How to Get Better at Sales (Real Estate) ft. Yulia Neicovcean

Where do I start? The main one is that they don't listen. They don't try to understand what you want for them. You're a bag of money.

Every salesperson, they have to have a way—how do I become excited? How do I become happy? I would say do like 10 push-ups and it will work. You know, if I do 10 push-ups, I'll go to sleep like I won't be able to meet anybody after. No podcast after that.

Thank you very much. You did my name. You got it right. Nice, I got it right. Let's go!

Yes. ThinkProp is a real estate institute where we license and train all real estate professions in Abu Dhabi and in Dubai too. So we were initially established to help the Abu Dhabi government enforce the laws, because they were laws but there was no entity that would train real estate brokers and license them. So it's not just brokers—it's valuers, surveyors, auctioneers, and there's some new profession coming up too.

I can't. But honestly speaking, all the professions that are in real estate are at some point going to be trained and licensed. This is the target of the Abu Dhabi government, which I think is right. You can't be a doctor if you don't have a degree. Why can you be a real estate broker if you didn't learn about it?

Yeah. Since I've been here for 11 years, Dubai used to be regulated quite a bit before, but Abu Dhabi—they did have real estate, they did have brokers, but they didn't have proper regulations in terms of licensing of brokers or training them. So it was sort of a world of its own until we came into the picture and started regulating it. So ThinkProp is basically that body.

When I was seven years old, I always wanted to be a singer. I loved Britney Spears kind of music. I was singing all the time. I thought I was good, but people at karaoke can say—I don't know, I have no idea. I still sing at karaoke. So that was what I wanted, and then when I was a little bit older, I wanted to be a politician. It fascinated me.

My mom was always working in City Hall, you know, in the capital of my country. So she was my role model. I was admiring her and going into City Hall watching all these people, so I thought I can be a politician.

When I grew up and realized how it really happens. Since I'm from Eastern Europe, it's clear.

Initially Dubai. It was funny because when I wanted to be a politician, after high school I wanted to take a bachelor's in philosophy and politics. My mom was like, 'Who the hell does this? What job do you get with philosophy?' At that time I was reading philosophy and I thought it was going to be cool—all you had to do was just talk smart stuff. No, I didn't end up doing that. I did a bachelor's in finance, and right after I finished university, I came to Dubai.

I had a friend who convinced me to come to Dubai for summer. Imagine how dumb I was—just come for summer and then you'll see. I came here—by the way, it's been 11 years now. I thought I was going to just chill a little bit and go back to Moldova, and I stayed. That's how we all come here. They're like, 'Hey, let's take a little vacation,' and then we're hooked onto the city.

I think like everybody, I came here to work in F&B. So as a hostess in a restaurant. The idea was you just have to stay pretty, smile, give the menus, and you'll be fine. With my Russian attitude, it didn't work at all. I couldn't be nice to them. I resigned after two months. Then I got into real estate.

My first year in Dubai was extremely tough because I never took money from my parents. Working on commission—I came here in 2013, just after the crisis. It was growing but not great. Luckily I speak Russian, so at that time there were Russian clients, so I could start. People think this happened recently, but it's been going on for a while. The first wave of Russians coming here was after the 2008 crisis—they started coming and buying. They were buying floors. At that time it was even more than now.

So we were working with them, and because they wanted to keep their properties, we offered them to do holiday homes. At that time there were no holiday homes in Dubai, there was no department that regulates it. We just did it ourselves—we were the first holiday home company. So I was working in real estate as a broker and doing holiday homes, renting apartments on daily and monthly, so leasing.

Yes. Then I got promoted to operations, and after that I became a commercial director and GM. I was GM at 25.

Yes, it was quite big. We had a staff of 60 people. It was a good experience.

I used to manage the sales teams all the time. I got a lot of training. I'm a nerd, so I took different trainings from the US. I was hiring, interviewing, training our team. This is how I came up with the career of a coach, because at some point the markets were falling again in 2019. I was like, 'I'm so done with real estate—I'm going to teach them to do it right.' So I moved to being a sales coach.

I have an online school. There was this guy from Sri Lanka—I think his name was Om. He was watching my videos and told me after he finished the second module, he sold a product and covered the cost of the course. That was a nice feeling. But overall I have lots of great students because I train in different industries—a lot in tech, a lot in the financial sector. I train Emirates NBD, banking. It's not only real estate—it's basically sales across all these different industries.

People should listen. That's the most important thing. Every salesperson thinks you have to give a pitch, and maybe you do, but you have to listen. Number one: you have to listen, and you have to make sure the clients feel that you're listening to them. Number two: you have to ask questions and don't assume that you know. Salespeople always think they know it all—I know what you need. Number three: make an attempt of closing. There's a statistic that 95% of people do everything right but they don't close. You're pitching your client, you qualified them, you did everything, and then they expect the client to say 'I'm going to buy.' They don't actually put the question. So ask. If the client doesn't say no, ask again and again and again until they say yes or they block you, which is fine.

Correct. The problem in the current market is that there's a big inventory, but not everybody has access to everything. So what they do is they try to pitch what they have. They don't try to understand what the client wants.

Half of the clients never end up buying what they inquired about. Usually you enter a shop thinking you want that, and you end up buying something else. Why? Because we don't know there's another availability, or we don't know what we want. Usually, a salesperson's job is not only to pitch a product but to help the client to buy. As a salesperson, you need to help them understand and qualify them in such a way that they agree with you—'Yeah, I think I need that.' Of course, you have to work on your inventory. You have to have a lot of options from what the client can choose.

Cross-selling. Exactly. And usually, people are afraid to get dropped off, so they put a lower price initially, what is their budget, so that they will be able to negotiate after. So instead of talking about the price—every salesperson, not just real estate brokers, everybody focuses on the price and tries to convince on price. But what the person is thinking about is what they get as an end result. You have to focus on that. When you buy a drill, you don't think about how cool the drill is—you think about the hole in the wall that you're going to make to hang a picture. So you have to sell the end result.

Because that's not really what they care about at the end of the day. It's the feeling they have when they walk into that place.

People decide by emotions and justify it with their brain. So you have to sell emotions. You have to make the client excited about this purchase—to make them feel, to make them believe that this will make them happy. If you're in an empty apartment with white walls and nothing, and you go around saying, 'This is the view, here's the window, the bathroom'—there's no excitement. You have to make sure the client sees a future: their family living there, how his wife is going to cook in that kitchen, how they're going to wake up to this view. You have to generate emotions, not just say, 'This is the price, this is the ROI.'

They do, because people buy from people. It's very important for every brand to have a face. You're the face of your brand. In real estate, if you keep posting square footage and white walls, it won't click. The very important thing every salesperson has to understand is that we're selling the same customers the same product at the same price. The only thing that makes a difference is the personality. Why should someone buy from me and not from you? This is why they have to sell on social media—as a personality. I'm a nerd, so I'd be interested to see a real estate broker sharing news, secrets, updates, something curious and interesting—new laws, new regulations, properties coming on the market, cool deals. Somebody who's on top—that gives me the understanding that the person actually works hard, is smart, and is on top of the market. I want to buy from someone who knows it all and can offer me the best product.

Before, people were tolerating it—you're new, it's fine. Nowadays, the trend is you want to work with professionals. Nobody's tolerating 'I'm going to check with the developer.' You have to know it all. You have to be an expert at what you're selling.

Or if you make content for clients and tell them, 'A customer of mine bought in Creek Harbour for 1.1 million and now sold for 3.5 million'—because it's a real story. The prices in Creek Harbour now are so different. And you can interview that person. Or there was a real estate broker who was sharing that some developer was offering 'buy a townhouse and get a second for free.' Imagine—that deal blew my mind. It was some very far place in the desert, but it doesn't matter. Sharing this kind of stuff. Or when Samana first released one-bedroom with a pool—when you're the first to share market news and you're always on top, those are the brokers people want to follow. Not that they bought a new car or a new Richard Mille watch—it doesn't matter.

I used to do more. Now I'm guilty—I'm not doing it. I know how to do it very well. I'm lazy. With social media, it likes me and I don't like it so much. Everything I do goes well. On LinkedIn I have quite a big following because LinkedIn is something I invest time in—I think about the articles, I write, and they go viral. On Instagram it takes a lot of effort. I have a full-time job too—managing an institute takes a lot of time. But that's an excuse. I should do more.

Apart from the compulsory courses from the government, we focus on soft skills trainings, or what we call professional career development courses—sales, marketing, personal branding, digital marketing. We brought the National Association of Realtors to Dubai, we brought REBIC, the Real Estate Business Institute. We brought a bunch of international designations and bring coaches for certification. I'm the first CRS-certified instructor. The future of education—I think what hasn't hit the spot yet in Dubai or the UAE overall is that training isn't so fancy or cool yet. All over the world, people go for trainings. In Russia, in the US, in Europe, everybody is learning something all the time. Here, the mentality is a bit different—the owner of the company has to provide me with the training. They expect the company will provide it.

Because it's investment in yourself. I would rather hire a person who doesn't have experience but has a lot of training. I know the person invested in themselves and is open to knowledge. When I used to hire for real estate brokerage, the biggest problem is if a person is not coachable—it's very hard to change them. If they learn to not go to viewings and just send the client to see the apartment without them, and then wonder why they didn't close the deal—that will be their pattern unless they're ready to accept, 'I think I'm not doing well, I need to learn.' Everybody has a big ego and it's hard to accept that you need to learn something new, unless it's a habit. So my goal is—I was talking to Suleiman recently—let's make training sexy again. Make it attractive. People need to learn and become interested in what else is out there.

I like all the new proptech things that appear in the market. I like when real estate brokers actually use them. Husp is one great example—they do help a lot with the mortgage market in Dubai. And just basic stuff like ChatGPT—at least emails became nicer. People started becoming more professional on emails all of a sudden. They have better descriptions on YouTube and on Property Finder. Let's hope that the MLS system will get into Abu Dhabi and Dubai because they're both in the process of doing that. That will regulate the market a lot, remove fake listings, and people will make more effort.

Yes, of course. One episode only. I lost brain cells. I was like, I can't do this. I have a friend who has a Netflix show—it's called Buying London. I know him and I know some of the agents. I know how they actually are and how much is dramatized. On the show, sometimes you're just like, is it really like that? Especially Selling Sunset. But if you take all the sparkles and the drama out of it, and you look at how they're doing it, it is right.

Yes, like they...

Prepare the property, they stage it, they make a great viewing. And if you see how they make the viewing is what I was telling you — they sell emotions. You know, sometimes when you come on viewing with a broker in UAE, you walk around and he is like, 'This is this, this is the kitchen,' like you're an idiot and you can see it. But instead of actually showing something that you can get out of it. So yeah, selling emotion. Selling Sunset, yes, it's kind of exaggerated, but the way they are doing it — when you look at their interaction with the clients and when you look how they prep for the viewings and so on — that's how it should be done. And this can be done only when one broker works with one property and he knows he will sell it. That's what MLS is going to solve. When there's exclusivity, because client buyers and sellers are not loyal — they work with everybody, whoever is going to sell my property. And I think it's because in other countries, back in the UK as well, and in Europe as well, the commission is paid by the landlord. But here the commission is paid by the buyer or tenant, so the landlord doesn't care who's going to work as long as they get the thing done. He'll give his property to everybody — just whoever will sell it. So this exclusivity will clean the market and will make people actually do some effort into preparing the property, into selling it, learning about it, and so on.

My favorite quote — I know you do a lot of quotes, I know you like them on the drives to work. So yeah, I don't know who said it, but I think it was something about never stop learning. Because that's what made me. So how I got promoted — it's funny, I'll go back a little bit. I was in the call center answering calls for the holiday homes, and I was complaining that everything is bad, there's no check-ins, blah blah blah. I was very vocal, and our GM was like, 'If you're so smart, just go and do it.' And I became operations supervisor.

Yeah, and like zero understanding of maintenance, cleaning — all this stuff, nothing. So I had to learn. I took some courses to understand how it works. And then I entered by mistake when my sales team had a training, and I stayed there. Being a nerd, I wanted to participate, and then the coach told my boss again, 'She's great in sales, you have to put her in sales.' And then I had to manage the sales team, and I understood that I can sell with my personality, but I don't know how to teach it. Because there is a very clear psychology behind sales — there's a form and math. You just do exactly seven steps or six steps, and you get it done. So I started taking courses. I did Grant Cardone, I did Belfort, I've done Brian Tracy — all the famous ones. I've done University of Grant Cardone for around two years of courses.

To me at the time, yeah, I needed that. Because Grant Cardone is a lot about massive action, a lot of 'do a lot,' and his 10X kind of theories and stuff. At that time, it was worth it.

His main thing is: whatever you're doing, do it 10 times more and you're going to get more results. So guys who call more, who make more meetings — scale everything you're doing and you'll get more. Now I'm kind of flipping on the other side towards quality rather than quantity, but at that time it was worth it. And it's also important to understand why learning is important: everything is changing. If 10 years ago cold calling was the thing, now it's not. If people were meeting face to face, now they do Zoom, and a lot of customers are happy to not go down and meet. All the interviews are going on Zoom now — I'm so lazy to drive to some more in-person interview. So lots of stuff is changing, you need to keep up with it. That's why you have to never stop learning.

Exactly. When I train, I tell them to do more. When it comes to me, I know that I'd better speak to three clients and I'm probably going to close all three just because I know how to do it. But when you have to qualify, when you have to prospect, you have to do as much as possible.

Where do I start. They don't know the product. They don't specialize. It's very important for a broker to be specialized in a certain area, because if you try to cover all of Dubai, it's impossible to know everything about every area. But this is not the main thing. The main thing is that you need to have an inventory for your client to offer. You need three to five similar properties to offer them. And if you have one in JVC, another one in Sports City, another one on the Palm, and then in Jebel Ali — he doesn't have anything alternative to choose from your inventory, and he'll go somewhere else. Then, listings — they have to actually invest in these things. It has to be, same as social media, qualitative content. Nice pictures, right description, right pricing. As a real estate broker, you're selling to two people: you're selling to the customer, the buyer, the property; and to the landlord, the price. If their price is exaggerated, you have to convince them. Through another PropTech thing that I like — the data stuff. We have DXB Interact, and we have one in Abu Dhabi called Quanta, there's a bunch of different ones here. They're very useful, and I'm glad that real estate brokers are actually using them. So when you try to talk to a landlord and he's telling you that he wants 20 million for his villa, you justify it by showing that the last 20 transactions on the same kind of villa were at 15 million. So he'll be more talkative, more flexible — okay, maybe we can drop it down. Otherwise he'll be like, 'Mine is the best, I have the Versace tiles.' Sentiment premium.

When I was a real estate broker, we didn't have that. You had to keep bringing them clients so they would see that the clients weren't ready to pay that much, and then they would slowly go down on the price. Now you have data that comes from DLD that is very nicely arranged and filtered. So that's another tool that is good. The main mistake is that they don't listen. They don't try to understand what you want from them. You're a bag of money and the commission that comes. They also kind of filter people by the way they look — 'This guy will not buy.' They start understanding straight away who will buy and who will not. And usually it's wrong. Usually people who are not going to buy, they pretend like they are very interested and very rich. And the other ones, they don't show how wealthy they are. So it's interesting when you have that pattern recognition in your head — your brain is just like an algorithm, 'Okay, this guy works at this job, which means he probably can't buy this.' Disqualify. And they don't even try.

First of all, you need to treat every buyer like they're real buyers. Even if they won't buy from you, they'll have a good experience and they'll recommend you to somebody. You have to go to the meeting with the belief that this is the buyer. And here it comes — psychology. How do you cheer yourself up? Somebody has chocolate, somebody jumps, somebody sings, somebody watches stand-up comedy. Every salesperson has to have ways to switch themselves on. How do I become pumped, excited, happy? Because if you go on the meeting bored and lazy and tired — not good. You go excited, you already did your exercise. It can be meditation, it can be a prayer. I always ask when I train: what is your way of doing it? And the majority say music, food, prayer, meditation. I would say do like 10 push-ups and it will work. You release endorphins and you become more happy. And then you need to have a plan. Sales are a subsequence of actions — we can call it a script. You need to have in your head the steps: now I'm greeting, now I need to qualify, and now I'm shutting up and listening to the client.

Yeah, it's a good trick to summarize what they said. While they're talking, you say, 'Okay, so to make it clear that I understood you well, you want one bedroom with this view, in this area, with this square footage, for this purpose, and so on.' That will make them feel that you listened, you shut them off so he'll be comfortable that you heard everything. You summarized, and the most important thing is when you present that particular property, he cannot say no — because he just told you that he likes that, and if you offer him exactly that, he can't really object.

Yes, do a few PropTech courses, that'll be fine. You need to summarize everything he said and then proceed with the presentation. Present the property, and at the same time while presenting, you need to understand: does he like it, or is he bored? Is he staring at the phone? Are you being the background noise, or do they have your attention? If you don't get the attention, move to another product. Talk about something else, find out what they didn't like about this particular one. Another mistake I just remembered: when you're on a sales meeting or viewing, real estate agents have a lot going on and they tend to answer other calls, chat with somebody, and they even say, 'Sorry, I'm talking to my client.' And it's like, who am I then? Why am I here? You have to be 100% there. Put your phone aside, be there, and don't schedule your meetings one right after another that you can't manage after.

And you're still trying to be sucked into something that's not there. But when you are in the moment — let's say I am recording this — you need to think about the thing that your friend asked you about two days ago, or something like that.

There are exercises you can do. If you feel like you're being distracted, like your thoughts are elsewhere, you focus on your breath — like meditation, you just focus on it and it kind of brings you back. If you want to show somebody that you're interested, you do like that pose — leaning forward. When your body is forward like that, it means you're showing that you're interested. When you're leaning back, it means you're not. So that's NLP — a little bit of body language is important. Looking a person in the eyes is important, but not too much, because some people are staring at you and that's intimidating. Not everybody likes it too much. But you need to be there, focus. If you know your phone is your problem, put it in your pocket, remove the notifications. Nothing will happen. I remember when I was managing the company at a real estate brokerage — at that time I was the commercial director, so I had everything on my phone. Hundreds of groups, everybody texting. I remember I was on a plane and I switched off my phone. When I landed, the first message was, 'Yulia, we need this,' then 'Urgent, please reply, we don't know what to do,' then 'Wait, I called Mohammed, I got a solution,' and then it's done. I wasn't there and they managed to fix it. When you're not babysitting your team — that's another aspect of leadership — when you don't micromanage, they will find a way. You don't have to be 24/7 on your phone. You don't have to be always with your team. Trust them to follow through and do their part, because you chose them for a reason.

You know, it's nice when you're 21, you're not afraid of anything. Because I wouldn't do the things that I've done at 21 — I wouldn't do them now. I wouldn't move to a new country with $400. So believe in yourself. Don't limit your dreams based on where you're from, your family background, or what you've been told. Because I come from a post-USSR country, and whatever we were told was that this is what you have and this is what you're going to get. You're going to have a steady job, earn like 200 bucks a month, marry, make kids, and die. It was very pre-written. I knew what I was going to do, and I didn't agree with that. So I think believe that everything is possible. Luckily now the internet helps — you can look at young people that travel all over the world, that succeed, that make their own companies. All this is motivational. I think this generation doesn't have an issue of believing in themselves. But apart from believing, they need to actually do something. That's the problem. They all like to dream and want to be somebody, but the action is missing. And I think this is our mistake a little bit as influencers — we show in social media only the success. We show how cool we are: 'Look at me, I'm at the training, I'm going to the event with Tony Robbins.' We need to show as well how much work we do, how much we learn. I read a book a week, and my reading isn't just sales — I don't like to read about sales because it's the same stuff every book. I read psychology, business, investment, finance, PropTech, tech — everything that I can bring into sales or my leadership. So how much effort I put in to deliver that three-hour training. The new generation has to understand that there is a lot of work behind the fancy life we try to show in Dubai.

So, we're always partners of this event. Cecilia and Sonia are our coaches — they train in our academy. I usually get a table for my trainers. Syan, Mel, Mark — they're all my trainers. And then some of them were for my staff, and my staff were at the booth outside. Mel told me, 'Can I bring Lyette and Do?' I'm like, 'Yeah, of course, bring everybody.' So I wasn't surprised, but I just didn't know you.

I think you're also a very open guy. You're open to conversations, you want to meet new people, and you're not afraid or shy to ask. This industry is very focused on experience. It was hard for me to become a coach — I was blonde before, so this Barbie girl trying to come in front of people and tell them she knows about sales, while all the coaches in real estate in Dubai are like gray-haired, aged men. So I had to show that I know about tech, about new techniques, about AI, and how you can improve your sales — not just the old greeting, pitching, and so on. I try to show that being young doesn't just mean I look young; it brings a lot of innovation. You bring something that people didn't think about because you're coming out of the box. You look at the industry and see where the flaws are and how you can fix them.

Thank you for having me.