It is funny how quickly the market changes. I have read blogs that predict that we are going to have hard times for a few years. That might be so, most of the people warning about this have been in the business a lot longer than I have, and have probably seen it before. I have not experience the hard times in this business, I have lived through them, but I was not in the business at that time.
This concerns me, because most of these people are very knowledgeable about the business, and know what they are talking about. But at the same time I have been in sales as long if not longer than most of them, different type of sales, but sales never the less. I was selling insurance in 1975 and in Material Handling in 1978. I saw the exodus of companies leaving the State of Connecticut in the late 80’s and early 90’s to go down south where the labor was cheaper. A day did not go by that the News Media did not tell us what bad shape we were in, and if you were not a part of the tough times, they were going to talk you into being a part of it. I will be writing more about this in my next Sunday’s blog. Those were hard times and many sales people and companies did not survive it. But myself and the company I worked for survived, because of mainly two things.
First, we didn’t concentrate on the business that we were losing, we concentrated on the business that we needed to get. We knew the problem existed and were concerned about it, but our focus and time was spent reaching out to new business. We did this by working harder instead of making excuses. There were still company’s spending money on Material Handling Systems, we just needed to be there to make sure they spent it with us.
The second was we were not going to let the News Media talk us into being one of the failures. We were going to be positive no matter what, and let me tell you that is not easy to do. We learned very quickly that companies want to do business with positive people, and not those that just kept telling them how bad things were.
We survived, did very well through it, and came out of it stronger. My point is that I don’t see anything different today, yes it is a different
business, but the same principle. If we keep telling buyers that things are bad, then they will wait to purchase, and thing will really get bad. It is a self fulfilling prophesy, more about that on Sunday to. We will stay in this longer and not come out of it, unless we take it upon ourselves to “change the attitude”. This does NOT mean that we lie to people. It does not mean that we talk them into buying houses that they can not afford, or loan that they should not be in. We need to work harder to find them the house they can afford, with the loan program that is right for them. Those houses and loans are out there, we just need to work harder to put them in them. But we are not going to do it if our first response when someone asks us how is business? We start going on and on about how bad and slow things are. They are going to stay slow, unless we help to change them around, and the way to change them around is not by telling people how bad things are.
There is already an effort to try to educate people more about the wolves that are out there who really thrive on these times and take advantage of people. This is good and more people need to get on board with it. Take it and use it in a POSITIVE way, because all this great information can be negative if it is used incorrectly, and defeat what others are trying to accomplish.
We have to educate, we have to warn, but we have to be positive, or what we fear will happen, will happen. Let’s be part of stopping it and not part of keeping it going.
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Info about the author:
George Souto is a Loan Officer who can assist you with all your FHA, CHFA, and Conventional mortgage needs in Connecticut. George resides in Middlesex County which includes Middletown, Middlefield, Durham, Cromwell, Portland, Higganum, Haddam, East Haddam, Chester, Deep River, and Essex. George can be contacted at (860) 573-1308 or gsouto@mccuemortgage.com
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