Elite AgentLEADERSHIP

Self motivation: Work out what drives you and why

Whether you are transacting with a buyer or a seller – the customer trigger, or the motivation, is essentially emotion driven.

As a property professional, your capacity to understand the emotional motivations of your customer, and to empathise with them, can refine and define your ability to meet their needs and close the sale.

In order to understand the motivation of our customers, it’s super important that we understand what drives our own motivation.

This is what interests most leaders.

“As a sales leader I spend a lot of my time working out what motivates my sales consultants,” says Ben Major, Sales Director at OpenAgent.

“People are motivated by different things, and if you can help them understand the connection between the things that motivate them and the work they are doing, they will be a lot more fulfilled.”

Whether you’re leading a sales team or dealing with property customers, it’s those leaders and agents who strive to understand what drives motivation who succeed on a broader scale due to their perseverance and sheer ability to get #$%^ done!

In order to get #$%^ done, it’s crucial to understand the nature of activity goals and learn how to use the things you love as incentives to drive the things you dread.

Enter self-awareness, the lever behind self-motivation and the ability to know thyself. Specifically, your triggers – what are those things that slow you down, speed you up or totally enrage you?

Which tasks do you avoid, which do you loathe and which do you love?

Let’s take that cold call you’ve been putting off making – when you finally force yourself to pick up the phone, what is the key driver motivating you to tackle the call, and not just tackle it, but deliver it with all the charm, zest and confidence in the world?

Sure, the initial motivator could be that you need to hit your sales target. But what lies beyond that?

Because whether the motivating factor is ultimately to be better positioned when it comes to your finances, or to move a few notches up the career ladder – these are the personal objectives that, together, make up your sales motivation. And it’s vital that you identify them.

Let’s say that you’re a selling agent who believes the most important thing is your sales activity – there are only a couple of key factors that go into making sure that you’re hitting your sales numbers.

The best and fastest way to get the listings is to get the number of leads you need.

The best and fastest way to get the number of leads you need is to get in front of the right number of people.

The best and fastest way to get in front of the right number of people is to super charge the number of calls you make.

Now it comes down to what you’re actually doing on a daily basis to make sure that you’re getting in front of the right number of people.

The most important thing you can do daily is to follow through with your activity goals.

You know exactly how many calls you must make, and if you commit to not leave the office until you’ve made those calls, then hello, that is your motivational driver at work!

As you get into the routine and rhythm of prioritising daily activities, you get a natural momentum with sales motivation.

That’s because you’re well-prepared – and you know what they say – fail to prepare or prepare to fail!!

These are tried and true selling habits that directly boost sales. It’s just human nature that as you see the numbers rise—your sales motivation will rise right along with it.

The better you are at holding yourself accountable to the activities, the more likely you are to hit your sales numbers.

Doesn’t it just make sense that your natural sales motivation will increase right along with it?

Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work.

Get on point by asking, “how can I improve my motivation?”

The answers lie in remembering the wins in whatever shape they appeared in, whether it was your peers cheering you on, or the CEO calling you in for coffee and a chat to celebrate.

Whenever you do something remarkable – be it closing 25 sales in 25 minutes flat or engineering a coup d’etat as you take down the competitor, it’s important to acknowledge it!

This can be done by jotting down a summary of your victories and keeping them someplace visible.

This is your go-to during those not so victorious days which you will inevitably encounter because, hey, you’re only human!

When you’re feeling flat, pause to ponder your past wins and remind yourself that the next big win is waiting in the wings.

When faced with challenge, resistance, or failure, do your best to find the silver lining – how many people have your heard say, “the one good thing to come out of Covid-19 for me was….”?

It might be something small, but there’s almost always something positive, if you look for it.

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Sue Ostler

Sue Ostler has authored 5 non-fiction books and countless articles designed to mentor, motivate, and inspire clients. In her day job she is a national agency Account Manager at OpenAgent.