The following are excerpts from a note I sent to the SVN Advisor base this morning. I thought that others may find some of the content useful, and I am posting herein as a result. Enjoy.
SVN Advisors and Staff:
While having the courage to start something is an admirable quality, having the tenacity, the dogged determination, and the sheer will to finish well is a quality possessed by all true champions. Let’s cut to the chase – entering the race is easy, fast starts are a dime a dozen, but finishing victorious as a champion is what everyone strives for but few achieve. My question is this: where will you be at the finish line in 2012?
The interesting thing about a year in time is we all have the exact same opportunity – 365 days. If you break down the 365 days, you’ll see you also have the same 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, and 86,400 seconds in a day your peers and competitors have. The question you need to answer for yourself is this: are you satisfied with what you’ve accomplished this year?
The realization I’d ask you to consider is a simple one: While summer is over, the year is not – you still have more than 90 days to compete and win business. So, will you finish well, or just stand on the sidelines and cede opportunity to your competitors? One of the greatest myths in the commercial real estate business is if a deal isn’t scheduled to close this year by now, it simply can’t happen. Let me say this as clearly as I can – THIS IS A NOT TRUE. Based on my having observed 12 years of pipeline activity at SVN, I can guarantee you between now and the end of the year all of the following things can occur:
1. Some of the deals you hope to close by year-end won’t. You can either mourn the inevitable, or work hard to ensure there’s enough volume in your pipeline to more than offset any year-end slippage that occurs.
2. Not all deals that die remain dead. Transactions previously considered dead opportunities can have life breathed back into them, but only by those Advisors who remain engaged.
3. New opportunities will go full lifecycle from list to close by 12/31/2012. You can either find and win this new business, or let one of your competitors do so.
Stay engaged, don’t quit, and keep working. Those who stay focused on items #2 and #3 above won’t need to spend time mourning losses covered under point #1 above.
A trusted advisor of mine has always told me great companies beat their competition to the future, because their leaders understand how to pull the future forward. I would encourage you to build a 90-day plan in which you both beat your competition to the future (go win new deals), and in which you pull the future forward (pull deals from Q1 ’13 into Q4 ’12). To that end, I offer the following suggestions to help power your plan:
The most successful Advisors help clients reach their goals by using their experience, knowledge, and work ethic to close transactions, not explain why they can’t close them. New listings will be acquired, and transactions will be closed before year’s end – will your deals be among them?
With less than 30 days remaining before we enter Q4, what are you going to accomplish with the last 90+ days of the year? It’s been said that mediocrity rests while excellence remains in tireless pursuit of the objective. Will you stay the course and finish well, or will you let others win the prize? It’s your choice – choose wisely.
– Kevin Maggiacomo, CEO & President, Sperry Van Ness International Corporation.
*All Sperry Van Ness® offices are independently owned and operated.