Ego versus your bank account … during the last several weeks, specifically in the month of May, I did thirty 3-hour seminars to different groups in 17 days. During June, I will do twenty-six 3-hour seminars in 15 days to a wide variety of great brokerage companies that are customers of my firm. Almost every day, somebody tells me that they are number one … they are the top agent … or that their company is number one.
My question, of course, is … great, I’m glad you’re number one … are you making any profit or income based on your activities as a broker/manager or as an agent?
Of the many problems our industry faces today … one is there are no “ego cops” or “exaggeration cops” … just like there are no “internet cops” checking to see if what anybody is saying is, in reality … real. For example, I had a person tell me this past week that last year they were the number one sales agent in the United States for all Real Estate people in the U.S. … because they had closed 502 REO transactions in the last 12 months. I smiled and said, “Great. But unfortunately, I’ve met agents that have told me that they did 750/900/1500 transactions … so who is number one?” I know two agents that have told me over the last year or so, in extreme confidence and with no smile on their face … that they were the number one agent in the world in the last 12 months. My only thought was … they live in a small world (or they’ve never seen the real world.)
The problem is, people can say anything they want today and there’s nobody to say … “Wait a minute!” In Real Estate, everybody claims to be the best, the biggest, the strongest, the most productive and that they make the most money.
In my business, all the speakers/coaches/trainers do the same thing. There is actually one of these people that states that since he started his coaching career, he’s made 100,000 personal coaching calls in his career. Let’s do the math here … I can take long term, extremely successful coaches that work in my company … for example Cathy Anderson, Steve Powers, Gordon Watson, Ann Baker, Larry Kozak (to name a few) … and they’ve all been coaching for me for 15 to 20 years. In most cases, full time! If each of them coaches 60 people for me (which most of them do) and they make 40 coaching calls a year to each client (which is our policy) … they are making 2400 coaching calls a year and if they’ve been doing it for 18 years, they’ve each made 43,000 coaching calls in their careers.
Based on these numbers, my competitor says he’s made 100,000 coaching calls, and he’s 42 years old … which means if he makes the same number of calls per year that my coaches make, he started doing this at age 2. WOW … I guess I should have started earlier so I could be number one also.
In today’s Real Estate market, the most important thing you can do is learn to be a great listing agent. If you are a great listing agent you can counter (and because of your listing skills) all the nonsense that goes on in this industry by all the people who claim they are number one, the biggest and the best. If you don’t have great listing skills, you’re going to get beaten by people that may not have any listing skills, but are willing to brag about something, that in some cases, is simply not true. Their ego demands that they say it.
My goal for you? Take 4 to 6 saleable listings per month, every month for the next 18 months. You and I know that they are all going to sell in this market. If your average commission check is only $5000 and you do 6 a month, that’s $30,000 a month in income, or $350,000+ per year. Let’s set a goal to make you the most money instead of setting a goal to have your ego be the biggest. When it’s all said and done, the true measuring stick of a successful Real Estate person is the money they’ve earned and the money they keep … not the plaques they bought with their own money to put their own name on. Fun thoughts aren’t they?
Mike Ferry
CEO - The Mike Ferry Organization
800-448-0647
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