When I ask the question in my courses, “When do we negotiate in Real Estate?” everyone speaks up – All The Time.
And this is true. Our work is to negotiate. With prospective clients, on behalf of clients, with our negotiation counterparts, with our brokers, team leads and colleagues. With suppliers for ourselves and on behalf of our clients and often, even our personal relationships and families.
However, there is one negotiation you should never have.
That is the one with yourself about whether you are going to do business development today.
Business development is the activities you do to bring in new clients. Without clients, nothing else matters. There are no listings to earn, no offers to make, no negotiations to be had. No real estate to be done.
Most of us have an inner voice that tries to negotiate with us about business development. “I’ll do it after I prepare this report for a client.” “I’m under stress today and that might come across to people, so I’ll do my business development tomorrow. “ I should drive out and look at that property that my uncle mentioned.” “I’m going to scroll Instagram for some new ideas. “ It goes on and on. This is my favourite: “If I could just get some of my current clients off the fence, I wouldn’t have to do business development”(this a sure path to utter disappointment). If you allow your inner voice to win this negotiation, your real estate career will slow to a trickle.
We don’t allow our inner voice to negotiate with us about brushing our teeth, getting our annual medical tests or meeting our kids’ teachers – so why do we allow ourselves to be utterly sideswiped by our internal dialogue when it comes to our business?
This inner dialogue, also knows as the inner critic, is unique in each of us but what I know to be true after 39 years in real estate: The people who are successful don’t negotiate business development. They do it. Consistently. No matter what.
It’s a choice. Do your business development and have an incredible real estate career and a life of abundance and freedom, or fuss about doing it and struggle for ever. What do you choose?
“Most of us have two lives: the life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”
