A Real Estate Agent Should Do More Than the Minimum

At the risk of sounding like Stan, the restaurant manager you want to punch in the face in the cult classic movie Office Space, do you really want to just do the bare minimum? While Stan’s concern was that waitress Joanna (Jennifer Anniston) wear more “flare” on her suspenders, his irritating point actually has a legitimate application in the real world, especially when it comes to your real estate agent career.

The point is this: How many slackers become a smashing success at what they do? We’re going out on a limb here to say not very many. Do you think Donald Trump sits around the office twiddling his thumbs, watching the clock, counting the minutes until the end of the day? While we don’t know The Donald personally, it would be a safe bet that he likely is cursing the fact that there are so few minutes in the day because there’s no time to get to everything he wants to.

While it is true you can slide through the day putting forth minimum effort, only returning the calls to people you like talking to, showing properties at a leisurely pace, whiling away large chunks of the day with Facebook “research,” and you might even eke out a living with such tactics but do you expect to find serious financial success approaching the day like that? It might sound like Joe Boy Scout Master but in life, love, and business, excellence is not found by doing the minimum amount of work necessary for others to consider the job “done.”

Let’s say you’re basically lazy. Ouch. Hurts to admit but that might be the case exactly. If you’re happy like that and really don’t care to ever find financial success, so be it. Have nice life. But if you haven’t bailed out on this article yet as “boring” and have the wherewithal to implement a little self examination, you may find that there is room for improvement and, more importantly, that you want to improve. As a real estate agent, pretend like every client is your mother or father – unless you hate your parents, then that would not work well as a motivator. Assuming you actually like your mother, it’s easy to get better at serving clients with the following mind game.

Think of all the “extras” you would do for Mommy dearest and simply do those for everyone else. Minimum effort yields minimum results. Maximum effort yields the world on a platter. Now go get ‘em, Tiger!

The Bonus Commissions Team

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