I remember something a great football coach once said. He’d been asked about the vanilla offense he ran, and how defenses were shedding old fashioned ideas, and learning how to stop tradition offenses with ease. He said, “Let ’em do whatever they need to. If my guys block their guys, we win.” That coach was a 1.0 guy if ever there was one. 🙂 I bring that up only as a preface to what my point is today.
It’s still all about skinned cats. It’s amazing how many are still calling guys like Chris dinosaurs. I’m sure his feelings are mortally wounded as he cries his way to the bank every month. Much like USC football coach John McKay replied when asked about his ‘student body left, student body right’ running game. Said Coach McKay: “When they find a way to stop it, I’ll try something else.” His boring, predictable offense produced multiple Heisman Trophy winning running backs.
Chris Johnson stimulated some pretty productive give and take with his last couple posts. Chuck Marunde and I joined in with our own thoughts on the subject. Where Chris was in his glory talkin’ about his use of Ma Bell’s favorite toy, Chuck was lamenting his local market’s dreary numbers. And dreary might be an optimistic description. He was up to here with high maintenance owners on sloooow moving listings. Me? I think Chris is a born cold caller, one of those rare people who knows the percentages, shrugs his shoulders, then works ’em, all the while wondering why his competition can’t see the gold too.
Chris’s core message as I see it is this: If he told you that digging a 100 three foot holes a day would uncover a pot of gold a week, every agent with a pulse would be grabbin’ gloves, a pick & shovel and headin’ out the door. Why? Because they’d be thinkin’ of the year’s worth of gold they’d have by consistently diggin’ those daily 100 holes, right? You know that’s true. Yet in real life they don’t, do they? Those who won’t dig understand why, so I won’t mash their tender souls further by continuing to drive that stake. They’re suffering enough as it is. How hard must it be to know there’s gold out there with your name on it, but you’re so afraid of your own shadow you can’t even hold the shovel longer than a couple stabs at the dirt’s surface?
And please, no harping from those I’ve just described. If, as Chris so eloquently put it, you’re already doing 40 deals a year, I’ll shut my pie hole. If you’re not, but you’d like to, your high pitched whining about how all this ancient 1.0 stuff doesn’t work, makes you look pathetic. I’m sorry, as those who’ve met me or read my stuff for years realize I’m never mean spirited, at least intentionally. Sometimes I tire of those who tell me what can’t be done, when so many good people like Chris are doing it daily with empirically measurable success.
Translation for Mr./Mrs./Ms. Excuse: HIs bank account is ever growing.
And for the record: If you’re runnin’ outa walls on which to nail all the cat skins you’re accumulating while using totally different methods, I applaud you. BawldGuy Axiom: Nobody cares how so many cat skins got up on all those walls — until that is, they ascertain you actually skinned all those cats. Then? They’ll be all ears.
Allow me a short digression.
My way isn’t the only way by any stretch, and I’ve never for a second believed nonsense like that. In fact, I’m writing here on Bloodhound because I was willing to listen to new stuff. I use 2.0 like crazy. It produces for me big time — six figures a year like clockwork. But overall, 1.0 production slaughters those numbers. Look, there’s a difference between using 2.0 exclusively and being content with whatever it produces. I get that. Fair enough. But if you’re hankerin’ to reach whatever you perceive as the next level, 2.0, at least at this point in its development, ain’t gonna get you there in and of itself. Also, with some notable exceptions, 1.0 can produce huge success without ever using 2.0. The same simply can’t be said about 2.0. The day is coming when this won’t be the case. But that day remains stranded in the future tense.
BawldGuy Axiom: Proactive prospecting vs passive prospecting is to income production as Lions were to Christians. And for those who simply will not get it, Proactive is spelled L-I-O-N. 🙂
End digression.
Chuck finds himself dealing with a market almost literally devoid of sales. 12 closed deals in a month for an entire county. Wow. He asks for wisdom, which is what wise men do. Almost everything I’ve learned has been from asking others, or failing miserably. I prefer asking others. 🙂 Chuck correctly observes the folly of those agents who, by whatever prospecting means, list bunches of property, most of which don’t sell, while sending their overhead to the moon.
He points out the erroneous goal to which so many agents aspire, but which is one of the fastest roads to Broke City — Listing the most properties possible. The goal our bankers understand much mo betta is: Listing the most properties I can sell relatively quickly. I know, Duh. Chuck gets it, big time. But how does he close more business?
I’ll begin with a (surprise) baseball analogy.
What if every time you came to the plate you knew when you were gonna get a fastball waist high down the pipe? You might be the first hitter in history to bat .500, that’s what. So why don’t you apply the same thing with prospecting? Instead of ordering lists from whomever and mailing, calling, knocking or what have you — why not make a list of nothing but 88 mile an hour, straight as a string, waist high fastballs right down Broadway?
Hey, now there’s an idea.
Approaching it that way seems second nature to Chris. For most however, it seems like the pot of gold nobody ever finds because it’s hiding in plain sight.
The old saying, “Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it” is analogous to most of the real estate agents I’ve known since forever. That analogy though breaks down because we all know we can’t do anything about the weather. Yet most agents spend their entire careers trying to convince anyone who’ll listen, (but mostly themselves) that finding new business is exactly like the weather — totally out of their control.
If I wanted to hide a pot of gold from them, I’d bury it in a three foot hole in their own backyards. How much safer could it get? To them I offer a helpful suggestion. Spend 90 days working from a list of easily hittable fastballs that they’ve filtered to their own specifications. Talk to as many folks as you can each day. Then tell me what you learned.
Here’s a pick & shovel — go dig some damn holes.
Matthew Hardy says:
> 2.0… produces for me big time — six figures a year like clockwork. But overall, 1.0 production slaughters those numbers… 1.0 can produce huge success without ever using 2.0. The same simply can’t be said about 2.0.
With credibility and panache (and no ass jawbone!), he slaughters the “automatic button” sellers…
> Spend 90 days working from a list… filtered to their own specifications. Talk to as many folks as you can each day.
Sometimes getting “found” means introducing yourself. Fortunately, there is no “Don’t You Dare Even Think About Approaching Me” list maintained and enforced by the federal government. We are are still free to say hello to one another for the purposes of commerce. Prosperity relies upon freedom.
January 17, 2009 — 4:31 pm