Oftentimes when working with my coaching clients or speaking in front of commercial real estate audiences, I'll ask the agents, "How much would your income increase in the next 12 months if you were prospecting 10-12 hours every week?"

And in answering this question, the majority of brokers feel they would double their income, some feel they would triple their income, and most everyone thinks they would increase their income by at least 30 percent. It's amazing how something as simple as getting your prospecting done every week no matter what can make such a huge impact on your income!

There are a number of reasons why prospecting at such a high level will increase your income like this. One of them of course is that you'll find many more prospects to work with and close transactions with. And another reason, and it's a very important one, is that you'll transition into working with a higher quality of client.

The reason for this is you only have so many prospects you can work with at one time, you're constantly prospecting and developing new leads, and you'll naturally gravitate towards working on the higher-quality leads and letting go of the less desirable ones.

Now contrast this with the agent who doesn't prospect very much and who waits for the leads to come to them. This agent is more likely to cling to the more marginal leads because they're the majority of what the agent has to work on. Instead of spending time prospecting and developing new leads, this agent is hanging onto these marginal leads and trying to force transactions from them. And of course, this leads to a lot of frustration for the agent.

When you think about it, all the business you've ever wanted for yourself is constantly out there for you, just waiting to be discovered by you. The fact that you have tens, hundreds, or maybe even over a thousand other brokers in your area closing transactions that you're not involved with proves this. These transactions began as leads at one time that you could have discovered yourself, but somehow your lead generation system didn't uncover them for you at the time. So the problem isn't that there's not enough business for you, it's that you're letting too much of the business go to your competitors instead.

If you're not prospecting a solid amount in your business, you're making the choice to be comfortable in your day-to-day activities as a broker, instead of doing what will have you make more money. The choice may not be a conscious one that you know you're making, but it's a choice you're making nonetheless.

Agents who prospect 10-12 hours every week constantly have an abundance of leads they're working on. And because they have so many leads, they're constantly working with the best ones that will make them the most amount of money. These are the leads of people and companies who will be loyal, and who are motivated to close transactions. And this beats the heck out of working with the 3,000 square-foot user who's looking for a one-year lease and who wants to work with a number of brokers to locate the deal, or the guy who wants to buy his first real estate investment but he needs to raise the money from other members of his family first.

When you're constantly doing your prospecting, you're constantly upgrading the level of client you're willing to work with, because you just don't have time to work with anyone else. You have so many great leads you've uncovered that you now laugh at the more marginal ones, you get them completely out of your life, and you leave them for all the other brokers to drive themselves crazy with!

So constantly prospecting leads not only to you making more money, it leads to you working with people and companies who are much more enjoyable to work with. And this in turn makes your life as a commercial broker much more enjoyable!

Published: October 12, 2006

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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.