One of my all-time favorite sales and motivational speakers is Zig Ziglar. Maybe it’s because my first "real job" was in direct sales — one of the toughest industries out there. Or maybe it’s because of Zig’s "down-home" appeal.
Either way, he’s is a legend. I have read a number of his books over the years, like "See You at the Top" and "Secrets of Closing the Sale," and I always get one or two nuggets of information that I can use today in my business.
Today, I wanted to share with you a clip from one of Zig’s well-known seminars: "Priming the Pump." Why did I pick an old video for the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog? Because sometimes the lessons of the future can be learned from simple principles of the past.
Here are two key takeaways to think about as you watch this:
1. You gotta put something in to get something out. Wow — isn’t that true?! Especially today, as a real estate agent. You need to put your whole self into marketing and branding. You can’t dabble in it — you’ve got to be aggressive and really go for it.
If you want to be a great blogger, commit to writing a blog post three times a week. If you want to be great at social media, commit to spending an hour a day on Facebook and Twitter. If you want to get good at marketing your listings online, stop advertising in the Sunday paper and spend the same amount of money (or less!) on Internet marketing.
So many people (in real estate and in life) want "something," but they aren’t willing to put the time, training and commitment into it.
2. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can learn to do it well. This statement (and you’ll hear it about halfway through the video), just hit me between the eyes. Time and time again I see agents who won’t get on Facebook or Twitter because they think they have no idea of what they are doing and are scared to even begin.
Read this again: anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can learn to do it well. The key is just to begin. Just try. It’s like the first time you did a listing presentation. Weren’t you scared? Sweating? Couldn’t wait for it to be over? Now it’s probably "old hat" because you’ve done it so many times. Anything new, like social media, is just like that: a little scary at first, but just dive in!
Here’s the video — enjoy!
Click here to view the original blog post.
Katie Lance is the marketing manager for Inman News. Future of Real Estate Marketing is a part of Inman News.
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