What is Success in Real Estate?

I would describe it this way:

“You have a steady stream of clients who atuomatically seek out your valuable services without you haveing to do any cold prospecting. You are viewed with respect by clients who value your advice. You are able to easily provide them superior service and results which leads them to refer lyou to other and give you their repeat busienss. You work a normal work week (or less), take plenty of time off to pursue outside interests, and make a rewarding income.”

The trouble in this industry is that the “hours worked = compensation” equaation has traditionally been an “either / or” situation. In other words, you Either make a lot of money and have no life outside you job, or you do have a life outside real estate but don’t make enough money. What’s worse, for many agents, the equation is entirely unbalanced. There are many agents operating today who kill themselves with grueling 80+ hour weeks and barely make enough money to survive. Maybe this even describes you.

According the Nationa Association of Realtors, 80% of new agents do not make it throught the first five years. Just as daunting is the fact that more and more real estate verterans are packing it in because they’re finding they just can’t make it work anymore: they’re working far too hard to justify what’s left in their pocket at the end of the day.

Why is this?

Well, part of the problem is that the real estte market is changing so dramatically; consumers are more sophisticated and demanding, commissions are under pressure, and technology is comnpetely changing the way we do business. Increasingly, more and more mega-agents are capturing a larger and larger market share. In the last 10 years, the number of agents operating in North America has dropped almost in half.

Despite these irreversible trends, however, I have a highly fulfilling personal life and make good money every year. So how do I do it? As you know, it didn’t always work this way for me. And because I’ve been where you are, it’s easy for me to understand, explain and correct the problem.

I followed my Dad into real estate and made the same mistakes most agents make: I looked around at what everyone else was doing, and copied them. Like them, I spent virtually all of my time trying to “hunt down” business – trying to find anyone who would let me help them. As you know, this entails the grueling tasks of cold calling and door knocking (and plenty of rejection).

Obsessed with desire to succeed, I began to work harder at real estate than I had at anything before in my life. I still did the same things that other agents did, only I did more of them. I made more cold calls, banged on more doors, and went on more listing presentations.

My regular work day was 18 hours long, and when I did sleep, I dreamed of what I would do the next morning. By the end of my first yeard, to everyone’s amazement I’d sold 62 homes, and by then I’d reached the point of no return. I was driven.

I spent my days meeting with prospects, and my nights doing all the paperwork. Each year, I sold more and more houses, but along with this new business, came more and more work, more and more hours. Somewhere along the way, something changed. The spark that kept me going was starting to fade. I was developing a real distate for getting up every morning to face more cold calling, more chasing people for business, more rejection. I began to get scared that I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace that I’d start to fade. Like many agents, I was beginning to burn out.

I knew I either had to find a better way, or give up altogether. I know from time to time you’ve probaboly felt the same way, that you’ve worked just as hard as I’ve described, and that you too seek a better way. Well, with the Cribbin System I will share a “better way” with you so you can learn from my mistakes.

The short answer to the problem is systems. In order to make real estate financially and emotionally rewarding for you you’ll have to abandon the traditional way of doing things and adopt systems which will automate almost every phase of you business.

The typical agent spends most of his or her time fishing (cold calling grunt prospecting, hard selling) in a vast ocean for a few little fish. Spending 85% of your working hours facing constant rejection in the process of trying to find someone to help is demoralizing, frustrating, nauseating, exhausting and the reason the majority of agents fail at this business.

Most agents position themselves as sales people – not professionals.

If you are tired of the old school methods of prospecting and what to have clients chasing you instead of you chasing them, visit mikecribbin.com.