Why is it that some people seem to feel that “prospecting” is a dirty word?
I define “prospecting” as necessary work that allows us to find the people who have a need to buy or sell real estate. Isn't that our business? Finding people with a need and satisfying that need?
A problem occurs when people think of prospecting as painful or uncomfortable. Does prospecting necessarily have to be painful? No, of course not. In fact, a major key to success in real estate is to learn to enjoy prospecting activities AND to enjoy working hard at it.
Why is prospecting so important? Because challenging yourself to find people who have a need, pays off. It’s the work that agents of lesser character will avoid. And if you infer that I’m saying people who avoid prospecting have a character flaw, you’re right… and a serious one at that. If you avoid prospecting, you avoid doing what it takes to succeed.
To keep your muscles strong or your mind sharp, you need to challenge them. To do only what’s easy will lead to physical and mental flabbiness and very mediocre results, followed by a great deal of time and effort spent justifying why such flabbiness is OK, instead of stepping up and taking on some real challenges.
Tackling challenges like prospecting builds character, just as lifting weights builds muscle. To avoid challenge is to abandon one’s character development.
Now it’s natural that we’ll tend to avoid what’s painful, so if we see prospecting as purely painful, we’ll surely avoid it. But in so doing, we’re avoiding some very important business building opportunities. So we must learn to fall in love with challenge of prospecting instead of fearing it, just as a bodybuilder can learn to love the pain of doing “one more rep” that tears down muscle fibers, allowing them to grow stronger. If you avoid the pain, you miss out on the growth. This is true both for building muscles and for building your business.
When faced with the prospect of saying to yourself, “If I always avoid prospecting, I’ll never in my life get to experience X, Y, or Z,” it’s a little easier to embrace the benefits of prospecting. What will you miss out on? You’ll probably never reach your true potential, live your biggest dreams, or make a real difference in the real estate business, etc. You’ll have to settle for only what going with the flow can provide, which is mediocrity.
If you want to achieve some really big and interesting goals, you have to learn to fall in love with prospecting. Prospecting makes the difference. It’s what separates the bottom 83% from the top 17%. You can keep desperately hoping that the business will always be easy, but then you’ll be stuck in a make believe world, waiting for opportunities to come to you instead of creating your own, and doing busy work that in the grand scheme can’t get you to the level of success and happiness you deserve.
All Star Coaching thought for today: The harder you work the luckier you get.
Have a productive day.
BF
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