How to be a $10 Million dollar producer
Focus on the process
Have you ever found yourself so distracted, so unfocused that nothing you seem to do in your business works out? It happens to all of us and very often when I’m coaching someone who’s gotten stuck in this mindset, my direction is to forget about yourself and your business. Walk away from it for a while and go help someone else in need with no expectation of financial gain. Occasionally we can get so narrowly focused on our own drama that a broader perspective can be tremendously helpful.
But what about those times when things are rolling along nicely? You’d like to accomplish more, but the enormity of your goal causes you to hold yourself back. What then? Self-help coaching junkies, like me, are often reading about and then professing the importance of taking “massive action”, a concept Tony Robbins will be selling to the masses until his dying breath. To be sure, taking massive action to build momentum works and I’ve personally proved as much many times. As a Realtor, speaker and a coach I’ve found myself taking massive action to build my business. Said another way, whatever professional role I’ve ever played in the real estate industry, there has been a time when I needed to go into hyper-drive with my lead generation efforts. Getting to $10 Million closed production in a year was one of the hardest things I ever did as a Realtor. After I did it once, multiples of $10M weren’t nearly as difficult, but that first 10…whew! To get there the first time I remember spending the entire year attacking FSBOs and expired listings like my life depended on it. Then, when I had to build a speaking and coaching business I would spend day after day standing at my desk on the phone, calling broker/owners all over the country, just to schedule an appointment thousands of miles away.
In each case however, I was always coached to take massive action without dwelling on that massive action, and I’m convinced it’s one of the major keys to success. Back then, my coaches consistently reminded me to set the goal and forget it. Then, focus on the process. When you own a business, “the process” is basically always the same:
- Generate Leads
- Convert leads to appointments
- Convert appointments to signatures
- Deliver world class service for the client
- Follow up and maintain the relationship with the client
- Repeat until you’ve hit the goal
Have you ever known someone who set a huge goal, only to have that goal stop them dead in their tracks? For example, who do you know who set a goal to lose a large amount of weight but never did? Who do you know who desired to pay off a large amount of debt only to find themselves deeper in debt, unable to see how to tackle such large amounts of money? Who do you know who wanted to write a book or run a marathon or complete an Ironman but never did it?
It turns out, Harvard has studied how setting big goals actually demotivate us. When we set big goals, our brains instinctively focus on how far we have to go, to such a degree that any small action we take today seems insignificant. Further, when we get close to achieving a goal, some of us will pull back. We sabotage ourselves because crossing the finish line is very final and throws us back into the fear of the unknown. When we hit a goal our brain will immediately focus on “what’s next?” and that thought frankly scares the crap out of much of humanity.
It will no doubt comfort you then, to know that Olympic athletes, who clearly have massive goals, learn to focus on the process in order to hit those goals. The swimmer knows that each lap in the pool counts. The runner knows that each sprint around the track counts. In fact, those athletes know the only thing they can control moment-to-moment is the lap or sprint they are on. Likewise, master salespeople know each call counts. Each lead generating email, text message, social media DM, door knock and face-to-face chat count. Want to hit $10M in production? Set that goal and then forget it. Focus on the process, and control on a daily basis, the small things — lead generating in nature — that will add up to huge production.
