One of my first managers was absolutely committed to his agents making daily prospecting calls.
Our meetings went something like this:

Joe: How many closings do you want to have this year?

Me: 18? (I had no idea.)

Joe: How many phone calls do you have to make in order to get an appointment?

Me: 20? (I think I read this somewhere.)

Joe: How many appointments do you have to go on to get a listing?

Me: 5? (Probably read this in the same place as the ‘20 calls’.)

Joe: So if you want 18 closings this year, that means you need to make 1800 calls or 35 calls per week or 7 calls a day. When do you have time scheduled in your day to make those 7 calls?

Me: (Long Pause) . . . Um . . . That’s not how I plan to do it.

This went on, regularly, until Joe finally saw that my unscripted, and yes, improvisational approach got results. GREAT results. Profit, or the number of closings, were never my “why”. Profit is a natural outcome of staying true to who I am (which is, by the way, an introvert), and learning to be the VERY BEST at what I do. The closings follow. As do the referrals and repeat business.

Not everything that counts can be counted. ~ William Bruce Cameron (and later, Albert Einstein)

No amount of potential money could cause me to make one prospecting call, much less 1800. I instinctively knew that if a random call from a perfect stranger wouldn’t cause me to hire them as a Realtor, then a call from me would be just as ineffective. Same with those mailers that go from my mailbox straight into the recycle bin. 

I wanted to BUILD something: Relationships. A Reputation. A Business. And that’s what I did. How? By getting my name out there - not through mailers, but through a forthright and personalized Holiday Card that went to everyone in my database. The purpose wasn’t to get clients - I still had no idea where those would come from - but to simply reconnect. 

And once we did reconnect, I asked about them - ORGANICALLY, like a real human would, not through some acronym. I worked hard. I focused on providing phenomenal customer service that involved prompt and thorough follow-up every single time. I educated myself, learning everything I could about the market and previewing as many properties as I could. I developed my unique way of holding open houses, and maintained a discipline of hosting two or three every single weekend. I hung out at my office, made friends with other agents, and listened during our office meetings.

If you’re not having fun selling real estate, you’re not doing it right. ~ Jennifer Allan Hagedorn

That is what Real Estate, Unscripted is all about. Fresh, practical ideas that don’t involve memorizing scripts, but rather give agents the tools and confidence to grow their businesses organically.  Real Estate, Unscripted helps agents define for themselves the type of business that they want, and then guides them create the tools they need to do that. It is chock full of resources that agents can use now.

My motto: If it doesn’t feel right . . . don’t do it.