“You cannot be a spectator to opportunity” – Lance Schafer

Standing on the stage during an award ceremony is a great opportunity to celebrate the achievements you made during the prior year.

A career as a real estate agent has many benefits – namely a flexible schedule, the freedom to be your own boss, and good commissions. With those benefits comes competition. While not everyone loves it, I appreciate competition. It’s one of the contributing factors to the improvement in our quality of life over the past 100 years. Professionals competing with one another to provide better quality service and products. In turn everyone benefits.

However, competition can be daunting. Looking at the stats of some of the biggest names in the business can seem mythical rather than motivating. Even worse, is seeing a new guy stacking up the awards in just a few years. What is their secret?

Before we get into their secret, lets talk about mindset. Gandhi once said,

“The future depends on what we do in the present.”

A few years ago I heard of the concept of future and present self. To put it plainly, our present self is what we actually do and our future self is what we think we will do. Gym memberships work on this principle. I think I’m going to work out 3 times per week for the next year, because my future self is awesome. So I signup to a gym membership. Turns out that my present self doesn’t agree and in the end the gym pass goes unused.

Some people have figured out how to use this concept of future/present selfs to our advantage. For example, one company asked their employees if they could save money. Unanimously everyone said, “no”. So they asked them if they could save some money in the future. You guessed it, everyone said, “yes”. So the company started a program where their employees could opt to have 10% of their paycheck deposited into a savings account of their choosing. One year later their employees were saving more than double the national average.

This future/past principle can work for you as well.

In his book, As a Man Thinketh, James Allen writes that “All that you accomplish or fail to accomplish with your life is the direct result of your thoughts.”

Often the toughest critics is us. Subconsciously we put up walls. Fortunately, we can choose to think differently. Everyone has the power to silence their own self critic. If you hear a negative thought like, “Well of course they can do, they have [ fill in the blanks ]” change it with, “That’s encouraging, if they can do it… I can as well.” Changing one’s thoughts motivates oneself to find a solution to the inevitable next question, “Now how do I go about doing it?”

This comes to my final point, before we get to answer the question “How do these competitors rise so quickly?”

Can you meet or beat last months sales? If you did it last month, can you do it again this month? Maybe it was your worst month of the year, so it’s easy to know you can do better. Maybe it was your best month of the year and meeting it will be enough of a challenge. The point is, rather than focusing too much on where you want to be, focus on doing as well or better than you did last month. Do that month after month and you will be surprised where that takes you.

Okay, finally let’s get to the most important part. What are these guys doing?

Darryl Reuter, a Realtor out of Kelowna, (yes I’ve written about Darryl a lot) is doing really well. But he wasn’t always this busy. He said he always knew that the top producers in his market were doing something to be consistently busy, but he wasn’t sure what. They do 3 things.

1. Referrals

2. Repeats

3. Leads

Every time they close a sale, sell a home, find a great deal for their client … they ask for a referral. “I really enjoyed working with you, do you know of someone else who is considering buyer or selling?” They ask this question every time. If someone doesn’t refer you, well it’s a good indicator of how well you served them.

Add your previous client base to your “stay in touch” list. Send birthday cards, holiday cards, you name it. Make it a weekly task to send out cards on Monday for the next weeks events.

Finally, once you have the previous 2 activities part of your normal weekly process – then you are ready for lead generation.

Lead generation requires weekly email nurturing, follow-up, phone calls and time looking at properties. It takes work and time for a lead to mature into a client. That is why agents who have the first 2 systems down do really well with lead-generation. Lead generation adds consistency to business. It fills in the gaps between a referral, repeat client or a lucky introduction. Furthermore, lead-generation is repeatable and a good system can be reinvested in to produce more results.

We do offer an excellent lead generation program through Facebook. However, I advise you to get the first 2 systems down first. And most importantly, do whatever you can this month to meet or beat last months numbers.

Have a great month and look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments.