Coach Dan Foster | Purpose Driven Broker

This past week I had the honor of interviewing Kim Dittler of Prudential Northwest Properties. Kim was recently honored by the National Association of Realtors as being one of 30 rising stars under the age of 30 in the entire nation. Kim is a true professional and all around great person. After spending time with her there is no doubt that she is one of the best real estate brokers out there right now.

Have you ever spent valuable time with a prospect only to find out they are not qualified or unable to use your services? This can be one of the most frustrating experiences in a sales professional’s day. Yet, this seems to happen over and over again regardless of the personal cost and outcome.

During the month of April my team and I will be scheduling time to review the first quarter of 2010. Our goal will be to reflect, adjust, and recommit to our overall life and business goals for the year. It forces everyone to take time out of their busy schedule to consider how the past 90 days have gone in terms of overall execution of their plan and high-payoff activities for their business.

The most successful professionals I know are committed to life-long learning. By this I don’t mean they are attending classes at the community college or getting and MBA. Rather, they have a discipline of learning something new through their interactions with clients, their failures and successes, and from studying their industry. I’ve identified four essential areas of knowledge that I think are important for professionals to be gaining in knowledge and understanding so that they have what it takes to provide great customer service and help their clients achieve their goals.

Early on in my career I learned that working by referral only was a comfortable but unsuccessful way to run a sales business. In those formative years I believed the only true way to stay in the business was to focus on the people I knew (sphere of influence). I was told people who were cold calling, door-knocking, and doing other selling activities that helped them meet new people through hard work and determination were crazy and wasting their time. I discovered quickly that nothing is further from the truth and the most successful sales people follow a Business Growth Formula that yields consistent business growth year after year regardless of the type of market. The formula is simple and one that by referral only agents are missing out on: