“The 30 day rule states that the prospecting you do in this 30 day period will pay off for the next 90 days” – Jeb Blount

The blessing, and the curse, of this industry is that, typically, as soon as we get busy we lose focus on making the time for the things that got us busy in the first place. I once wrote a to-do list of all of the things I would need to do for a cold start in a new patch. I realised that almost nothing on that list are things that we do day to day in our own moderately successful agency- madness!

If you have ever had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Brown live in action, it is truly terrifying the abundance of potential lead sources we have laying dormant in our databases. The holy grail has always been to focus on prospecting, power hours, client services department, and the like to turn this into gold (thank you, Stephen). Whilst we all instinctively know this, it’s still a comparatively rare thing to see in many agency businesses. Those that successfully do it really are outliners to the norm.

I was recently at a regional RAN meeting when I had the fortune of a quick masterclass from Chris Watkin about why agents don’t do prospecting, and perhaps more valuably, utilising the tools for identifying those people that would. It was a moment of David Blaine’s street magic as Chris started scribbling on a napkin, but the realisation of what he was saying struck a simple chord with me.

Here is my interpretation of what Chris said, and hopefully what I have learned.

For those familiar with the DISC model of profiling personality types, people fit broadly into four buckets.

1. 
   

   D = Dominance. These people are orientated, competitive, and impatient (Bosses)
   
   

2. 
   

   I = Influencing. These people are outgoing, enthusiastic and persuasive (Valuers)
   
   

3. 
   

   S = Stabilizing. These people are amiable, patient, and reserved. (Negotiators)
   
   

4. 
   

   C = Cautious. These people are analytical, detail orientated, and systematic. (Property Managers)
   
   
   
   

According to Chris’ teachings, 3 of these 4 personality types are broadly ineffective at prospecting for these broad reasons. 

D’s get bored as it’s not fast-paced enough and gratifying enough playing the longer game of relationship building. 

I’s get upset and demoralised when they are rejected as that is their biggest fear in life

C’s spend so long perfecting the process, they just don’t get anything done. 

Chris concluded that the number 1 personality type to successfully prospect are those people who come up with an ‘S’. These people will just quietly go about things in the right way as they have the balance between following systems and a genuine warmth towards building relationships with people.

There are loads of free resources on the internet to do a simple DISC profile. It’s definitely a few minutes well spent!

Anyway, it was a significant lightbulb moment for me and I need to now end this blog post to now go and do something about it!



Best

Mike