When I first began my real estate career over 20 years ago, I was told how important having knowledge of my market was. And yet one of the most successful agents I ever knew had very little market knowledge at all. But he was continually closing one transaction after another. How?

Everyone has their own style, techniques, and approaches in this business. And different agents can become hugely successful in real estate sales and leasing while following systems and methods that vary considerably.

So what is the one quality that is shared by every top producing agent no matter what system and approaches they are utilizing to become highly successful in their real estate business?

Desire.

Desire is the one underlying component that you must have to become hugely successful in your real estate business. If you don't really want to be hugely successful, the chances are that you'll fall short of achieving all you are capable of.

The agents who are the top earners in their territory are the ones who want it the most. The other agents simply don't want it as much. They may say that they want it, but the truth about how much an agent wants to be highly successful can be seen by what they do and the results they produce, not by what they say.

I see this all the time with the agents I coach and the people who contact me who are interested in becoming new coaching clients. My dream client is someone who wants to achieve great success in their real estate career with an incredible burning desire. They already have the high performance engine burning inside of them and all they are looking for is the focus, direction, and accountability to make it all happen. These people are very coachable and are willing to make immediate changes in their day-to-day routines because they recognize this is what will have them stop producing the same old results in their business. They recognize that the sum total of everything they are capable of doing in their real estate career has them stuck making the amount of money they are making right now.

They've tried producing better results on their own but keep producing the same old results and they've finally gotten tired and frustrated enough about this to try something different that could actually work much more effectively for them. So it is the incredible drive and underlying desire of these agents that has them try new and creative ways to achieve the success in real estate that they want so much.

Poor to mediocre agents on the other hand tend to get to a level of success that they become quite comfortable with. While they say that they'd like to make more money their actions dictate that this really isn't their first priority. The more truthful statement would be something like, "I'd like to make more money as long as I don't have to change very much about what I do day-to-day in my real estate business."

In reality these people desire to keep their day-to-day routine the same much more than they desire to become top producing agents. There's great comfort for them in staying in the same routine. While making more money may sound great to them, changing their day-to-day routine in order to make this happen scares the heck out of them. Personally, though, my attitude is that as long as you're going to be working the same amount of hours as the top producers in your territory, why not learn how to do what will have you earn the same amount of money? No degree of comfort in keeping with the old routine can match the incredible feelings of producing excellent results. You just have to be willing to bust through the barriers that will allow you to get there. But in order to bust through the barriers, you must have the strong desire to get what's on the other side of those barriers first.

In his landmark book, Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill talks about how all-important having a strong desire is in achieving whatever it is you want in life. In addition to this, internationally acclaimed author and speaker Wayne Dyer says that whatever it is that you really, really want in your life you will have. This again speaks to the importance of having a burning desire within.

A strong, unyielding desire for great success is the most important quality that any real estate agent can have. This burning desire is something that no manager or real estate coach can ever create for the agents they work with. This desire can only come from within the agents themselves, but once the desire is there all great things will then become possible for these agents.

Desire is the one, all-important ingredient that will make all of your dreams and goals come true for you in your real estate career.

Published: October 28, 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.