Are You A Natural REALTOR Or An Ongoing Student?

So many of us get into sales, or real estate, because we have been told our entire lives that we “have the gift of gab,” or “could sell ice to Eskimos.”  The difference in outcomes comes from if we continue to do it naturally or become students of our craft.

 There are seven key result areas in our industry. They are like digits in a telephone number, you must dial each in sequence if you want to get through and make a sale.  Your performance and effectiveness in each of these key results areas determine your overall success and height of your income.

 These key results areas are prospecting, building rapport, identifying needs, presenting through a conversational approach, answering objections, closing the sale and getting resales and referrals. Your own self-concept in each of these determines your performance and over all income.

 Fortunately, everyone who is good in any of these areas was once poor at it. Every professional in the top ten percent started in the bottom ten percent. The good news is if you can drive a car or operate a cell phone, you can become excellent in each of these seven critical skills. It is simply a matter of learning and practice.

 If you have a poor self-concept with regard to any particular sales activity, you will avoid it whenever possible. The only reason you avoid taking action in a particular skill area is because you are not yet good at it. You have not yet mastered the skill. If you are not good at something, you make mistakes. You will feel awkward, angry and frustrated. It would be normal and natural for you to avoid that activity.

 The solution for your fears, or reluctance in any key skill area in selling, is for you to master that skill. Fortunately there are countless books, audios and our own Momentum Complete Agent Development courses available to you. There is no reason for you to be held back from joining the top of this profession simply because you are currently weak in a particular skill.

  You can learn how to prospect effectively. You can be taught how to build high levels of rapport and trust with prospects. You can become skilled at how to ask questions and listen carefully to the answers. You can develop calmness and confidence in your interactions with others. You can learn anything you need to learn through practice and repetition.

 It is the same with any skill area. You can become an expert at accurately identifying the needs of the person you are talking to and qualifying the prospect by asking more and better questions. You can become excellent in your sales conversations, growing so effective that people are asking you to close them. You can learn how to answer the prospect’s objections and concerns, responding so satisfactorily that the objections disappear and never return. Also you can learn to create a never ending chain of referrals and repeat customers for your business.

 The better you get in any area, the more positive your self-concept becomes in that area. The more confidence you have in your abilities, the happier you feel when you are doing that part of your job, and the better results you will get. You never feel uneasy doing something you are good at. You only feel anxious doing something that you think you are not particularly good at. Every single step that you take to improve in any area raises your self-confidence and increases your likelihood of success each time you try it.

 In 2018 there are Small Groups that will be working together with Jimmy's guidance to hone your skills and develop your businesses, there will be our ongoing classes and boot camps to refine those seven skills. There will be monthly accountability sessions to assure that you are making defined progress and private coaching to work on your own specific business needs along with two retreats were you will be introduced to new challenges to stretch your thinking and a deep dive into one area of your business.

 So, whatever future success you desire is available to you for the taking.

What Is Your Crutch?

 When we are learning a new skill or technique, we are often dealing with learning new terms or new understanding of definitions of terms along with the actions required to implement them. This can cause confusion and frustration in the learning process. We can get overwhelmed and retreat back to what we know and give up on our change we wanted, or at least thought we wanted. 

 Last month on this blog I talked about how in any learning curve we go through four stages.  Starting with Unconsciously Incompetent, where we don't know we don't know. Then to Consciously Incompetent, where we learn that we don't know.  Then hopefully to Consciously Competent, where if we are focused on doing the new skill we can do it, and eventually to the Unconsciously Competent where we just do it without even thinking any longer. When was the last time you have experienced this? If you are taking the Momentum Complete Agent Development program, I am sure you can relate by now. It is a tried and true system, but one that is foreign to the experiences of most in our industry, thus why it is a complete game changer for those who fight through. 

 It was ironic that I wrote about this last month because I just have had a serious "Ah Ha" moment on it personally yesterday. I have learned through my surgery that words have different meanings from my experience previously and how the doctors used them for surgery recovery. When I hear "rehab" or "your body will tell you how much you can do," I understood them to mean what they did for rehabbing dozens of injuries over the years. Yet, there is obviously a huge difference, where I was always trained to push them to build strength, that didn't work well at all. I pushed too hard on the ninth day post surgery, not realizing it until later when my body slapped me down hard.  I have never experienced that level of pain before. After that I was kind of like the cat that jumped on a hot stove, I was very reluctant to jump on a cold one for fear of getting burned again. So I was going along Unconsciously Incompetent, not knowing I didn't know the meaning of those words by my doctor, and was shaken awake to a very Conscious Incompetence. At this stage, I became overly cautious and retreated back to not wanting to feel the pain. How much is that like when we decide to try a new script or process we are learning and it blows up in our face because we didn't know it as well as we thought? That is the purpose of SPAR (Study, Practice, Action and Review) but in the middle of the pain of the moment that isn't the first thing we want to do. 

 On Tuesday I went to my one month post op appointment with my doctor and something he said took about 24 hours for me to hear. He off handed said when I grabbed my cane, "you should use that when you walk for long distances." It didn't register at the time, but did he mean not to use it otherwise? So I made the decision yesterday to try it, and it was awkward and felt scary just like any time you are working on those new skills and scripts. Then I learned something even more interesting, when I was consciously thinking about walking "normal" heel to toe without "protecting" the leg I have been protecting for the last six years and intensely protecting the last four weeks, it worked much better with much less discomfort. However, whenever I wasn't thinking about it and fell back into the habit of protecting it, it was more awkward and painful. So, I have advanced to Consciously Competent, now I am looking forward to that wonderful day when it becomes Unconsciously Competent and no longer have to focus or think about it at all. 

 Whatever it is you are working on learning you will go through these four stages, just do not get weary in well doing, keep pushing through it, keep SPARing and you will make whatever it is you want to learn a part of your every day life.