Real Estate Success: You Either Want To Win, Or You Don’t

Real estate success is a tricky thing to measure. Look at the bios of some of the most successful humans on the planet, and two themes run consistently through them: they’re workaholics and they aren’t content with being average.

Former NFL wide receiver Jerry Rice didn’t win 36 NFL records by working at it part-time. And, although he is considered by some to be the greatest all-around NFL player of all time, it isn’t talent alone that got him the accolades.

Rice was typically the lone guy on the field after practices were over and the other guys on the team were on their way home.

Six days a week, during the off-season, Rice spent mornings running along a five-mile trail in the Oakland hills and lifted weights in the afternoon.

You either want to win or you don’t and judging by the effort he put into his craft, Jerry Rice obviously wanted to win.

“Become a master of your craft. While everyone else is relaxing, you’re practicing and perfecting,” admonishes Benjamin P. Hardy, author of “Willpower Doesn’t Work.”

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Rice knew that his speed was mediocre, at best. How did he overcome that weakness? “By leveraging his greatest strengths,” according to James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits.”

Since he knew he couldn’t be the master of everything, he decided to focus on perfecting his assets – “precision, endurance, and strength,” according to Clear.

What are your strengths as an agent? Focus on improving those skills and use them to maximum advantage. That’s how you achieve real estate success.

If your communication skills are top notch, practice those scripts until they flow effortlessly. If it’s your negotiation skills that surpass others’, work on leveraging those skills to produce marketing-worthy statistics. Problem solvers can look for new and unique situations to leverage that strength.

 

Delegate for the win

Too many agents spend all of their time working in their businesses and not on them.

It’s evidenced by the lousy listing photos that litter the MLS, by the poor grammar, spelling and punctuation in too many real estate blog posts and by the lack of basic SEO practices on agent websites.

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Leveraging your strengths requires understanding that you can’t do it all. At least not effectively. If you want to win, you’ll need to delegate.

If you aren’t a professional photographer, ditch the idea of purchasing that fancy new Canon and put the money toward hiring a pro.

If you aren’t an ace writer, stop littering your site with blog posts that do nothing for your business and hire a writer.

And, for God’s sake, stop trying to take care of all the little details and hire an admin person.

Free up the time you need to use your strengths to maximum advantage.

 

But, I’m new

New agents, with no history in the industry to use as a yardstick, have a tougher time developing their thirst to win into an action plan.

If you aren’t fully aware of your strengths and weaknesses, determining them is the crucial first step for real estate success.

Business development coaches suggest that you start by making a list of both. What to put on the list? Jonathan Michael, engagement marketing manager at Palo Alto Software, suggests asking yourself the following questions:

• What am I good at?
• What have others complimented me about?
• What tasks have I had to ask for help with on more than one occasion?
• Which projects and tasks seem to drain my energy?
• What tasks do I routinely put off?
• Which projects have I spent hours on without getting tired?
• What are my hobbies, and why do I like doing them?

 

Michael goes on to caution readers that this is going to be a biased list, so reach out to friends, family and trusted colleagues to find out what they feel you’re good at and not so good at.

“In reality,” suggests successful entrepreneur Ryan Robinson, “there are a nearly unlimited number of character traits such as a strong leadership ability, being a good negotiator, and having a laser-like focus, that can contribute to your success . . .”

Once you have your core strengths nailed down (and how they pertain to real estate success), you can look for ways to use them to distinguish your real estate practice.

Check out what competitors are doing and find their weaknesses. If any correspond to one of your strengths, you’ve got something to continue perfecting and to leverage in your marketing and other presentations.

Robinson reminds us that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were two entrepreneurs who “made lasting impacts with very similar product offerings, in the exact same industry, during the same period of time, with a completely different set of strengths and skills.”

Gates was a software engineer who, in Microsoft’s early days, wrote code for the products. Jobs’s strength, on the other hand, was design and he “never wrote a single line of code for Apple,” according to Robinson.

Both men, in their overwhelming desire to win, leveraged their strengths to become successful.

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