Is Perfection Hampering Your Success?

Recently, a coaching client told me he realized that his emphasis on perfection sometimes slowed him down and limited his ability to accomplish as much as he wanted.   We both agreed that, while it’s important that we deliver as highly professional an image and service as possible, if we allow ourselves to hesitate, seeking just that one perfect phrase for that unique listing presentation, or feeling disappointed that we couldn’t come up with it, we probably will lower our chances of actually getting that listing!

Years ago, when I was in grad school, a fellow writer told me a story about an undergrad class she’d taken on writing short stories, where the question of perfection was a focus.   The professor had divided the class in half, and told one group that they were to write a single story over the course of the semester.  Each excellent story would get an A, and all the rest C’s.  The other half of the class was told that if they simply wrote three hundred pages of stories (probably twenty to thirty stories!) they would get an A, and for each twenty-five pages fewer, the grade would be reduced by one letter.

The first group of writers spent weeks in planning and making notes, developing ideas and characters, and researching details for a fascinating setting, until they each felt they had the perfect story ready to be written.  Of course, once they started to write, they found the execution of their ideas a lot tougher than expected.  And since they felt every sentence had to be perfect, they moved at a snail’s pace.  Bottom line, no one came close to writing an excellent story and no one got an A.

The second group, on the other hand, simply wrote stories.  And wrote and wrote more stories.  Of course, as they wrote, their practice let them improve not only their craft but also their creativity, and nearly every student produced an excellent story or two out of their hundreds of pages, and most earned A’s.

So, as someone once said, it’s usually best to just get out there and do it, and the results will surely follow.

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

Leverage and Magic

Even though it’s the middle of January, we’ve come up with a suggestion for a belated New Year’s Resolution for everyone that is guaranteed to make your 2014 your best year ever!

But first, the tease:

How would you like to have easy to use tools and systems that would let you be far better organized than you’ve ever been before? And of course better organized means more in control, and we all know how good that feels, right?

How would you like tools and systems that would give you better and faster and more consistent connectivity and communication of documents and information with your clients and others in the execution of your business?

How would you like tools and systems that would keep all your needed information, of whatever kind—yes, photos, documents, excel files, annotated maps, and notes, you name it—available at your fingertips, 100% of the time, no matter where you were, and yet required only a single entry on laptop, tablet, or smart phone?

How would you like tools and systems that would make all your information on clients, transactions, activities, relationships, and even the number of miles you’ve bicycled, if you like, immediately searchable and findable, always right where you know you can get to it without having to fumble around, for example, in the pockets of the different jackets you might have worn last week when you met that person at the gym or the cigar bar who said they were thinking of buying or selling their house?

Finally, if you had such tools and systems, wouldn’t your hours and days be far more efficient—ie, you’d be able to do everything faster and with less stress—and thus making you much more effective—ie, you’d be getting better results—than you've ever been?

If you’d like such tools and systems, then join the New Year’s Resolution crew and make 2014 your year of integrating that iPad or other tablet into your business to leverage your time and talent, and to mastering the art of Evernote, the app that will let you accomplish all those nearly magical aspects of organization and control!  Go paperless and save yourself—and more importantly, your clients—time and stress in what can often be a stressful process due to all those outside factors we can’t control.

The key to Evernote is simply that it lets you enter and organize and store information on either your laptop or your tablet or your smart phone, and that information is immediately synced with the other two devices, so you ALWAYS have everything you need—for all your clients and business—right there with you and available, even when you’re jogging or biking.  Okay, okay, you’d have to have your smart phone with you!

The Coaching program will be there with one on one sessions, seminars, and roundtable discussions throughout the year, to help you through the process of sparing the lives of those trees and differentiating yourself by keeping you at the leading edge of our business.  Not to mention saving yourself considerable time and stress so you can spend more of your time letting your individual talents and expertise shine! 

So put down that axe and get synced!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

The Larger Questions

This time of year, our coaching and the Playbook focus a lot on numbers as we encourage folks to master their stats and create their roadmap for 2014 as part of an annual business plan.  We look beyond sales volume and GCI to things like average DOM and average side price and even average commission rates, so agents can both differentiate themselves and set target areas for improvement.  The details are the key to this analysis and planning work.

But this time of year, when transaction activity is typically at a lower pace, is also a great time to step back and look at the bigger picture, to ask some larger questions.

First of all, as you review your business for 2013, you might want to consider what event or experience with a client or transaction was the most rewarding for you.  Not in terms of dollars, but in terms of gratification for a job well done, a difficult problem solved, or a client’s perhaps unexpected gratitude.  Think about that situation or experience and see if there is some key element or pattern that can be grasped and learned and repeated in your own actions and attitude.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could achieve that kind of satisfaction in our business regularly?

Next, think about the opposite, the most challenging situation or event or relationship in your business last year.  What went wrong?  Who did it impact beyond yourself?  What role did your own actions and attitude play in creating the issue?  And most importantly, of course, what might you have done differently to prevent or minimize the negative impact, and how can you integrate that learning into your approach to similar situations in the future?

Finally, the most important of these questions:  what do you want from the business in 2014 for yourself and your family?  How is your business integrated with your overall goals as a person and member of the community, and what is it, beyond any monetary considerations, that drives and encourages you?

Simple questions, really, but ones we all too often forget to contemplate.  Let’s all take some time before the snow melts to incorporate these larger questions into our business planning so 2014 can truly be our best year in all respects.

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching

A New Year, a Fresh Start!

The holidays are now behind us—hopefully filled with lots of good cheer—and it’s time to dive into 2014 and making it the strongest year in your business yet!  The stats all tell us the market definitely rebounded last year, so the time is right to set expectations and goals for a strong 2014.  Remember, the first thing we need to do is to Master our Stats for not only 2013, but to look at the trends over the last few years to find areas for differentiation and for improvement.  Did you sell more homes in Sunnyside Acres than any other agent?  Was your “Days on the Market” a bit longer than the average?  How about your average side price and your average commission rate per side?  Did you have great success in one of these stats and can you now use that to differentiate yourself?  Or is there room for improvement that can add to your bottom line once you recognize what you need to do?  Only by digging into your stats will you be able to note these details and take action to correct them—or take advantage of them in your marketing.

Once you’ve Mastered your Stats, then you can Create your Roadmap for 2014 so you’ll have a clear, detailed path for your activities to help you reach your goals for the year.  And don’t forget to think Paperless as you add new tools to the mastery of your business to support your unique, cutting edge approach.

Remember, your coach will be there to help you dig into Mastering your Stats and Creating your Roadmap, so if you haven’t done so yet, set an appointment for your first coaching session of the year.  Our coaches have some great new tools to assist you in your analysis and your Annual Business Planning—along with all Five Keys to a Strong 2014—so you can make more money per hour this year!

David M. Hassler

Director of Coaching