In almost every single territory throughout America it's the agents who consistently obtain the highest number of listings in the area who usually end- up making the most amount of money. There are people who can make a great living focusing on working with buyers and lessees but, generally speaking, the people who are successful at obtaining a high number of listings are normally the ones who make the big bucks.

Why is this so? Why is it that great listing agents are normally the ones who are the top earners in the territory? One of the biggest reasons for this is the sheer nature of how our business works and the fact that agents who choose to become excellent at listing properties are focused on doing the activities that are virtually guaranteed to make them more money than any other agents in the territory.

Once an agent obtains an exclusive listing on a property he or she is almost guaranteed a commission if the property is priced right to sell or lease within the listing period.

Now here's where it gets interesting...listing agents have at their command an entire workforce of agents in the territory assisting them in making money on their listings. These are the agents who are running with buyers and lessees to try and find the right property for them. And typically in a normal transaction an agent other than the listing agent will be the one representing the ultimate buyer or lessee.

So what listing agents are doing then is focusing on enrolling property owners in listing their properties with them so that all the other agents in the territory can then do the work and find the people who will actually buy and lease these properties. All in all if you're a listing agent it's a pretty good system!

So what we see then is that listing agents' time is very well spent. By focusing on listing properties they minimize the amount of time that they actually waste. They usually know within a matter of days after making a listing presentation whether they will be the agent exclusively marketing the property for the owners... or not. Their success becomes both a numbers game of working on a system that leads them to making more and more listing presentations combined with a devotion to honing their craft of continually improving their listing presentations along the way. When they combine making more listing presentations with increasing their percentage of successful listings obtained along the way they really have attained something quite special.

Now contrast all of this with how agents who work with buyers and lessees often end up spending their time. These agents will typically run on a non-exclusive basis with prospects who are looking at properties with other agents also. In these situations agents can spend weeks or even months of their time showing properties to these prospects and in the end have nothing to show for it if the prospect successfully finds a property through a different agent. And when this happens it can really hurt. You've lost your time, you have no money to show for it, and you can feel like you've just gone a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson.

This is why listing agents are normally the most successful agents in the territory. So much more of their time is focused on developing exclusive relationships that are almost guaranteed to make them money. It is rare indeed to find buyer and lessee agents who only work with their clients when a signed exclusive agreement is in place. But those agents who only work with their clients under this kind of arrangement, similar to the listing agents, can find themselves making a great deal of money year after year also.

As an agent one of your goals must be to maximize the productive use of your time. When you're working with people on a non-exclusive basis you're guaranteed to be throwing a great amount of your productive time completely out the window. Property owners recognize that exclusive listings are the norm on their side of the transaction but buyers and lessees don't necessarily see it this way on their side. That's why listing agents, by focusing on obtaining the exclusive representation that property owners are accustomed to giving, continually lead their territories in the amount of money they make each and every year.

Published: March 17, 2003

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Jim Gillespie, Ph.D., is America's Premier Real Estate Coach℠. He has over 20 years of experience in real estate sales and is a past president of three different real estate companies. His FREE real estate E-newsletter with tips and creative ideas to help agents make more money is now read by over 35,000 agents nationwide. You can subscribe to his FREE E-newsletter by visiting RealEstateSalesCoach.com or contact him at Jim@RealEstateSalesCoach.com.