be a permanent structure, which everyone knew to be true. He mentioned that the government could no longer pay maintenance, something the men had already read about in the newspaper. The newspaper had mentioned that the Eiffel Tower was in need of a major repair, the cost was very prohibitive, and there was a brief comment that the government was exploring the idea that it might be cheaper to tear it down than to repair it. He was careful to emphasize that this was a highly controversial decision on the part of the government, so the men had to keep quiet about the tower’s disappearance or risk public outcry.

Lustig then arranged to take each man on a tour of the tower to establish rapport, determine their emotions, and select their “brand”. After interviewing each junk dealer, she selected a man named André Poisson and worked the sales magic on him.

After the sale was completed, Lustig immediately left for Austria. He made no attempt to hide and lived a life of luxury at Poisson’s expense. Every day, Lustig checked the Paris newspapers for news about his scam, but he was never reported in any of the newspapers. He came to the conclusion that Fish was too embarrassed to fall for the scam and had decided to eat his loss. Knowing that he was clean, Lustig returned to Paris a year later and pulled the exact same scam again.

Yes, you read that right, Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower for the second time! But he wasn’t so lucky that time. His mark went to the police and the story blew up in the press. Lustig was forced to leave Europe and head to the United States. There would be no third sale of the tower.

What does this scammer have to do with you as a Real Estate Agent? Well, a lot actually. While selling the Eiffel Tower, Lustig used specific techniques that the people at Natural Born Sales use; dirty techniques you should be using too.

Scammers and natural salespeople have exactly the same skills. However, there is a significant difference between the two and that is the intention. Scammers use these psychology techniques to harm people in a win/lose proposition. The scammer wins and the person they are working with loses…sometimes everything.

On the other hand, Born Salespeople use the same techniques to help people on a win/win proposition, helping their clients achieve their dream and buy a home, while becoming the top 10% of real estate agents who do it. do.

Both are experts in the use of psychology.

Both are experts at using customer emotions to sell.

Both are experts in using and gaining rapport.

Both are experts at finding out what the client’s unconscious mind wants.

They are both experts at figuring out what emotions are driving that person and using those emotions to make a sale.

The difficulty comes when you try to get a born salesperson to teach you how to sell like them, and they can’t. They can’t because most born salespeople don’t have a clue how they do what they do. It comes naturally to them and they don’t even have to think about what to do to make a sale. This is why so many of the best salespeople make the worst trainers. They can’t teach what they do.

Now the good news. These psychological sales techniques can be learned and mastered, and once mastered they can propel you to the top.

For example, a tenet of sales psychology is that people buy based on emotion and justify with logic. I’m pretty sure you’re even familiar with this principle, but do you know how to use it to make sales?

Imagine if you knew exactly how the principle works, you could use it to help your clients while becoming a better agent.

One of the many natural skills sales professionals and con artists use is to listen and ask questions until they understand exactly what the person wants, not just consciously, but more importantly, unconsciously. This is one of the biggest mistakes many if not most real estate sellers make, they listen but don’t really understand.

In a sales situation, and even in everyday conversation, people use “Code Words.” For example, a client may tell you that she is looking for a house with a view. The word “see” is a keyword. You may think you know what it means, but you really don’t. You understand what “view” means to you, but not what it means to your customer. The Natural Salesperson instinctively knows that he doesn’t know what “view” means and can extract the true meaning of the customer.

Not too long ago this happened to a new agent I was working with. He was teaching her about keywords. She seemed a little confused at first and then all of a sudden you could see the light come on in her head. She told me that for the last two months she had been working with a couple who were looking for a home. She had asked them what they wanted and they told her a house with a view. With that in mind, she kept taking them around and showing them houses with views. The agent lived in the Great Northwest, where there are stunning views of mountains, valleys, and rivers, so there was plenty to choose from. But no matter what she showed them, the wife was never happy.

One day, while being shown houses, they passed through a neighborhood and noticed a sign leading to a house that had gone on the market earlier that day. They decided to call the listing agent and were able to go see him that day. While touring the house, the wife commented on what a great view the house had and the agent was surprised because the house was completely surrounded by trees, and he had no view! The officer, looking out the window at all the trees, asked her what she meant and the wife said, “I can’t see any cars.”

For months, the agent had tried to find a house that had, what the agent considered, a view, but it was never what the wife considered a view, and the agent had no idea. By “view” the wife meant that she wanted to be able to look out the windows and not see any of her husband’s cars, equipment or tools… that’s what a good view meant to her.

Perhaps if you understood the keywords and other techniques used by the born salesperson, you too would be able to sell the Eiffel Tower. And if you could sell the Eiffel tower a couple of times when it wasn’t even for sale, he thinks about how many houses you could sell.

Oh, and as for our con man Lustig, he ended up dying in Alcatraz prison (where he was sent after being convicted of a forgery scheme) and his death certificate listed his occupation as a salesman.