10 Challenges of Selling Real Estate in High Volume - Part 1

Welcome my good morning to Mike Ferry TV. It’s the week of February 12th. The month’s good days and the weeks go by faster and faster. So let’s get right to it. About, uh, ten days ago, I had the chance to see an article that was published on some of the social media sites, and the article was titled the 12 Hard or 10 Hard Rules of Selling and Doing Business in Life. And I thought it was an interesting article. And I took that article and I adapted it to you and I in the Real Estate business, and I changed the title to The 10 Challenges of Selling Real Estate in High Volume.

Because the truth is, you know, everybody talks about Real Estate as if it was a very simple and easy business. But the truth is, and you, and I know this, that it’s a very challenging and in many times very difficult business because of all the things that we have to learn, know, understand and then execute on most importantly. So I’m going to go through five of these ten this week and five of these the last five next week. And I want you to think about possibly taking good notes today and next week. And as importantly, listening to this message probably two or three times. I read this fellow’s 10-point checklist, probably 8 or 10 times, because I thought it was very impactful and very meaningful, and the way I changed it to Real Estate could make it hopefully a little bit better for you.

So number one, on this list of the 10 challenges of selling Real Estate and high volume, accepting the fact that change is inevitable and it’s very constant. 1971 which for many of you was before birth? I was working in the Real Estate business as an agent, Huntington Beach, California, and I bought a book called Future Shock, and the author was a guy named Alvin Toffler. And it was a book about the future of the world and the future of life and the future in the United States in 1971. And I can’t remember what page it was on, but it was on the first page of one of the first few chapters where he said, “You can’t stop change, accept it.”

So I guess the question that each of us have to look at individually is this: Are you making the progress here that we’ve started 2024 at the level and degree that you would like to make progress? And what changes do you have to make in your style of selling? In the skill set, you have possibly the mindset that you’re holding on to. What changes have to be made in the activities that you’re involved in every day? Because the truth is, the simplicity of the business is also the difficulty in the business, because we have to learn how to prospect, present and close the sale and do it on a regular basis to make the kind of money that everybody wants to make in Real Estate. So, number one, accept the fact that change is inevitable. It is going to take place whether we accept it or not. And then we understand that it’s very constant because things are changing all the time.

Number two, learning that failure is part of succeeding. And I went on to write the following. Failure is the stepping stone from where you are today to where you want to be. It’s the stepping stone. You know, people say I can’t handle rejection, which is, of course, a form of failure. And of course, we also know that what are the odds of you talking to ten people today, tomorrow, or whatever day this week that you choose to, and all of them saying, “Yes, I want to buy or sell.” If you get one lead per week, if you get one or two leads in the course of 7 to 10 days of talking to people, you’ve had a successful time. But in the meantime, you’ve been told no time and time again.

There was a noted sales trainer way back in the early 70s named Doug Edwards, and he had a comment that he made and I wrote it down. “Understand that the only ‘no’, no that counts in selling is the last one before you quit.” And that’s the only no that counts.

The third thought this author had, and again, I changed it almost 100% to make it adaptable for you and I, accept the fact that none of us are perfect. And I made a note. You can’t find perfection in an imperfect world. And that message comes directly from Earl Nightingale. But he also said, if your ego is really big, of course you assume you’re pretty good and close to perfect. I don’t think anybody should spend the time looking at the mistakes they made, but I think we should spend the time learning from the mistakes we made. Nobody is perfect. Nobody’s going to have a perfect day every day. In fact, in the course of a five or six day week, if you can have one perfect day where you do everything that you had set out to do, I’m going to give you a silent high five right now. There is no perfection in an imperfect world.

Number four, one that all of us have to deal with through our business life Real Estate and selling Real Estate is not always fair. But then I wrote, hard work does not always lead to high-level success. There are always bumps in the road, and there are people that we can never move to our side to someone else that because they will want to list or sell with somebody else. It’s just part of life, you know, if you understand that driving your car from point A to point B, there’s going to be intersections, there’s going to be red lights, there’s people that drive kind of crazy. There’s going to be bumps in the road. You have to change lanes. There’s all sorts of things that take place in our day-to-day life. And I think once we accept the fact that we’re never going to move everybody to our side, we’re probably going to be a lot better off in accepting the reality of what we do each day in Real Estate.

And the fifth and last point for today, and again, as I said, I’ll cover the next five next week. In our time together, we cannot control everything. We cannot control everything. You know, you’ve heard me talk about the four personality styles time and time again. The driver personality, the amiable personality, the analytical personality, and of course, the expressive personality. And the driver personality is known for trying to control everything. So I wrote the following: We have to stop trying to control everything that goes on in our world that we live in, as it just leads to a lack of productivity, and a lot of frustration.

You know, controlling what you can control is picking up the phone and calling a past client. You can control that activity, but you can’t control if they’re going to answer or not. You can control driving to an appointment and being there on time, but you can’t control the fact that you hit three red lights and are five to seven minutes late. So we control what we can control and let go of what we can’t. Selling Real Estate is a highly profitable business for a small percentage of the people. Our goal is to help you, if you choose to, to become part of that small percentage. Have a great week. Watch this time and again and I’ll see you next Monday. Thanks for today.