What Mode are Your Agents In?

Noted author and speaker Seth Godin posted the following on his blog today:

“You can have grand visions for remodeling your house or getting in shape, but if there's a fire in the kitchen, you drop everything and put it out. What choice do you have? The problem, of course, is that most organizations are on fire, most of the time.”

An interesting point that Godin brings up, and for many real estate professionals and agencies the statement is true. Yet, most agents tend to spend the bulk of their time thinking about what they’re going to do, and telling their selves the market is going to turn around soon, then I’ll get busy with my real estate plans. The reality is, there’s a fire in your kitchen, and you need to put the fire out now! Case in point, my own business www.RealEstateSalesMeetings.com is a new venture I started where I provide weekly sales meetings, audio interviews and more to brokers around the country. One way I thought to help build my business was through blogging, podcasting, and other free promotional ventures on the World Wide Web. I started out in full speed, posting, recording, adding new twists and turns everyday through these “free” electronic mediums. The results were amazing, but like most normal business professionals I began to pile more “to do’s” on my plate, allowed myself to be pulled into other directions, and the fire which was once under control and remodeling that was off to a “great” start quickly died. I lost my focus and my sense of urgency to continue with my task at hand.

So I have two options with my new business venture:

1. Tell myself that the plans and drawings for my newly remodeled kitchen will be awesome, “someday.”
2. Fix it!

As real estate professionals if you want to succeed, you must always be in mode #2, (fix it). Telling yourself what the outcome will be like is okay, if you’re busy and hard at work fixing it, however if you’re just sitting there dreaming and thinking about it, the project will never get finished. Listen to how Seth Godin finishes his blog on this subject of “Managing Urgencies,” and follow his advice:

“Add up enough urgencies and you don't get a fire, you get a career. A career putting out fires never leads to the goal you had in mind all along.
I guess the trick is to make the long term items even more urgent than today's emergencies. Break them into steps and give them deadlines. Measure your people on what they did today in support of where you need to be next month.
If you work in an urgent-only culture, the only solution is to make the right things urgent.”

To read Godin’s entire blog, click here!