When I began coaching agents years ago something that I greatly looked forward to was the opportunity to work with middle-of-the- road producers and turning them into top producing agents. I recognized that the differentiating qualities of top producing agents could be learned by those agents who were willing and strongly interested in becoming top agents themselves.

What I then experienced came as quite a surprise to me. As I began marketing myself to agents I found that it was the top producing agents themselves who were hiring me. At first I was stunned by this but then it all began to make sense to me.

Mediocre agents tend to believe that their success in the real estate business it not really within their own control. Whereas top producing agents tend to believe that they are in complete control of their own level of success in the industry. In addition to this mediocre agents tend to believe that the reasons why they are not top producing agents themselves have little or nothing to do with how they are spending their time day-in and day-out in their real estate business.

Some mid-level producers actually recognize that there are other activities they should be doing to bring in more business, but for whatever reasons they're not really motivated to change their habits. In the end they'd really rather work the hours they're working, approach their real estate business as they have in the past, and produce the same results they've been producing year-after-year. It's almost as if they find more comfort in the predictability of it all than they do in the prospect of making changes to their business that will completely propel their productivity to a whole new level.

Top producers, on the other hand, embrace change. For it is through embracing change that they have become the great high-level producers that they are.

When they began in the business they didn't really know what they were doing, but they were determined to become one of the best, top producing agents in the territory. And along the way they've realized that in order to become this agent they must be willing to constantly reinvent both themselves and how they go about doing their business. They realize that whenever they stop changing they immediately put a ceiling on the level of success that they can achieve. And that level of success is whatever level they are at right now. The more forward thinking agents also recognize that not being willing to change could quickly mean actually facing a substantial loss in income as they're really opening the door for the competition to simply blow right by them.

So, if you want to increase your income above and beyond where it is right now, be willing to embrace change. If you change your behavior and begin doing what will have you take your income to the next level you will see great, tangible results in a matter of months. And you will feel much more excited, passionate, and fulfilled in your real estate business almost immediately.

Published: November 8, 2002

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