All the real estate books I read and all of the pundits I have listened to all speak about the consistency of our daily actions and rituals being the key to ultimate success in our industry. I have taken this to heart and arrive at my desk each morning with a series of rituals already on my “to do” list. Study, Exercise, Affirmations/Incantations, Farming, Calls, Follow-up on yesterdays lists are all there with various goals attached to them for the day, sounds good, right? Well the unfortunate aspect of this organization is that our lives just don’t function that way inside this business. Yesterday I had a list of 9 items to complete. At 9:45AM I got an email from a prospect I have been tenderizing for a couple of months now. It was a short and sweet note from a person I had moved from my A list to my C list over the weeks. “I found the house I want at 3340 Roundup Lane. Can you show me this property at 2:30PM today? I have cash and if the house is what I think it will be I want to make an offer right away and close as soon as I can,” his note read.
I read it twice. It is the kind of note I want 10 of in a day, but hardly ever get when I want it. I had it yesterday morning and I did what every agent good agent does. I dropped everything to get this request taken care of. I set the showing; I did some due diligence on the comps and sales in the local area. I spoke to the agent about the house and I drove the 44 minutes to the property arriving 15 minutes early to get my own feel of the home. The prospect, now client, arrived and went through the home asking questions. He appreciated that I did a CMA for him to help him make his decision. I had found out from the agent that they owners were highly motivated to sell right away and that is why they put such a good price on the house. I gauged the low end of what a bid could be and still keep the owner at the table. My client and I spoke about this. A decision will be made today on what the offer will be. I put that on today’s “to do” list.
So this is good, right? Well, yes and no. I did stop everything, dropped all the tasks already on my list and did the one that was needed most. I prioritized. The good news about rituals is that they keep you busy working to get calls like this so that you can drop everything and take care of an A client’s needs. There were only 2 of the 9 things I had to do on my ritualized list that got done. Everything else slid back to today, but today is already full with other things. My point here is that it is very difficult to have any real steady schedule in our business, there are always interruptions, distractions and fire drills. This morning I think the key is to not be so ritualized that I feel badly about not completing the tasks on my list, but revel in the fact I completed a new task that is the true indicator of my abilities as a professional—sell a property to a client. The whole stop, drop and roll aspect of our business is great juice that just has to be mixed in the daily stew. Flavor is everything.
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