Expired Listings, Edison, Colonel… Oh My!

“Thomas Edison failed 1,000 times before he invented the light bulb.”
“Colonel Sanders offered his recipe to 1,000 restaurants before one finally took it.”
WOW. Perseverance, you think? Bull. That’s what I think.

God, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that “inspirational” perseverance nonsense from all the ra-ra trainers, motivational snake oil salesmen, and pump-up coaches…. I’m just sick and tired of this sh… stuff.

So what does that mean, exactly? That you have to stubbornly keep doing something and fail miserably 1,000 times before you finally reach success? NONSENSE! If something doesn’t work, then STOP for crying out loud. Give it a fair – FAIR – shot, yes, but no sense in killing yourself thinking, or worse, hoping things will magically change if you just keep going.

I mean, think about… If you contact 100 expireds and not get one listing out of it, then there is a good chance SOMETHING’S WRONG, bubba.

If you go on 10 listing appointments and walk away with zero listings, then it’s time to pause and see what’s up.Don’t just stubbornly keep mailing, calling, showing, prospecting, presenting, wasting time, and wasting money… If the results are not what you want them to be, you are off course. Common sense, right? You’d think…

And yet look around you: same old boring marketing, bad postcards, dull ads, wrong approach, ineffective presentations, overpriced listings… It’s the Sanders/Edison approach of “just keep going and hope hope hope”. No wonder so many agents quit every day.

The way I see it, Edison was one smart guy, no question, he just sucked at time management. And he had all the time in the world! No urgency. Honestly, if he took this long today at GE he’d be fired by now, light bulb be damned. And Colonel Sanders might have been a decent chicken cook but boy was he horrible at sales and presentations! Can you afford to be like them? Keep trying and failing for years? I didn’t think so…

I think you’re smarter than that.So don’t make the same mistake. Go for it with gusto, give it your best shot, take time to get things going, that’s all good. BUT see where your shots are landing, and ADJUST. Evaluate. Learn. IMPROVE. THEN repeat.

Don’t believe for a second that success takes a long time. Or thousand failures. It’s all within your reach. You just need to know what works, and what doesn’t. Do it the smart way.

Now go out there and Get some Expireds!