Creating a Work Environment for Success

Prospecting and your environment

Prospecting, sometimes referred to as cold calling, is one of the best ways to generate new business in real estate.  It’s absolutely free and the results can be immediate.  Many of the top producing agents in the business include prospecting as a major part of their lead generation activities. 

So why don’t more agents use prospecting as a tool to increase their sales?  There are as many reasons as there are agents – lack of motivation, fear of rejection, and a bad attitude toward cold calling are some of the most common.  Despite whatever reason they give, many agents know deep down that it is something that could dramatically increase their business if they actually started and stuck to it as part of their daily business plan.

One of the most powerful things that you can do as a real estate agent and one of the crucial factors in your overall success in this business is controlling your work environment.  There are many things that are out of your control in life, but the environment that you work in is completely in your hands.  This is critical in every aspect of the business, but increasingly so if you are committing to prospecting as part of your daily routine.  Your environment can make or break you – especially if you are a newer agent trying to learn the ropes.

I am going to discuss five factors that you need to address in creating the correct work environment in which you can thrive. 

Home or office – which is better?

One of the choices that you have to make is whether you are going to work primarily out of your home or if you are going to work from an office.  There are many pros and cons to each but it boils down to you and your personality and tendencies.

 Some agents feel that working from home can be detrimental because they are unable to avoid the distractions that can be part of being at home.  They can get caught up in doing little household chores that just have to be done, or have to catch a particular show on T.V. or any number of things that distract them from actual work.  Many agents new to the business are used to a particular routine at home and find it difficult to switch to work mode while in the area in which they are used to relaxing.

In reality, the average real estate office doesn’t offer much more in terms of a quality work environment.  A casual stroll through many offices will reveal that most agents spend their day chatting in the break room, socializing with somebody’s assistant, designing flyers for their listing, toying around with their website, or talking to other agents about how bad the market is and not much in the way of quality money making activities.

Despite the potential negatives, my advice for a newer agent is to plan on working out of the office for at least two years before considering working out of home.  The reason is that you need to learn the business of real estate – be exposed daily to the vocabulary, the situations, and the discussions so that you become proficient in the basics of the business.  The trick is to join an office or a team that provides an environment where work is encouraged.  I’m not talking about a dry boring place where everyone is just trudging through their day, but a high energy, enthusiastic office that fosters an environment of achievement and learning.  This is the first step you can take in proactively creating your ideal work situation.

It does not matter if you are in a private office or in a bull pen type of area as long as the agents around you are highly motivated and have a genuinely positive attitude.  For my team, I leased out a large space in the office and set up open cubicles that are adjusted to the height of the stomach or lower chest to encourage standing while on the phone with prospects.  Standing while prospecting – or while talking to ANY client on the phone – creates great energy and naturally helps you project your energy while speaking to them.  Stand up and move around!  Motion creates emotion!  People are always attracted to and want to work with people who are highly enthusiastic and project positive attitudes.

Being in an environment like that will get you in the mindset to work hard and expect great results when you get in to the office.  If you are having a bad day that kind of environment will also help you shake it off and get back in to a positive state of mind, which is critical to your success in sales.  Real estate can involve a lot of ups and downs and it is good to have a support network to help you through when things get rough.  Another advantage – especially if you are new to the business – is that you always have people around to answer questions for you when you encounter situations that you don’t quite know how to deal with.

The Correct Equipment

There are certain things that a real estate agent needs in their environment to be successful.  First, a good cell phone is as necessary as air to breath in this business.  Preferably a PDA type that allows you access to the internet, has a quality camera, and of course, gets good signal over the entire area that you work.  It is the information age and when clients want information, they want it yesterday.  Be prepared to communicate via phone, texts, multi-media texts and e-mails in real time if you want to keep up with today’s high pace information society. 

A good laptop computer is critical as technology becomes more and more a part of the real estate business.  You have to be able to send and receive information about properties, access and maintain your website and/or blog, create and build your database, maintain communication with prospects, work your pipeline with automatic drip campaigns, and keep up with the latest developments in your community so that you can be knowledgeable when assisting your clients – just to name a few of the many tasks that your laptop computer will be needed for. 

If you are doing a lot of calling from the office, whether it prospecting, lead follow up, or any other type of client communication, you will find it beneficial to have a quality headset for your office phone.  If you are in a loud, high energy environment you should consider getting a noise suppression headset.  This will help you focus on the conversation you are having as well as blocking any noise from getting through to the person on the other end of the phone.  Everybody on my team, including me and my partner, invested in noise cancelling headsets from The Boom.  We can have music blaring, people yelling, phones ringing and still hear as clear as if there was nobody in the room.   The person on the other end of the phone can hear what we are saying and hear none of the background noises, no matter how loud.

The one other piece of equipment you need for this job is a vehicle.  When you are starting out, get something you can comfortably afford that is clean and in good condition.  Four doors is a must – you don’t want to be showing homes to a retired couple and expect one of them to try and slide behind the front seat to get in the back.  Believe me, I had a two door sports car when I started in the business and it didn’t take too many times seeing the contorted faces of clients trying to get in and out of the back seat to realize that four doors is mandatory.

As you progress in this business, you are going to need to upgrade your vehicle.  There are many people who are going to fight me on this point, but the fact remains that image is a part of this business and if you want to succeed at a high level you have to project an image of professionalism and success.  Whether you like it or not, showing up to a $3 million listing appointment in a Saturn is going to get you no where.  Period – end of story.  I’m not saying that you should live above your means or engage in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses sort of mentality.  What I am saying is that if you want to be a highly successful, top producing agent and do business with other highly successful people, you have to project the right image and in this business, your vehicle is part of your image.  It is a highly competitive business and if you are going to compete with the top agents, you need to utilize all the tools that you have available.

Coming soon…

Keep checking back – in the second of this two part installment on your work environment, we will be covering organization in the work place, routines and schedules that help you stay on the fast track to success, and the most important factor of all in terms of your work environment… the people and attitudes that you surround yourself with on a daily basis and how it affects every facet of your success.

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