What is Your Company Core Built On?

When you know your people’s passion, their purpose, or their why, and link that up with selling real estate, you have the rocket fuel that drives motivation.

At our Ninja Leadership Institute, we ask company owners and managers this question: “Why does your company exist other than for making money?

After some brainstorming, many of them come up with this answer: “Our company exists to help our people and our clients go from the life they have to the life they dream about.” In other words, we help people achieve their purpose or passion in life. This is often called their why.

When you know your people’s passion, their purpose, or their why, and, then you link that up with selling real estate, you have the rocket fuel that drives motivation. Simon Sinek, in his book, Start with Why, says a person or company’s why is at the core of what motivates them.

What we do is sell real estate. How we do it is the (name your company) Way. Why do we do it? What motivates your sales associates and managers? The why is their rocket fuel and usually falls into one of life’s four core values: Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams. Here’s an example from each.

Family: Mary has three daughters in college at the same time—all at expensive private schools. The tuition is $50,000 per daughter ($150,000 total per year). Her why for selling real estate is to educate her daughters. She tells me her goal is to make $150,000 a year. I remind her that she needs to make $200,000 before taxes to have $150,000 after tax for her daughters’ colleges. Mary, who previously was an average producer, makes over $200,000 every year after that. Even after her daughters graduated, she has become accustomed to a new normal for income and continued to earn over $200,000 annually.

Occupation: Tami’s why was to become Rookie of the Year in our Realtor® Association. She was on fire to do it with everything from daily affirmations, to learning the systems, to her amazing work ethic. She did it! And the work ethic and systems she developed carried her to a very successful long-term career. Along the way, she set other career milestones – earn her CRS designation, have 100 transactions a year, be one of REAL Trends America’s Best Real Estate Agents and more. Being the best in her career is her why.

Recreation: Aaron is a talented singer and performer. He realizes that if he learns the real estate systems, he can have enough time and make enough money to buy the equipment and hire the musicians to launch his rock band—which is his true passion. Later, he told me a key piece of advice I gave him was “Your passion has to be funded. And a real estate sales career is a great way to fund it.”

Dreams: Jason, a 25-year old, only had $100 in his pocket and borrowed money from his parents to get started in real estate. His dream was to make it in real estate and be financially secure. He was motivated by his dream and within three years, he built a successful career, married the love of his life, bought a home, and has over $100,000 cash in the bank. He’s now living his dream and has a new dream for “wake-up money” (annual income from investment property).

Learn your peoples’ passions. Sales associates come in all ages, shapes, sizes, and motivations. One size does not fit all. You must identify their specific passions (whys) and then show them how selling real estate can fund their passion. Connecting their passion with funding their passion via selling real estate is a much more powerful motivator than cajoling them at a sales meeting with “C’mon team we need more listings!”

As Friedrich Nietzsche says: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

One of our great Ninja clients (and a great friend) is Bob Parks, owner of Parks Realty. Bob and his team have a mission to “inspire our associates and our staff to build a magnificent life.” This is so much more than just listing and selling. It includes family, health, and wealth management goals as well.

Discover your peoples’ passions and then show them how to fund their passions. Build your organization around the philosophy of helping your people “Build a Magnificent Life,” and you will build a magnificent company.

 

 

 

By Larry Kendall, author of Ninja Selling and chairman emeritus of The Group, Inc..