I recently had an opportunity to listen to Alex Perriello (President and CEO, Realogy Franchise Group) address a group of brokers and agents. While spirits of the crowd seemed high, you could sense an undertone of concern as Alex was asked to give his advice to the group on how to weather this challenging market.
You could see the crowd sit a little straighter and lean forward in their chairs as Alex began to address the question. Here’s my summary of his advice.
Alex’s Three “B’s” to success in today’s market.
1) Be Positive.There is a lot of unflattering media and negative people in and around our industry right now. You can choose to join the pity party or you can choose to ignore it and make your own reality different than the doom and gloom. There are still agents and brokers making money and having fun. Stay away from the negative people, they will make you lose your focus — not to mention, drain your energy.
2) Be Persistent. It is more important than ever to approach your business development and management from a strategic perspective. Plan your prospecting and marketing programs and stick with them. Don’t start doing something and then stop before you’ve given it enough time to pay off. In previous posts I’ve discussed the use of technology tools like blogs and other forms of social media. These are all good examples of strategies that are often started but dropped before there is time for the investment to pay off.
3) Be Proactive. Focus on prospecting and building your business. The new contact you make today could become your next listing or buyer sometime down the road. The problem is when you stop making new contacts or staying in touch with your current database, you lose those future possibilities. By doing the right things each and every day, tomorrow will look much brighter.
As Alex shared these insights, I sat observing the audience. An audience of real estate people is not an easy audience to capture. But this practical and insightful advice seemed to cut to the core of what today’s real estate practitioner must do in order to ensure they are tomorrow’s real estate practitioner. I saw heads shaking in agreement and people nodding at one another.
As a student of human behavior, I took this as a sign that this message was hitting the mark. No spin, no hype– just a straight forward plan of action. After the session had ended I listened to the chatter of the attendees as we were all filing out of the room and they were refreshed by this candid, straight-forward approach.
That’s why I felt compelled to share this experience with you. We all need a good kick in the “B” hind once and a while to stay focused on the right things!
Thanks Alex!
