Years ago, in a former career, I made weekly trips with co-workers making sales calls on our major customers in the Midwest.  My job was to offer technical support to the sales force.  We often would propose questions to each other to stimulate our minds and pass the time as we were driving 100 or so miles each day.

On one of these trips, one of our salesman said to me, if you had $1,000,000, what would you do?  Would you continue working?  Would you change to another kind of work?  Would you quit work and do charitable work? 

Then we both decided that we would continue working on the jobs we had because we liked what we did and liked the company.  Then we asked, "Would our job behavior change?"  We both concluded YES, our behavior would change, and for the better; we both would be better employees!  Why:  because we would be doing what we believe is the right thing to do!! So then, the salesman said to me, what if we ACT as though we have one million dollars!!

So what does all this mean to the real estate business? Just this: If we ACT as if we are making a SIX FIGURE income, what would we change? And would we be more successful?  Here are some suggestions:

IF I WAS MAKING A SIX FIGUE INCOME, I WOULD: 

1. Not take every listing that came along, just because you need the money.  Everyone knows what I mean, the listing that you don't want because its 40 miles from your office and the owner insists that you be present on all showings and you're spending a fortune on gas!  And it's a referral and the fee is 35% and so on and so on.

2.  Dress like a top producer - for me, I'd probably wear a sports jacket more often; for women, maybe a fashionable dress rather than a casual look.

3.  Keep my office and car looking sharp.  Ever notice that top producers drive cars that are always "car wash" clean all the time?

4.  Work with buyers that agree to work with you (in our area, sign a buyer agreement) and drop the others and don't take buyers who want to look at property 60 miles from your office.

5.   Spend more time having breakfasts and lunches with old friends, past, current and potential clients.  The same for business partners, mortgage brokers, home inspectors, attorneys.  What if you did something unusual like buy them lunch?  Don't you think they would tell their friends, hey, Ed's doing well; he just picked up the tab for lunch?  What do we do now?  Oh, we don't' have the money to buy lunch two or three times a week.    

I could go on and on but my conclusion is that if we act like we're top producers - it's possible that we'll be much more productive, more efficient and before long, earning that six figure income.