Somebody here at AR took a big swipe at coaching and Coaches recently. The gist of their post was that coaching was a rip-off, a swindle, a waste of time and money for agents, and offered only by people who could not make it in the sales game and only want your money...
Oh, they were eloquent, and firm. A summary of the post could well be as follows:
Coaching is a complete waste of time, offered only by failed agents who can't sell, and we don't need none of that! All you need is the free resources offered online, and maybe a mentor in the office.
MY RESPONSE:
Big Swing, Loud Noise, Lots of High Fives - but Foul Ball!
I agree that there is a lot of BS out there sold as coaching. And there are a lot of free resources out there to take advantage of.
One of the biggest problems is even knowing which free resources are good, and which ones are outdated, or sound good but never really work anyway.
As a coach myself, I can tell you that I am not the whole package of a millionaire Realtor. God simply did not make very many of those. But there are some parts that I do, or did, EXTREMELY WELL. And I can help you with those.
I offer many free resources, such as free FSBO Listing scripts, recorded coaching sessions and an e-book on SEO, Web Marketing. Some agents have no doubt done well with my free help. However, better things happen FASTER when there is exploration, deadlines, role playing, live fine tuning.
You may be able to perform well WITHOUT a coach, but I PROMISE YOU you could do even better WITH a coach. How do I know? Because nobody is perfect. Everybody has blind spots, weak spots, things they don't know or are not aware of that are hurting their productivity. It's a fact that self made people are not as common as mentored successes.
Self teaching is a wonderful thing for those who are so inclined, but it is generally a SLOW process involving a lot of trial and error. A good web marketing coach can save you A GREAT MANY hours during the learning curve, maybe even help accomplish in one year what you could learn on your own in 2 years.... Which means you get more leads, convert more leads, do more deals in that first year. You have more free time, family time, or productive deal making time during that same first year since you are avoiding many time consuming mistakes.....
YOU DECIDE:
Q. How many Olympic athletes can coach themselves?
Q. How many professional singers make big bucks without ever taking voice and music lessons?
Q. Of all the people on this thread who disagree with me, and think coaching is a waste of time... How many of you list 30 to 50 homes a year or actually show 6 figures net income after each and every expense of being a Realtor is paid - and did so in your first 5 years in the business? 10 years? Ever?
Coaching is Professional Mentoring plus Encouragement and Motivational Deadlines. It works - IMHO.
You can self teach on SEO if you want to read a million web pages of outdated information, and spend hour after hour after hour doing it and tweaking your site, or you can hire a coach for an hour a week for a month and learn everything you need to learn to get to page one at google.
Q. Which way is better?
You can read books until the cows come home, and spend another 100 hours blowing listing appointments, learning by trial and error, or you can hire a listing presentation coach and be closing 50% of your listing appointments, 2-4 a week even, within a couple months.
Q. Which way is better?
BTW: I have a license, listed 50 FSBO homes my first full year in the business, and sold for almost 5 years. Today I still rank page one at Google at least 10 times for the best keywords in my real estate market. However, my work today is to help other agents succeed - so I choose not compete with them. I don't do what you do, but I understand it and admire it. I choose to have weekends off and not answer my cell phone for days at a time. You may make other choices. Ain't it great that we are all so different and yet we can grow and learn and play and help each other!
Coach Lonn : )
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