ICYMI: Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been outlining the key principles of successful teams. We started out with the importance of articulating a purpose—defining your “big whys” for being in real estate and starting a team. Then last week, we talked about what it means to be truly productive and how money making activities need to be central to your daily pursuits.
What does it mean to be truly prosperous?
There are probably as many ways to define prosperity as there are people who experience it, though Merriam-Webster defines it as simply “the condition of being successful or thriving.” To some it has a strictly economic connotation having to do with income, costs and margins; for others it has also to do with the health and wellbeing of self and loved ones. For others, still, it involves leaving a legacy in business, public or private life.
You might have your own definition of a prosperous business, but to me it signifies one which is able to predictably and consistently provide that sense of thriving to its owners, employees and investors. It’s neither a one-time event nor a permanent state of being. Rather, it’s the result of many daily actions taken by people across the organization and the culmination of all your purposeful productivity.
Predicting Success
I’ve met more than a few real estate professionals who claim to be powerless when it comes to their next sale. They feel completely at the mercy of the market, not in control of their prospects, and their efforts are often reactive rather than proactive.
One of their largest worries is that there is no predictability in this business—they never know where the money is going to come from, so they don’t feel comfortable trying to build a team or plan for the future. This limiting belief that keeps many from success in real estate may sound familiar: “What if I can’t generate a consistent output and end up disappointing my team members or my family?”
This is not a mindset that exceptional agents allow themselves to subscribe to because they know that they actually can predict their success. If you can identify the specific activities that lead to results, then you know what you need to do to meet whatever goals you set. For example, if you know that, on average, you close a deal after every 200 contacts, then you know you need to make 100 contacts every week if you want to close at least 25 deals this year. The more data you track, the more prediction power you will have for your team—and this kind of control is a solid foundation for prosperity.
Acting with Consistency
Of course, all the predicting power in the world will mean nothing if you don’t act consistently on that information. If you don’t follow through on making those 100 weekly contacts, you won’t realize your goal of closing 25 deals. Information without consistent action is just trivia.
Consistency is what separates truly prosperous businesses from their competitors. You can have the most talented people and the most detailed tracking metrics, but without the discipline and infrastructure to consistently execute the necessary tasks, your business will never reach a level of lasting, self-perpetuating success.
Prosperity isn’t an accident. It is the result of intentional, consistent action based on accurate information. If a prosperous business is eluding you, I suspect it is because one of those two elements is lacking: either the efforts of you and your team are inconsistent, or you are basing consistent actions on faulty data.
So What, Now What?
I doubt whether anything I’ve covered here is new to you. So why are we discussing it? Why tell you that a prosperous business ought to be an important goal as you establish your real estate team?
The reason is because too often, as we work to make each day great, we lose sight of the endgame. Therefore, I’ve grounded my own business in the three Ps. The tenets of purpose, productivity and prosperity help me and my team keep our sights on target. We can ask: Does a particular action 1) meet our purpose, 2) add to our productivity and 3) lead to prosperity? If the answer to any part of this question is “no,” then we know whether we are creating value for our clients or just doing “fake work” for its own sake.
I would encourage you to make these 3 Ps central to the success of your own team. Act with purpose and focus on productivity to create lasting prosperity. You’ll be amazed at where you end up.
Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems, a real estate consulting company that specializes in performance coaching and building highly effective teams. Contact wssm@workmansuccess.com for more information and free downloadable resources.
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