Monday Morning Match is a quick post – maybe a quote, inspirational story or idea – intended to spark some motivation inside each of you so your week gets off to a fantastic start on Monday morning.
Who’s On Your Dance Card?
How’s your business right now? I’m not talking about what’s “in your pipeline” or is supposed to come together in the near future. I am talking about current listings, pending transactions or appointments scheduled for this week.
I see far too many agents bank on deals that might happen and it causes them to take their foot off the gas in their business development efforts. If you’ve been in this crazy business for more than a few months, you know not every “sure thing” happens so why do we all get tricked into believing that every nibble will turn in to “the big one”?
It’s just like when you were in high school or college and you met someone who seemed like they had potential. “Give me your number” was the easy thing to ask. Actually making the call wasn’t as easy. Too many of us waited for the girl (or guy) to call us instead of being proactive, dialing the number, taking a deep breath and saying “Hi, it’s me. Would you like to go out some time?”
It rarely happened, did it? So why would it be different now that we’re grown ups – sometimes with even more self-esteem issues than our teenage years?
Waiting on the phone to ring in real estate is just accepting mediocrity.
“What may be may not be.” – Scottish Proverb
Start following up more than once with those Internet leads who never answered your initial inquiry. Realize that sending people auto-emails from the MLS doesn’t mean they are committed to you and your services. Just because someone was a client of yours in the past doesn’t mean they are contractually obligated to use you in the future. And please don’t ever assume that family members will be using you or referring people to you just because you share some DNA.
You must be finding reasons to get in front of people every week. Nose to nose, toes to toes, belly to belly or worst case scenario – ear to ear. I’ll even agree that text to text is okay but at some point you must type something like – “Let’s get 2gthr l8r? How about Tuesday @ 4:30?”
Conversations don’t pay. Closings do.
If your appointments schedule this week includes a bunch of “tentatives” and “maybes,” perhaps it’s time to rev up that business development engine called the “telephone” and start making some calls.
Quit being that wall flower that you might have been as a teenager. Get off the bleachers and start asking people to dance.
You’ll be glad you did.
Photo Credit: Derek Gavey Creative Commons 2.0
1 thought on “Stop Being a Wallflower”
Rick Lemmons ·
Sean, its amazing what phone calls will do. Since November I have been making an average of 6 outbound calls a day. Usually connect with 1-2 people. The calls are a combination of past clients and old leads in our database. I am also following up on current internet leads within 30 minutes of recieving the lead.
I have $1million in pending sales, just closed a $195k deal that came from a internet lead in December and showed houses today to a $250k out of town buyer because I followed up before any other agents did.
Two days ago I called a name in our database, only had a phone number with an out ot town area code. When she answered I Identified myself, said I came across her name in the database, wanted to find out if she was making a real estate decision in teh near future. Guess what, her husband was negotiating an offer for a new job out of town and they will need to sell their condo (here in Columbus) if he takes the job. Follow up call is scheduled for Friday to see if he has the job.
If you work the phone then the phone will work for you.