Eye on the prize. Not on your competition.
It’s no secret, the world of real estate is competitive.
But what happens when we start to focus more on our competitors than our own success journey?
It’s a slippery slope and one that I know all too well.
The game of real estate is lucrative and the best part, the barrier to entry is low. Just about anyone can be an agent and you don’t need a fancy degree to make it big in this business. But that’s not to say it’s easy.
What you do need is a whole other skillset they don’t teach you at school.
Rather than academic skills, I put it down to one’s ability to tune into their street smarts to really stand out as a winner in real estate.
To the untrained eye, real estate is about houses, but as agents playing the game in real time, we know better. Your ability to manage people (and particularly their emotions) is crucial and if you are a natural rapport builder, you have a huge head start.
Aside from this, the practical tasks that come with the job such as prospecting, making calls, showing houses and negotiating aren’t really all that difficult, but when you throw another couple of hundred of agents in the same mix, all competing for the same clients and the same properties, you end up with the perfect storm.
Competition in real estate is fierce, particularly in the cities where the bigger money can be made and the potential for real estate celebrity stardom is on offer to those who are happy to flaunt their stuff via multiple forms of media and make the rest of us cringe.
I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this industry for almost my entire career (bar the first few years where I was green, naive and all too nice) and for me, being a naturally competitive soul, I must admit I have found it difficult to reach a level of peace when it comes to competitors and the role they play in my head.
I believe the hidden challenge they don’t tell you at real estate school (is there even one?) is the mental game you will need to master in order to survive (and thrive) in this industry.
Just like a professional sport, it is more often than not the players who can master their own mental game that go the farthest and become true winners.
I liken this to a career in real estate because it was only when I started to win the internal battle myself, that my love for the industry overtook any of those other negative feelings I had up until that point.
That is also about the time my business picked up because I was able to focus on the right things rather than be bogged down in less than desirable thoughts.
We can often get distracted watching our competitors ride alongside us, winning listings we were sure were meant for us or being the superstar front-runner to a record breaking sale that went viral on social.
It’s human nature for one to have doubts about their own abilities when you see someone else’s perceived success unfolding in front of you, but I’m here to tell you this - turn off the TV.
Stop watching them.
When I had my first office in 2004 I was completely obsessed with my competitors.
I needed to know what they were doing, what they were listing, how our stock levels were tracking against theirs and how big their ads were in the newspaper. This was before the time of social media (thank heavens) because if it were 2014 I would have become a serial cyber stalker, and that ain’t cool!
I was so busy concentrating on what they were doing that it put the brakes on my own game.
Looking back - I know this hurt me. Mentally more than anything.
Fast forward to today and I couldn’t give two hoots about what everyone else in the industry is doing.
In fact, I have come to embrace that competition in our industry is healthy and the way it always (and should) be.
We need each other to push ourselves and this industry forward and to give us all a reason to become better.
Both as individuals and as an industry as a whole.
Whether we like it or not, we are in this together.
When I hear about Seller’s Agents and Buyer’s Agents not seeing eye to eye it makes me cringe. We should look at these relationships as strategic professional associations, not as the competition.
And all this low-level activity like sign jumping and calling other agent’s clients - really? I thought we left all of this back in the 90’s along with those wicked electric typewriters, kodak film and the hideous fluorescent window cards.
The truth is, regardless of whether we’re referring to our career or just our life in general, when we focus on what others are doing, it takes our best attention away from where our focus really needs to be - on ourselves.
Some of the best advice I received when it came to managing competition was to not manage them at all.
Let them do them - and you do you.
Don’t follow on social media.
Don’t call their clients if you think a listing is about to expire, and don’t bad-mouth them because they happened to win the business you wanted.
Remember, the world of real estate is abundant.
The best agents play the bigger game and know that business comes to them based on their own merits and work ethic.
Not only this, when you focus on your patch of lawn and nothing else, you just feel better.
Letting go of negative beliefs when it comes to the competition is liberating to say the least. Trust me. The world of real estate is abundant and when you start to see things through this lens, you won’t even feel the need to check in on your competitors.
You’ll be too busy achieving your own goals and focussing on what the future holds for you and your career.
So, as some homework, perhaps now is the time to do that social media cull of agents you just don’t need to follow anymore.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Wendy Russell writes about the highs and lows of a career in real estate. She is a self-made woman and Independent Buyer’s Advocate based in Brisbane Australia, representing busy professionals in luxury home purchases.
