Embarrassing Confessions & Marketing Memory

by Sean Purcell

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

Two quick confessions:

I can’t throw a baseball.
I’m pretty sure I just scared a potential client away.

I used to be able to throw a baseball.  I played little league and pony league with some success.  There weren’t any pro scouts putting radar guns on me or anything, but I played right up until high school and I was regularly elected to the all-star team.  (Although looking back, it probably helped that I was much bigger than all the other kids and threatened to show them my Bruce-Lee-super-fist-of-temporary-death if they didn’t vote for me…  Nah, I’m sure it was my prowess inside the foul lines.)

Anyway, in high school I discovered my true calling: shot-put.  After that, I didn’t have occasion to pick up another baseball until my boys started playing just a year or two ago.  That’s when I discovered that I now had all the throwing grace and accuracy of a little girl.  You see, by my estimate I probably threw the shot – over the course of my competitive career – 15-20,000 times.  That pretty much wiped out any skill I ever had for throwing a baseball.  On the other hand, it created a near perfect shot-put technique that I can still demonstrate even now… as I enter my peak “mid 40s” athletic years.  (These are a lot like my peak “mid 20s” athletic years, only everything is now done while carrying around the extra weight of a small child.  It’s actually quite impressive if you think about it…)  Think about it or not, I can still summon dynamic and purposeful form because of a powerful adaptation called muscle memory.

Earlier this week, as I was parking my truck,  I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the street.  The driver was craning her neck to jot down information from an agent’s For Sale sign.  She then pulled up two houses and stopped again to take down information from another agent’s For Sale sign.  By this time I was walking down the sidewalk; I veered in toward the middle of the street and approached her on the drivers’ side.  “Hi,” I said, trying like hell to flash my I’m a big, cuddly polar bear smile rather than my (way too similar) I’m a big, psychotic black bear smile.  Pointing back toward the two signs she had just copied down I continued,  “I work with both of those agents and they’re very good.  My name is Sean and I’m the best damn lender in San Diego.”  Then I stuck out my business card.  I had to reach pretty far through her open window because at this point she had recoiled almost to the passenger’s seat.  I’m guessing I frightened her a little.

Will she call me for a loan?  Very doubtful, but then I never expected her to call me.  That’s not why I did it in the first place.  This was an opportunity to perform rep #7,487.  Every chance we get – as agents, as lenders, as vendors… as salesmen and women – we must practice our marketing form.  We must ingrain our Marketing Memory.  You may lose the ability to throw a baseball, you might even scare away a prospective client.  But eventually, you’ll end up with a near perfect marketing technique and be on your way to world-class producer.