Talent and Hard Work — Overrated? Do Results Factor In?

Most marketing and branding efforts fail miserably. We all know a ton of so-called talented folks who’ve failed — and they worked their asses off. How’s that possible? I used to ask myself that question all the time. Then one day Dad pointed out a guy in the office who looked completely average. One might even say he blended into his surroundings. He made beige exciting.

He’d been a teacher for 20+ years, was in his 40’s, and had been licensed about three years. He was the fourth highest producer in terms of commission dollars in the highest volume real estate brokerage in San Diego. I was 16 at the time. Dad said to watch him and learn whenever I was cleaning the office. (I was company janitor.)

Watchin’ this guy was beyond boring. All he did was make practice calls to FSBOs. Then he practiced cold calling. Then he practiced listing presentations. Then he practiced showing property — all in the office. It was irritating. His name was Bob, and since I was still in school at the time, I could only imagine how terminally bored his students must’ve been.

In his third year, 1967, he made over $35,000. To put that in perspective, the median income for the nation then was about $7,500 or so. In today’s figures, and adjusting for currently available splits, his earnings would be roughly $700,000. More about Bob later.

Many times after monthly TechTard meetings adjourn, I walk across the hall to attend similar get-togethers with those equally handicapped in the disciplines of marketing and branding. No real point here, except to establish street cred when it comes to my lack of expertise when it comes to these subjects.

For the purpose of this post we’ll leave out selling, which is a stand-alone skill, generally not reliant on marketing or branding. Yeah, I realize bad marketing or branding can significantly hinder selling.

I hereby publicly plead guilty to multiple counts of Marketing By the Seat of My Pants, and Branding By Default.

If you know how to sell, great. If you suspect you could improve, do so. Under-skilled sales forces are where great marketing/branding efforts go to die — or so I’m told by experts in those two fields.

We all know those who swear by their marketing programs. I’m willing to be dead wrong, but IDX ain’t marketing. It’s cowboy real estate — herding home buyers into your personal corral — effective for some, though not for most. Don’t get me wrong, I love an effective IDX.

A cold caller buddy of mine has the best ‘pre-listing’ packages I’ve seen. By best I mean it’s so effective his listing appointments rarely proceed more than 5-10 minutes before the property owner clearly indicates their intention to sign a contract. I’m unaware of his actual batting average, but given his production, something for which I have first hand knowledge, I’m pretty sure it’s way north of .150. What magic is he including in that package to generate such stellar responses?

90% of the package is a list of scores upon scores of properties he’s listed and successfully sold — along with the names and numbers of the sellers.

Geez, I dunno, bet if you were a seller that might impress you a tad. Ya think? Not real sophisticated, is it? I’ve come to call it ResultsMarketing.

It’s the opposite of “I’ll do this, and I’ll do that, cuz I’m MarketingGodzilla — King of the real estate jungle.” Instead, show empirical evidence of actually, you know, consistently delivering superior results.

It’s long been my belief that most marketing consists of makin’ up for the agent’s or brokerage’s lack of proof demonstrating — that word again — results.

Dad’s only foray into what we might loosely refer to as marketing, was a giant billboard which said: F. Doyle Brown — San Diego’s Mr. Real Estate! It went up on a Wednesday, and by the weekend my friends at school had made my life a living hell. 🙂 That sign was up for a month or two, I don’t remember exactly how long. He never did anything like that again. It didn’t change a thing.

Why?

This is only my opinion, but his ‘marketing’ was made up of 100’s of ‘sold’ signs on front lawns — without there ever having been a ‘for sale’ sign up first. Frankly, even that part is probably given too much credit. The fact is, his company was known as the one that sold real estate — quickly — and well.

If you listed with him, you got…wait for it…here it comes…RESULTS. Wonder if that was his ‘brand’?

Openly producing tangible results, over and over again, will brand you almost against your will. Feel free to write that gem down. 🙂

Everyone talks about results, but nobody does anything about it.

Marketing ain’t gonna help ’em — .150 hitter syndrome. Branding? They’ve already branded themselves. Since they haven’t learned to sell, and/or haven’t produced enough of a resume of results to show new prospects, they must resort to what currently passes for marketing. In the end, most conversations are gonna get around to the questions these agents dread — almost all of which are seeking evidence of previous and ongoing results.

The solution to your marketing and branding dilemma.

Surely Grandma told you this when you were a kid. If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. You may suck right now, but today you can make yourself .2% better than yesterday. Most us go through our professional life without consciously striving to improve on a daily basis. I remember back in the mid-late 70’s I was asked to assess my agent skills and ability to produce results, then compare that assessment to 2-3 years earlier.

I was completely embarrassed even though I was the only one who knew there’d been no real improvement anywhere. I’ll never get those years back.

Whether we do it or not, the consequences are nearly always staggering in their impact. Becoming excellent at anything relies, for the most part, on practice — repetition. Here are the kickers though — they may surprise you as they certainly did me.

Talent, especially in real estate brokerage, is criminally overrated.

Hard work? Almost always misdirected — and therefore massively overrated. It is best spent becoming excellent. Those working hard at anything other than constant practice, that is, becoming excellent in all their job requires, are waxing rusted out cars, then wondering why they can’t make them shine. Hard work, in and of itself doesn’t lead to success, absent the long and painfully honed skills necessary to produce real and consistent results. The .150 hitter will tell you, honestly, that’s he’s worked as hard at batting practice as the .330 hitter. The problem though, is that as most of us have heard so many times — practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect.

Take those words literally and change your life.

The .150 hitter reaped the ‘rewards’ of having his endless hours of practice groove multiple bad habits. All his hard work provided him with was the same bad swing, perfectly honed.

The day I stopped looking outside myself for reasons leading to my poor performance, was the day I took the first step down the path of excellence. I’m an average palooka who was given the key to the vault.

Consciously become better at tasks that produce superior results, and do it every day. Be your own worst critic, acknowledging errors and correcting them. Be brutally honest. Look only to yourself as the reason you succeed or fail. All this will require you to constantly push a bit past an ever expanding comfort zone.

Nobody is a born real estate agent.

Great real estate agents are made. Mentors can only point in the right direction. You are the only one who can choose to take 200 swings a day in the batting cage — just as you’re alone stepping into the batter’s box when game time arrives.

Practice the right way to do things long and hard. Pretty soon the reward of superior results will take care of itself. Remember Bob? All he did for his first two years was practice, make mistakes, correct them, practice more, rinse and repeat. His third year he exploded. I remember him tellin’ Dad how easy it was for him to produce so much, when it’d been so damn hard for him to learn how it was done.

I’d modify that statement as a result of my own experience. Most of us know how things are done, we just didn’t/don’t have the wicked good skills to do it in an excellent manner.

Talent is overrated until it’s perfected. Working hard doing things poorly will only get you tired — not well paid.

The public always pays exceeding well for stellar results. Stellar results are only consistently produced with stellar, wicked good skills.

And the congregation said, Duh!