Doing It MyWay
My approach was to start making money immediately. I figured I didn’t need all that education. All I had to do was work my butt off and the money would start rolling in. I enrolled in the college of hard knocks, earning my street smarts, and working like a dog to make things happen. I had to overcome my lack of education with the sheer number of hours worked and energy spent. In the long run, we both became very successful agents, but I had to work much harder to achieve the same level of success. At the time, I was too stubborn and closed-minded to see the value of education. You really need both to be successful: e2, or education and experience. Learn from my mistake and seize as many educational opportunities you can.
Easy In, Easy Out We all know that sales in an easy profession to get into. That’s why there’s such a high turnover. Something like two or three out of every four automobile salespeople leave their dealerships each year. What an unbelievable waste! In my field, about half of the people who go into real estate sales fold within their first year in business. I could have been one of them. In my youthful exuberance and na¨ıve enthusiasm, I thought I knew it all. I had closed my mind to new ideas. I wasn’t smart enough to realize you could never be smart enough. Looking back, I’m amazed that I was able to succeed with such an attitude. Over the years, I started realizing how important education was to my career, to the point that I became an information and resource sponge. I couldn’t get enough. In fact, when I started taking my CRS courses and my GRI classes, I saw how knowledge I picked up could indeed make me richer as I applied it to my career. I was in the classroom devising ways to use what I was learning to make more money. (I also took an investment course, and I used what I learned to buy my first office.) I even took my GRI course over again, because another instructor was teaching it, giving me a fresh perspective. I am a big fan of education now, because I know it helps build you into a better salesperson. I found that getting my education and increasing my knowledge gave me something very important: It allowed me to work smarter instead of harder. That should be the goal of every salesperson.
Read, Read, Read! Your education as a salesperson is not limited to the classroom. You should read all the books you can get your hands on. There are books on service, books on time management, books on a variety of topics and subjects. You can even get audio books on CD and iPod if you’re too busy to take the time to read. There are motivational CDs that will help you develop a better attitude and more productive mindset. The key is to never adopt the attitude that you know it all. Then you’re dead in the water and you’ll lose any leadership advantage you may have. When I first decided to go to the National Association of Realtors convention, I went only because my wife really wanted to visit San Francisco and I knew I could write off the cost of the trip. I really had no intention of attending the actual convention. However, when I got there, I decided to have a quick look to see what was going on inside the convention hall. The strangest thing happened. I absolutely fell in love with the speakers and what was happening on the convention floor. What an amazing place to get ideas! (No matter what profession you are in, you should go to your convention and soak it all in.) At the time, I had to wonder why, from about 800,000 real estate agents in the nation, only 25,000 bothered to show up. I thought, “Wow, all these great speakers, all these great ideas. Where’s everybody else?” Go to seminars, take classes, attend your convention, read books, talk to other, more experienced salespeople—do whatever you can to improve yourself and your skills. My big mistake early in my career was thinking I knew it all, that I didn’t need to take the time and effort to learn. How much sooner could I have improved my skills and become a top agent if I hadn’t made this terrible mistake? I also feel that this mistake is not limited to beginning salespeople. To this day, I still bump into seasoned, veteran salespeople who think they can’t learn anything else, that they’ve seen it all. It breaks my heart to see this. It could mean that these salespeople won’t grow anymore. That, to me, is stagnation. That’s not a good place to be, especially in an industry—a world—that is changing daily with new technology that can empower us to do more things faster and better. I guess the lesson I am trying to impart here is this: Never stop learning. Never stop growing as a salesperson. Soak it all in like a giant sponge. You’ll be better off for it, your career will be better off for it, and your clients will be better off for it.
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