Your Gorgeous Garden - What's a Flower, What's a Weed?

Pull a few weeds and all your plants will do better!

The business you’ve cultivated is a garden. You have some clients that are well established, solid, and will thrive no matter what. They’re the evergreens—not very demanding, well mannered, and yours for life. You also have more delicate clients—the roses. They’re the ones that require lots of attention and special handling, but will yield breathtaking results if you’ve nurtured them properly. Some clients are annuals: they bloom once and they’re done; others are perennials: you can count on them to come back for another season or two. Then you’ve got your weeds.

Weeds are tricky. Sometimes they start out looking like lovely additions to the garden. They’re small, bright, and colorful. But suddenly you realize that your pretty little weeds are crowding out your other plants. They’re sucking up water and fertilizer, claiming more than their share of sunshine, sending down tangled roots, and forcing you to spend all of your attention on them.

Every Realtor® has weeds. They’re the clients that cause you headaches and simply cannot be pleased, no matter what you do. As the Master Gardener of your business you have two choices: you can try to train and cultivate your weeds, perhaps at the expense of your other plants, or you can pull or transplant them.

Just as a gardener may grow dandelions and nettles as herbs, some other Realtor® may be delighted to help your weedy clients grow to their full potential. Also, remember that even your roses have thorns. Even the perfect client is entitled to be human, to have flaws, to have bad days—and to question your opinions. Gardening expertise is being able to tell which clients are the roses and which ones are the weeds.

Being selective about your clients dramatically improves the success of your business and the quality of your life. As a Realtor®, you have the power to choose your customers; you are in complete control of the number of weeds in your garden.

Weeds Cost You a Fortune

When you first got into the business, you likely took on almost every client that was breathing and eventually filled up all the hours in your days, and then some! You chased after people without asking if they were qualified because you were too afraid of hearing “no.” You pursued clients who were not loyal, or honest, or respectful, or coachable, or communicative, or decisive. Some were, frankly, nuts. There were even times when you worked your tail off and didn’t see the closing. Sound familiar?

Not only do these weedy clients take up space that could be dedicated to more profitable and rewarding clients, they also add tremendous stress to your life. This stress decreases your overall production by depleting your effectiveness with your more valuable clients, with your staff and, very importantly, with your family and friends. So how do you get rid of them?

It’s up to you to decide what kind of garden you want. If you want a rose garden, you’ve got to be able to recognize the weeds—and it’s silly to accept a friend’s offer of a palm tree. In your business, here’s how that translates:

• You need to decide what kind of business you want. You can’t be all things to all people, but you can design, define, and control your business.
• You need to know how to describe your business, your expectations, and your standards to your colleagues and to your clients. The better you get at describing your business, the more your business will look like what you’re describing.
• You need to be able to describe and communicate your role and responsibilities in the agent-client relationship as well as the client’s role and responsibilities. It is up to you to tell them how they can be a better client for you. If you don’t communicate these standards, you only have yourself to blame for a garden full of weeds. If you haven’t communicated well, start now.
• You need to know how to say “Thanks, but no thanks.” When someone offers you a referral that’s way outside your business model—the palm tree in the rose garden—it’s better to say "No" than to serve the customer poorly.
• You need to cultivate a community of Realtors® with whom you can exchange referrals. One Realtor’s® weed is another one’s rose.

It takes time, effort, and attention, but you can remove the weeds and make yours a gorgeous garden of the kind of clients you want to work with. How do you do it? That's the question for next time.

Coach Patti

Patti Kouri, Accelerated Performance Coaching
Helping You Through Self-Made Limitations!

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