Happy Sunday Everyone:
Coming off of our sales rally in Orlando plus a variety of other situations, there is a common thread to much of the conversations from the winner’s circle. The winners are doing the basics. Perhaps that sounds ridiculously simple but if it’s so simple, why are so many not winning?
I interviewed 2 of our LO’s for our division a couple of weeks ago. One has been in the business for 24 years. He’s up 128% year over year. I have access to his data, this is real. The other guy, up 118%. What do they have in common? They work in the same office, they make 15-20 calls a day, they meet with their clients in person, they write handwritten thank you cards, they hold each other accountable to get their work done, they’re having fun while doing it, they share with one another. They don’t share compensation, but they share everything else. I’d say instead of “divide and conquer”, they unite and conquer.
I did a panel at our sales rally, 4 of the top producers in our company, exact same feedback. It’s not a secret, and the top producers aren’t trying to keep it a secret. They’re all saying the same thing, question is are we listening?
I wanted to list out a few thoughts based on situations that have occurred the last two weeks in the hopes we all might consider it.
- Conversation with Ron, our CEO, two weeks ago. I asked him, “what do you think about this market”, his response, “I don’t”. He’s not trying to be tough, he just has the mindset of keep moving, keep going, stay on offense, gain market share, that’s it. Whether we have personal production, branch, divisional, or corporate, just gain market share.
- Panel conversation, I mentioned a very well-known concept “you can have excuses or you can have results, but you can’t have them both”. I tweaked it to say you can actually have both, but there is a strong correlation to the more excuses you have to the crappier you’re doing, and the less excuses you have, the better you’re doing. I’d like to be clear here, there are people that have legitimate struggles and challenges, this is not what I’m talking about. Some self-reflection on what side of the fence you land on is worth consideration.
- My interview with the 2 LO’s. Jason (128%) started off by saying we all need to remember we’re in a “contact sport”. You think about this past week, how many new “contacts” did you make, or how many existing contacts did you speak with? If your job is to sell real estate, how many people did you speak with this week that want to buy or sell real estate? If your job is to do mortgages, how many people did you speak to that need a mortgage, or can refer you to someone that needs one. And the only way to really know, track it. There is nothing funnier to me than someone telling me their lead to close ratio and then I ask them how many leads they get and they don’t know. You can’t measure what you don’t track.
I say, “back to basics”. If I’m being honest with myself, when was it ever not about the basics? When was I ever going to do more loans by talking to less people? When was I going to gain market share by looking at my emails? The excuse vs. results is a great lens to keep in front of you. We don’t need to find some new strategy; we need to do the things that made us win in the first place. It’s not complicated.
I hope everyone crushes the week ahead!