What are the reasons that investors advertise? You may say to get leads, find sellers, find buyers, or to market yourself. Those are all good reasons, but the main reason an investor advertises is to get the phone to ring. Until it rings, we don’t know if there’s anybody out there in the world and until we answer it we don’t know if we have a buyer or a seller or whatever else.
Let’s imagine that your advertising is successful and the phone rings. What happens now? Don’t say, “panic.” The information in this blog series is designed to help get you over that hurdle today that there shouldn’t be any fear when they call.
So many new investors will put money into advertising. They’ll setup their office. They’ll print business cards. They’ll run ads. That phone will ring. They’ll look at a strange number on their caller ID and say, “I’m letting it go to voicemail.” If you sit down and figure the average cost of a quality lead, it might be $1,000, but if you figure the average transaction should net about $27,000, how many times would you spend $1,000 to make $20,000 or more?
I would try to do it as often as I could, but the problem is there’s a disconnect because the phone rings. Whatever will I say? Am I going to sound like an idiot? I hope not, but maybe I let it go to voicemail, that way I can kind of prepare myself and once I’m prepared, I’ll call them back and find out that Tom already bought the house or that some other investor already closed the deal.
You need to be ready to respond. Preparation meeting opportunity creates success. Very simple formula and it really works.
Do you have fear? What kinds of things make you nervous or afraid, especially in this business? Fear, as an acronym, is really false evidence appearing real. Fear is one of those things that has been around for a really long time. It’s a very ancient and universal reaction. Every culture experiences fear. If you think about it, the fear mechanism is built into each one of us.
I think I’d more accurately define fear as a sensation of danger. I’ve been involved in many, many, real estate transactions and I’ve known people involved in many, many more and I have yet to find the fatal transaction. I don’t believe anyone has ever died from doing a real estate deal.
Now, my wife said I could be the first, but it’s not because of fear or the sense of something ominous. Have you ever felt that something bad is about to happen? What bad thing could happen in our business? Somebody says, “No?” That’s probably the worst thing that can happen.
This fear is usually accompanied by a host of physical symptoms and those can be really disturbing. They say the greatest fear in the world, often ahead of dying, is public speaking. Even today, I can get a few butterflies before getting up in front of a group, but I look at it from the perspective of what’s the worst that can happen. You can laugh at me. You can laugh with me or you can go” boo”. I think I’ll survive. It took me many, many years to realize that mom was right. Sticks and stones break your bones, but words, not a big deal.
When fear isn’t justified by danger or a threat, or by any kind of rational cause—and you find yourself avoiding something because of that fear—that’s called a phobia.
If you consider all the investors you will meet, you will see a great many of them go to classes and focus groups. They join organizations and buy products and setup LLCs and learn all about land trusts. But they never do a deal because they have success-a-phobia. It’s out there. Believe it or not. People are afraid of failure and rejection, but they are also afraid of success. They are afraid someone might actually say “yes.”
In Part 2, we’ll take a look a fear of being judged, rejected, and abandoned. And in Part 3, we’ll examine what investors can do to overcome the “fear monster”.
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