Do you fail more often than succeed?
If you answered "yes" to the above question - I say "Good for you! Keep it up!" If not, I'd go as far as saying; "If your successes outnumber your failures -- you ain't tryin hard enough."
I was talking with an agent who quit buying leads from an internet lead generation company after 30 days because "most of the leads weren't serious buyers". I asked her what they she was paying for the leads, and it was about $30 each. In response, I asked; "At $30 a piece, what would you consider a successful close rate?" The way I see it, at that price, I could "fail" to close 96 out of 100 leads, and consider that a pretty good success rate. (At an average commission of $7000, I'd be getting just shy of a 1000% return on my investment.) In other words - assuming a 96% failure rate, and an average commission of $7,000 -- every $3000 I spend buying leads would generate an average of $28,000 in commissions.
Ted Williams - Baseball's 7th best hitting record holder of all time once said; "Those that fail 'only' seven times out of ten attempts will be the greatest in the game." In fact, of all of the thousands of professional baseball players in history, less than 1 tenth of one percent of them have an average career "failure rate" of better than 7 in 10.
Quit being so hard on yourself: If the top one tenth of one percent of professional baseball players consider a 70% failure rate - a mark of excellence, why do we as Realtors set such ridiculously high standards for ourselves? Instead of looking at our glass as 96% empty and getting frustrated, why can't we focus on the 4% that is full? Especially if all we need is 4% to get a 1,000% return on investment. In fact, if all we do is focus on raising our success rate from 4% to a measly 5% - we'd give ourselves better than a 30% increase in net profits! (100 leads at $30 per lead with an average commission of $7K would be $25,000 in net profits at 4%, and $32,000 at 5%.) Net profits at 4% close rate would be $25
Whether you're working with internet leads, canvassing neighborhoods with postcards, cold-calling FSBO's/expired listings, social networking/blogging, or doing any other form of prospecting - I'm willing to bet that you're being way too hard on yourself. I have overseen dozens of real estate agents since starting my little Colorado real estate company, and the most common reason I see agents not succeed is because they focused on their rejection rate rather than their acceptance rate, and they didn't fail often enough to start seeing success.
Harland David Sanders, (better known as Colonel Sanders) tried to sell his "Finger Lickin' Good" recipe, and was rejected 1009 times before getting a "yes". Would his secret recipe ever have made it outside of his 142 person restaurant if he drew the line after failing 1000 times in a row?
Woody Allen once said "90% of success is just showing up" and that couldn't be more true when it comes to a salesperson's success. No matter how successful your close rate is, accept the fact that not closing the majority of your leads (however you get them) is simply a part of the business. A system is not "a system" if you don't use it for long enough. Do yourself a favor and whatever system you're using -- make sure to stick with it for at least 2 or 3 times as long as you think you need to. I'd bet dollars to donuts you that if you "just show up" and apply that system in earnest (no matter what that system is) -- you'll be ahead of the other 98% of salespeople who are focusing on the empty part of the proverbial glass.
Every time you don't get business from a lead/prospect - you're one "no" closer to getting a "yes".
Comments(4)