Often, the market will get tougher for a period of time. Agents will get frustrated because there is not enough inventory. Sometimes, getting new listings is more difficult than ever. We will always go through periods of challenge and adversity. We will all have trials. Even long ago, Confucius said, The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man without trials.
We must accept that adversity and trials are there to strengthen us, our thoughts and mind, and our will and actions; to shock us into improving our skills, so we are better prepared the next time around. That is the role of adversity in our lives its to make us better.
The first thing to do when you encounter adversity (because of not having enough listings or sales) is to increase your frequency and intensity of prospecting. When those challenging market adjustments appear, it may take more contacts to generate the leads we need. It may take more leads to generate the appointments we need. It may even take more appointments to generate the listings we need to drive our business. Tracking our numbers and sales ratios and understanding the market can be the difference between winning and losing. Writer George Shelham said, Winners keep track of the results; losers keep track of the reasons. The results are the daily activities of prospecting: the contacts, leads, appointments, and clients created from them. The losers let the reasons why they dont feel like prospecting take over. We all can think of a million reasons not to prospect. There will be many distractions every day that will take us away from the necessary
There are things we know we need to do daily to achieve success and accomplish our dreams in life. Often, our feelings determine whether we do them or not. Our will and desire has to be strong enough, so we do what we need to do anyway . . . even if we dont feel like it. For example, I feel like eating Rocky Road ice cream daily. I have a weakness for ice cream, especially Rocky Road. If I did what I felt like doing, I would weigh considerably more than I do. I need to discipline myself to control that feeling with the action of abstinence.
We all must control the feeling of not wanting to prospect. Prospecting daily is an act of will, not feeling. If we are determining whether to prospect or not based on feeling, we will not prospect. Granted, daily prospecting isnt easy. It will be difficult, but it will be worth it. When the first part of that statement is coming true, always remember the second part: It will be worth it! The personal satisfaction that we will achieve by conquering our fears and winning the game of production will be unmatched.
Too often, we expect results instantly. We want success without effort. We want victory without defeat. It amazes me how many speakers and trainers are trying to sell Agents on the get rich quick system of success. They promise results from a magic ad campaign, a magic website, or any number of other gimmicks. If we look throughout history, the people who got to the top and stayed there have one thing in common: they continually worked diligently, and all their failures added up to eventual success. These successful people persevered and struggled and mastered the fundamentals to reach the pinnacle of peak performance. I watched a commercial that illustrated this truth well. The individual in the commercial said, Ive missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. Ive lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times Ive been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed! I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." The commercial was for Nike, and the individual was Michael Jordan. We can only avoid failure by playing the game, meeting the challenge, and stepping toward the adversity. We must stare failure down and do the difficult task of prospecting. We need to set aside our thoughts of not feeling like it. If we do that, we will change the outcome of defeat to victory. Start your journey to disciplined success today.
comments by Dirk Zeller of Real Estate Champions in a reccent email.
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