Change – Are You Ready?

Times change. Nothing remains the same for long. One thing that is guaranteed to change at some point is the market. Markets change and salespeople need to change with them.

Gary Keller, Jay Papasan and Dave Jenks in their book “Shift – How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times” said:

Agents must rethink, restructure, refresh, reenergize, and reinvent every aspect of their business. The ostrich approach guarantees extinction.

Are you ready for a change in your market?

This question is even more important:

Do you really believe the market determines your success?

If you are going to blame the market when your performance is poor, you have to credit the market when you do well. In other words, your performance is determined by the market and not by you. You are just along for the ride.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? So does blaming the market for poor performance.

Many of you spent last year in a booming market, but it appears the market is changing. This should not concern you, if you know how to thrive in any market. But change is seldom comfortable.

This is what authors Keller, Papasan and Jenks say in Shift:

ANYONE WHO EXPECTS CHANGE to be comfortable hasn’t been challenged enough. Change isn’t easy and significant change is downright difficult. Yet long-term success requires it. My experience has taught me that the people most responsive to change are the ones most likely to survive and thrive. James Yorke, a University of Maryland mathematics and physics professor, put it perfectly when he said “the most successful people are those who are good at plan B.” In other words, when change affects your plan, plan effective change.

Don’t be a ‘good time Charlie’ who depends on booming markets for survival. This is not a smart strategy. As a real estate trainer, I spoke to a lot of salespeople during booming markets in several cities. Many salespeople and offices were NOT doing well even though their markets were booming. ‘Good’ markets are no guarantee of success.

Skill is the answer to every market.

The more skilled you are, provided you are ACTIVE, the greater your chance of being market proof.

When markets change, don’t look on this as a bad thing. Look on it as REALITY. Change with the market – reskill.

Pricing properties to sell

Most likely, you know what you have to do to thrive in this changed market; you just haven’t needed certain skills for some time.

For example, during booming markets you may not have had to talk as much with your listed sellers about pricing their properties closer to market. All you had to do was leave the price where it was and the market price climbed up and met it. Then you made a sale.

Now you need to brush up on a skill you might not have needed for a long time: at your listing presentations, you now have to talk more with sellers about the importance of pricing their properties so they sell. This is most important if the market is falling, because staying high will cost the sellers money when they finally meet the market at a much lower price than would have been necessary had they reduced earlier.

The times they are a-changin’. Reskill. Be ready.