Sharpen your skills, even the ones you think you have mastered

Posted Feb.09, 2009 by Jamey Bridges in Real Estate Internet Marketing

The 5^th day of challenging yourself and learning new skills is upon you. We hope that you have already started to see some changes in your business. If you haven’t noticed any change, ask yourself the question “Have I really pushed my limits and implemented change in my business?“.

The pursuit of mastery is one that is often overlooked in today’s age of “I must have it now“. Pursuing mastery is a concept that is evident in time honored traditions like the martial arts and can certainly be applied to business. Joe and I trained in the art of Taekwondo, in which we both achieved our black belts. Many people hear that and think we hit the top level, but that is actually not the case. In the art of Taekwondo there are 9 belts you must achieve to get Black Belt, certainly a wonderful accomplishment, but the pursuit of mastery doesn’t stop there. Once you achieved the rank of Black Belt there were an additional 9 levels! So really getting to Black Belt is just getting to a new plateau where you can again pursue new mastery.

Business owners must pursue mastery

Working side by side with this group of top online business people I realized that not only were they there to learn, they were in the constant pursuit of mastery. You see, in order to be part of this group you had to be willing to present your business to the entire group and then listen to how you could improve it. Remember, these are big businesses and they have to put it out there for everyone to point out how they could actually do better!

There were no punches pulled and nothing was sacred. All critiques were done in order to help that business owner improve so any improvement was fair game. That could have meant suggesting a big change (like moving to a new contact management system like Infusion Soft) or to a smaller detail like creating a more compelling headline. Everyone was honest in their mission to help and all took the criticism very well because they were looking to make an improvement.

After speaking with everyone I realized that this was not the only group that they attended. They regularly attended seminars, purchased CD’s and DVD’s, all in the name of improving their skills. They had made the pursuit of mastery a part of their daily activities so it was second nature for them.

If the best in the business can do it, we should all do it

Taekwondo gives you a series of belts to earn to identify your achievements. The business world isn’t so clear on what you need to do to achieve the highest ranks of achievement, but most of know what we should be doing and what skills we need to work on. If you don’t know, that’s ok; it’s time to get a real estate coach to help you identify the areas you need help on.

Take action with your business

Now it’s time to take a tough look at yourself and see which skills you need to sharpen. Leave no stone unturned when you take this look, even the skills you think are your best can always use some fine tuning. Here are a few skill areas that you might want to tackle and reach for your black belt in:

Scripts and Dialogues - A core skill to any environment where you must “sell” something. Maybe you need more work with buyer scripts, maybe seller scripts, pick one and reach higher to master it.
Buyer Interview / Listing Interview - I didn’t say presentation, I said your interview of buyers and sellers. The best people interview buyers and sellers, they don’t do a “presentation”. Check out what I am talking about at www.BuyerScripts.com.
Online Marketing - This is a big one that you will probably want to pick a specific area to pursue mastery. Think about the areas of pay per click marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), or blogging and start learning more about them.

Your action item is to simply pick 1 to start. Not 1 in each area, just 1 area. After all you wouldn’t sign up to do Judo, Kenpo, and Taekwondo a the same time, so just pick one area from above (or another area you were already thinking about) and get started.

Your time to take action is now. We hope you have enjoyed some of what we learned at our conference and we hope it helps you to take some action in your real estate business. If you want help to get started and take action in your business and you want some guidance, we are here for that. Try one of our products to start your learning and improving today.

To your success online.

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