The Never Ending Search For The “Easy Button”

As Colin Powell once put it, “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”

Who among us doesn’t know the truthfulness of that statement? Yet most of us still find ourselves falling into the trap of the never-ending search for “the easy button”, the “silver bullet” or “the magic pill.”

A lot of sales professionals, realtors, entrepreneurs are looking for the thing that will give them that edge. And it makes sense to look for incremental improvements or things that can take you to the next level because you literally could be just one idea away from a breakthrough.

But in most cases, when we get tunnel vision looking for the magic bullet or the easy button, we get a warped reality. Once our perspective gets lost, our productivity and income actually go down.  We start slipping and find ourselves on a transactional rollercoaster.

That’s why I want to emphasize that we’ve got to stop wishing things were easier and instead start working on getting better. I’ll say it again; we’ve got to stop wishing things were easier and focus on improving our skills and our strategies to get better, period. I got in a debate over the weekend with a private online group that I’m in. We were having a conversation about social selling and social media and the role it plays. At one point, someone in the group said that outbound prospecting was dead. This agent said they wouldn’t do it because it interrupts people, it doesn’t work, and it’s not effective. You should have seen my face! Oh my gosh!

While I admit prospecting has changed, there are better and more effective ways to do it, but at the end of the day, it’s not dead. The conversation reminded me of a situation that happened about three years ago to a new salesperson that I hired. This salesperson said to me, “Look, I don’t think I need to make outbound calls; I can get people to reach out to me.” I asked him how long he would need to put his claim to the test?  I told him I would measure his outcomes against the outcomes I achieved through outbound prospecting. So we agreed to give it two weeks.

Result: after the first week, the salesperson had a whole bunch of people who “liked” his social page and two leads who wanted a follow-up; during the same week, I had conversations with about 50 people and generated ten qualified appointments. I even sent over four strong opportunities that then listed within two weeks.

So, to recap, the non-prospecting salesperson secured two leads while I had four listings. When faced with these results, the salesperson bemoaned how this strategy “takes a lot of time.” My response to that was that neither the gas & electric company nor the landlord cares about how much time it takes to generate a lead. We need to hit our goals by any means necessary, so we have the revenue coming through the door.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that social media or other strategies are not important but if you’re just depending on those tactics for inbound leads, then you must lower your goals. Those market-dominance goals are NOT going to happen in the timeframe you want if you’re relying on passive inbound traffic. Maybe…eventually…someday, you can get enough action from referrals, but the big Rainmakers who get all that referral business have been in the business for a long time. Rainmakers have been nurturing their database for a long time—years. They have a multi-million dollar revenue stream year after year at this point. But it’s not happening because they have giant magnets in their pocket, pulling in clients.  What’s happening is that they’re staying in touch with their leads over time. As good as they are, even these rainmakers are not achieving their absolute best if they’re not prospecting for new business.

To hear more about accelerating practice growth, the RIGHT way, watch the rest of this real estate coaching video here.