Good morning to all of you steadfast prospectors, salespeople, and businesspeople! This is just one more day that you have the opportunity to do something meaningful and powerful with … IF you take those minutes and hours that have been given to you and convert them into effective ACTION! What are the steps that YOU are committed to taking today to move your results forward faster?
After talking with several of my clients this week, I began thinking about the ‘three Ps’ of this business: Prospecting … Pre-Qualifying … Presenting. As often happens in life, we can experience a bit of ‘middle-child syndrome’ when it comes to this concept called Pre-Qualifying. For many agents, there is an enormous amount of energy created around and hyping up that takes place when it comes to Prospecting. We all know how important it is … no training event can be complete without mentioning it at least 73 times … and common sense tells us that without it our business is basically dead in the water.
Presenting needs no introductions either—after all, this is show time! It’s the end-game of all of our front end efforts of lead gen and lead follow up, and it’s that moment we covet when we finally get to showcase all that we do and offer in the way of getting the job done.
And then, sandwiched in the middle is this oh-so-important item that we dub Pre-Qualifying. So consistently overlooked, misunderstood, and even scorned, agents in many cases couldn’t appear to care less whether they participate or not … to their serious detriment! This step is NOT just a good idea that got wedged uncomfortably between the two stars of real estate business-building for the family photo … no, it is a true and necessary ~link~ between the essential time spent in the trenches finding new business and the excitement of game day that we call a listing appointment.
Agents who don’t EFFECTIVELY pre-qualify lose money, waste time (which is essentially the same thing), and experience frustration and discouragement. They develop a wrong, negative image of the listing process, begin to doubt the value of prospecting, and miss out on the truly good opportunities because of all of the above. If you’re cool with that—go ahead and keep looking at Pre-Qualifying as some sort of awkward middle-child vying for attention. If not, let’s give this valuable step it’s proper dues and use it every single time to give us a higher assurance of success!
So—get out there and make today count … and don’t forget to pre-qualify any appointments you set in the process!
(Photo courtesy of tutordoctor.com)