How we approach driving the growth of our business has the ability to fulfill or to just pay the bills. About a year ago, I was training a class of 40 real estate business owners. Our focus was a mid-year check-in on their business. I walked them through the following exercise:
“At the beginning of the year, you had a plan to generate a certain amount of revenue each month. Write that number down.” They quickly went to work.
“Now, because we are all optimistic and like big goals, my bet is that you might be lagging in your pace to achieve your revenue goal — write down what the gap is between your goal and how you are trending year-to-date.” A few calculators were pulled up on smartphones.
“Now, in looking at that gap, answer this question: What lead generation tool do you currently have in your personal arsenal that can bridge your identified gap by the end of the year? Write the tool down.” Within 30 seconds, most had written down their tool.
“Now, looking at that tool, imagine doing that activity for the next three years, five days each week, three hours every day for 50 weeks a year. How many of you are excited to do that task? How about a show of hands?”
I looked around. I waited. Not a hand was raised.
Intrigued, I took it a step further: “I’m curious — those of you who have children (most of the room was over 30 years of age and married), how many of you would be excited to teach your son or daughter about this tool you’ve identified so that he or she could have a more fulfilling career?”
You guessed it. Again, not a soul.
It struck me that if a group of experienced professionals felt this way, then there is something wrong with the way we are learning to generate business. It’s not that the solutions they wrote down don’t work, its that the tactics they wrote down do not fulfill them enough to be worth doing.
Perhaps this is why salespeople have been taught to have vision boards in front of them as they make their calls, so that they can distract themselves from the lack of fulfillment they are persevering through.
Perhaps this is why salespeople use mirrors to check to see if they are smiling before they answer the client.
Would vision boards and mirrors be necessary if we were fulfilled? Fulfillment occurs when we have authentic human experiences. Fulfillment happens when we can be generous, and when we are generous, we never feel like we are selling. We aren’t.
This is what we want for our kids. It’s what we should also want for the time we invest into our businesses.
Stay tuned for more articles in the coming weeks and months as I start to examine our lead generation fulfillment problem, as well as offer some potential solutions for you and your business.
Patrick Kilner is the founder and CEO of TowerHill Realty. You can follow him on LinkedIn.
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