The Answer May Surprise You…
By America’s Six Figure Real Estate Coach Roberta Ross
When I am giving a talk on lead generation, I’ll often ask the audience what they get paid to do. Typically, the list of responses I get are: buy houses, sell houses, close, buy and sell, help buyers and sellers, list houses, list and sell houses. Some get more creative and suggest “to help others achieve the American dream.”
In order for a business to succeed, it is critical to know what you get paid to do, or what you’re most important revenue-producing activities are. Meaning, if you eliminate these activities, your business can make no money and would literally collapse. The above list of most common responses is a clear indicator that most agents do not have a clear understanding of what their highest priority, revenue-producing activities are.
What you get paid to do should run like a tape inside your head – always driving you and your business forward. Let’s look closer at the responses I get to the question, “What do you get paid to do?” to illustrate my point. One of the most common is “I get paid to buy houses.” I love this one, because for the most part, real estate agents do not even buy houses. They represent others who buy them. Real estate agents do not get paid to close. The closing agent gets paid to close. In fact, a real estate agent does not even have to be present at a closing for it to happen, or for them to get paid. Helping others is important, but it’s so vague. It is very difficult to be a top-producer or even move to the next income bracket without having this understanding and applying it as a priority in your business. So what DO real estate agents get paid to do?
If you want to turn yourself into a lead-generating machine, your best bet is to see yourself as someone who gets paid to build relationships and provide exceptional service. The mere adoption of this concept can be career-transforming.
Build Relationships. Your first and foremost revenue-producing activity is to build relationships.
Provide Exceptional Service. Your second revenue-producing activity is to give exceptional service. I’d imagine there are many who would take issue with this one. In fact, it would be easy to create an argument that it is not necessary to be exceptional to be successful.
I imagine we all know people who are successful and are not exceptional at what they do. Those who fall in this category probably make up for their lack of good service with some other quality. I am not suggesting it is not possible, but I am saying that it is the most important if you want to turn your business into a referral-generating machine and have the greatest amount of business with the least amount of time, money and energy input to create it.
Remember more than a single piece of real estate, to thrive in this industry, your business and your focus – needs to be on PEOPLE. Delivering the tools, skills, information, and connection they need to continuously trust you with their business and their referrals. When you’ve got that focus crystal clear in your vision for the year, you’ll soon find everything else falling neatly into place.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Leave them below – and happy listing this season, and remember I’m here if you need a coaching boost!