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| This article was published on: 10/01/2007 FEATURE: 2007 REALTORS® CONFERENCE & EXPO / LAS VEGAS Entrepreneurial Excellence Series BY WENDY COLE A career and marketing guru, a sports legend, a celebrated historian, and the marketing genius behind some of the world’s most recognized brands: That’s the extraordinary lineup for the 2007 Entrepreneurial Excellence Series. REALTOR®Magazine asked all four speakers — Seth Godin, Lou Holtz, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Scott Bedbury — for a preview of what conference-goers might hear.
Lou Holtz: You’re Not an Order Taker  Lots of experts dole out advice about being successful, but Lou Holtz earned his stripes by turning around one lackluster football team after another, giving him a level of authority practically unrivaled in any field. Holtz is the only college football coach to have triumphed in five bowl games with five different teams. He remains the only one to have had four different college teams ranked in an end-of-season Top 20 poll.One of the secrets behind his record, whether on the field or in business, is to establish and maintain a vision for your team — and yourself, Holtz says. Achievement isn’t about securing titles or awards — though the West Virginia native has earned more trophies than he probably remembers — but about keeping sight of your goals, even when the odds are long. Holtz and his teams, including the University of Notre Dame, the College of William & Mary, and the University of Minnesota, developed a coveted reputation for knocking off highly rated opponents. In five of his last seven seasons with Notre Dame, his teams posted a combined record of 74–4–1.He finished his 35-year head-coaching career in 2004 after six seasons at the University of South Carolina. Holtz remains in the game as an analyst for ESPN. His autobiography, Wins, Losses, and Lessons, was published in 2006 (William Morrow). Holtz will speak at the REALTORS® Conference & Expo in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Nov. 14, from 8:30-9:45 a.m. Q. Were you born with leadership abilities, or did you learn them? A. Anybody can learn those skills. I study people. I read. I try to study and learn even today why some people are successful and others aren’t. What’s important is that you have to keep growing. You’re either growing or dying, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with age. It has to do with whether you’re trying to get better or to maintain. Q. What lessons from coaching are most relevant for business leaders? A. There’s a strong correlation. I don’t care whether you’re leading a football team, a company, or an office. I’ve had many athletes tell me that the same things we taught them about football have been very instrumental in their success in business. For example, titles don’t make people leaders. People could appoint you to be a manager, a CEO, or a coach. But they can’t appoint you to be a leader. It’s the people underneath you who determine whether you’re a leader. A leader is somebody who has a vision and a plan. You have to lead by example and hold people accountable. Too many people in leadership roles are insecure and don’t hold people accountable, because they worry more about being popular than being a leader. Q. What was your No. 1 challenge as a coach? A. It was dealing with young people from different backgrounds, having different thoughts, and different ways of doing things. I can get everybody to accept the same core values. That’s what holds a family, a team, or a country together. You don’t have to like one another, you don’t have to like the same music, but you better share the same core values. They’re the things your organization refuses to compromise on. What are the core values you brought to your teams? A. Make sure people can trust you and know you are committed to and care about them. Q. What’s your secret for motivating people? A. Motivation is just getting people to believe they can succeed. They won’t quit if they think they can eventually succeed. The problem is when they lose sight of what they want to do or lose faith that they can get it done. I think half the goal is getting people to have something they want to do, showing them how they can accomplish it, and then keep encouraging them. That’s all motivation is. Quitting is a final decision to solve a temporary problem. Losing is never easy, but it’s inevitable. How difficult was it for you? Did you turn those moments into growth experiences for your teams? I never worried about winning. I never talked a whole lot about it. I talked about doing things the right way. When you follow the plan, winning is a result. But winning isn’t the destination. I always looked upon it as we want to win, but we can’t sit around worrying about succeeding. What you worry about is doing the things you need to do to get to your final destination. When you don’t win, you have to examine why you lost. But everybody is going to lose sometimes. Everybody is going to be down, and everybody is going to have difficulties. The important thing is, what did you learn from it? And understand that wherever you are, you’re there because of the choices you’ve made, not because of what somebody else did. If we lost, it wasn’t because of what the other team did. Invariably, it was because of what we did. Q. How much do you miss coaching? A. My son is head coach at East Carolina University, and I talk to him. I do ESPN. I’m involved in the game of football. I think I’d miss it if I didn’t have anything to do with it. I had a wonderful career, and I enjoyed every minute of it; but now I’m doing a lot of speaking and other things, and I’m very content. Q. What advice do you have for real estate professionals who find themselves struggling in the current market? A. Sales have been tough for a while for some people. You’ve had such an uplifting profession for so many years in real estate that many people became order takers instead of real estate salespeople. It’s a flat market, and it’ll be that way, as I understand it, until 2008 and maybe even as long as 2009. The last time I looked, more than 6.1 million homes sold last year, and some expect 6 million to be sold this year. Now, that’s down. But by the same token, 6 million people are going to buy a home. All you need to do is find a number of them to buy from you and help them get what they want better than anyone else. Q. So people shouldn’t let themselves get discouraged or use those falling percentages as an excuse not to do their jobs? A. I think the attitude you have is very important, and sometimes we hear people say negative things about how difficult something will be. But then you’re looking for problems rather than solutions. Anybody can find problems; it’s finding solutions that matters. Q. Do you have any memorable homebuying stories to share? A. In the coaching profession, when you move as much as we have, it’s always a different experience. You have to understand that when we have moved, I’d go into the office and put my name plate on the desk, and everybody would be there to help me. It was my poor wife who had to find schools, doctors, dentists, and all those things. It can be a very difficult time. A real estate salesperson can make a tremendous difference as to whether it’s a happy move or a sad one. Even a successful move goes back to the core values I talked about. Can I trust you, are you committed, and do you care about me? If the answer is yes, you’re not going to have any problems. If the answer is no to any of those three questions, you’ve isolated the problem. The answers apply to real estate as much as to football. It’s not complicated. Return to Top Seth Godin: Aim to Be the Best in the World  Contrary to the mantra that winners never quit, best-selling author and marketing entrepreneur Seth Godin says nothing is more important in business than being able to discern when to move on and when to stand your ground.Breaking through occupational barriers, whatever they might be, is the only path to becoming the best at what you do. Godin founded the breakthrough Internet company Yoyodyne in 1995, and three years later it was the largest creator of direct mail and promotions on the Web. In his latest book, The Dip (Penguin Group, 2007), Godin insists that identifying the right professional doorway will help you overcome inevitable setbacks. Indeed, the low points themselves can present ideal opportunities to prove that you’re indeed worthy of being noticed. You maintain that achieving success depends on striving to be literally the “best in the world.” Why is such a lofty goal necessary? When people have a choice, if they’re even a little rational, they pick the best option. They seek out the superstar. If there are 12 real estate professionals in town, and one has the reputation of being over-the-top good, more honest than anybody else, and has been doing it longer than anybody else, why on earth wouldn’t you list with that person? What we see in real estate and any other field is that superstars get far more than their fair share of success. The No. 1 winner in any market is 10 times more popular than whoever is No. 10. It’s a very steep curve. Whether you’re talking about the iPod compared with all other mp3 players or the best salesperson in my little town, one person ends up way ahead in whatever little segment that person competes in. Q. How do you get to be a superstar? A. It’s a myth that doing what you’re told and working harder than everybody else pays off. The system wants you to do that because it benefits from your doing it. That’s what you were taught in high school and college. Show up, follow the rules, and if you work really hard, you’ll get a B+ or an A–. But if we look at those who’ve really succeeded in the world, a lot of them dropped out of college or did something everyone else said was stupid. They went around the queue. If you want to enter a real estate market where there are eight other people just like you, and you’re going to win by trying a little harder, you’re not going to win. You’re not going to benefit from word of mouth, because no one’s going to talk about you. Why should they? They don’t care about you. The answer is, instead, to find a niche where you win, where you can invent something. For example, you can be the best person in New York selling co-ops for more than $3 million on the Upper West Side, or you can win by catering to gay couples who want to move to the suburbs but don’t want to attract attention when they go to an open house. You win when you become the best in the world at something. I call that a purple cow—something that’s remarkable, that people can’t help talking about. At the risk of being overly literal, isn’t your approach mathematically impossible? How can everyone be the best in the world at something? That’s not going to happen. But if I can get 1 percent of the people in this country to really focus on being the best in the world, that’s good enough for me. Q. How exactly can you stand out from the crowd? A. The fact is that 91 percent of real estate professionals never contact a buyer or seller after a deal is done. So an easy way to stand out is like the incredible real estate salesperson in my town who’ll give anyone a 90-minute tour of the town without trying to sell anything. He knows every architect, contractor, and builder. The minute your deal is done, he’s in your house every week until you throw him out, introducing you to the painter, the mayor, whomever. He works harder for you after you’ve purchased your house than before. He does it because he’s a nice guy, and he’s also the most successful real estate salesperson in town. The benefit is that every person who buys a house from him is going to sell it one day, and every person he sells a house to is going to have many friends in the neighborhood eventually. And when it comes time for any of those friends to move, the home owner is going to regale them with stories about how the real estate salesperson showed up so often and how helpful he was. People don’t talk about the person who sold them their house; they talk about the people who helped them and did something remarkable. What stands out is that there’s nothing immediately in it for him — maybe in 10 years, there will be. But you can’t fake it. If you’re passionate about your town and your buyers and sellers, it shows through. Q. What attitudes can hamper real estate practitioners? A. When real estate professionals think they deserve a listing; they think they deserve a sale because they’re working so hard. The sad reality is that you don’t deserve anything, and most potential clients are selfish and don’t care how hard you work. Q. This is a rough time to succeed in real estate. What’s your take? A. The softening in the market is great news for professionals, for people who have the long view. It has washed out the amateurs and those who are making a lot of noise. In that lull, it gives you a chance to start conversations. My No. 1 piece of practical advice for anyone with a real estate office is to open it to the community for meetings. Let the Girl Scouts meet there, let the soccer team meet there, let a local community board meet there. And every time people come, serve them snacks. Q. What if you’re a salesperson without the clout to reserve a conference room for such a purpose? A. If you’re working at the kind of agency that would say no, you need to work for a new one. You have a choice, too. You’re either going to be a superstar or you’re not. The people who own the agency want you to color inside the lines and do exactly what you’re told, because that’s how they make money. But that’s not how you make a lot of money. You make a lot of money by standing out and being the one everybody else talks about. Q. What role can your competitors play in your success? A. I don’t know why real estate professionals think they have competitors. If your goal is to be a typical real estate professional you have an enormous amount of competition, so why on earth would anyone pick you? On the other hand, if your goal is to be you, you have no competition. I don’t have any competition when it comes to being me. When you excel at something, it becomes easy to work with the agency down the street, for example, because it specializes in single-parent families, and you specialize in families with same-gender parents. And when a heterosexual couple comes in, you should refer them to someone who’s really good at that. You should spend all your time dealing with a specific group because how else are you going to be the best in the world if you keep compromising? You can refer one another business all the time, since you don’t compete. Q. Isn’t it risky to turn down good leads even if they don’t fit your unique niche? A. My point in The Dip is that the world is a very big place, and Google makes it even bigger. When I want to buy sesame seeds, I don’t want to buy them from someone who sells 18 other kinds of seeds. I want to buy them from the world’s best sesame seed seller who sells organic and roasted sesame seeds. If they’re the same price as that of other vendors, why wouldn’t I want to buy those? The minute that guy starts to sell peanuts, he’s going to be distracted; he’s not going to be the best sesame seed salesman in the world anymore. You must say no to keep your focus on being the best in the world. I get consulting offers every day and turn them all down. The minute I were to do a little consulting, then I’m doing two things, and then I’ll do a third thing, and all of a sudden I’m a wandering generality, instead of a really focused person. You need to employ many tactics but have one strategy. Q. What are the warning signs you’ve reached a professional cul-de-sac? A. It’s a place that never gets better, and you’re never getting any closer to getting out. You know you’re at a dead end if tomorrow is just like today except that you are a day older and can’t measure anything getting better. You know you’re in a dip if you can measure something like referrals, inbound phone calls, or mentions on the Internet. Dips are hard and painful, but if what you’re doing isn’t hard and painful but just boring, you’re in a cul-de-sac and should quit it immediately. When you quit things you can’t master or be the best in the world at, it frees you up and forces you to consider aggressively what you could be the best at. About 20 percent to 30 percent of people in real estate today should quit selling houses. They don’t have the guts to push themselves. They need to say, “I have to go and find something at which I can actually be the best in the world.” Q. Should you ever shy away from taking on listings for difficult properties, such as houses in poor condition? A. It depends. You could be the person who sells “houses that can’t be sold.” You could get a reputation as the person who turns down easy ones and gives them to colleagues, but takes the hard ones and charges a 10 percent commission because it’s harder. So if you’re really serious about selling your difficult house, hire me and I’ll do whatever it takes to get it sold. Q. What has impressed or not impressed you in your own dealings with real estate professionals? A. For a while, we rented a house next to the railroad tracks, and my wife promised the real estate salesperson we would keep the place clean and neat so that it would be ready whenever prospective buyers wanted to see the house. About 80 percent of the time, people would drive up to the front of the house with the real estate salesperson and not even get out of the car. What the real estate salesperson had done was write a technically truthful ad touting the community, but he didn’t mention that the house was a prefab by the train tracks. Everyone wasted time because the real estate salesperson was under the illusion that getting someone into his car was an essential step in selling the house. The lesson here is that authenticity is critical. You can tell a story that gets people’s attention, but it backfires if the story isn’t true. Stories are more important than facts except when the facts belie the story. Q. What would be a smarter approach? A. Your opportunity as a marketer is based on being aggressively truthful with people. I’d run an ad that says every house in the community costs $900,000 or more, but we’re selling this house for $400,000. How come? Because even though it’s comfortable, dry, clean, and brand-new, it has a view of the train tracks. Not only do you save $500,000, but I’m also going to throw in a big-screen TV. The house isn’t for everybody; however, there are plenty of people who want to live in my town but can’t afford $900,000, so they’re willing to take a $500,000 discount to look at the train tracks. Rather than build up expectations that you can’t meet, brag about the fact that all prospects have to do to save a half-million dollars is to be willing to look at the tracks. Return to Top Doris Kearns Goodwin: Avoid Pettiness  The legacies of the nation’s greatest presidents offer valuable lessons in leadership. Renowned historian and best-selling author Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Simon & Schuster, 2005) points out that Lincoln’s forgiving spirit and astute political instincts helped him turn enemies into some of his closest advisors. Staying accessible and open-minded in your dealings with colleagues and clients, she says, could also be the key to increasing your own success.Q. What are the most significant distinctions between political and business leaders? A. To be sure, there are differences. In the White House, you’re making decisions that may lead to the life or death of soldiers. As a president, you have to persuade 535 people in Congress to follow your lead and to win popular support for your programs rather than worry about a quarterly return. But after writing about Abraham Lincoln, what became so interesting to me is that the traits that made him such a successful leader were precisely those identified by the leading business authorities — people such as Warren Buffett, Stephen Covey, Tom Peters, and Jim Collins. Q. And what are those traits? A. What’s true about leadership in any institution are the emotional and human skills involved. For example, there’s the ability to motivate yourself in the face of frustration. Everyone has to come through trials by fire. Our presidents who have been the best have somehow already experienced that. Once something gets difficult in the course of the presidency, they’re ready because they’ve been through it before. Hemingway once said, “The world breaks everyone, but afterwards some people are stronger in the broken places.” I think what Lincoln showed for sure and what Franklin Roosevelt had as well was the ability to listen to different points of view, to let your advisors argue with you and question your assumptions, whether it’s with a small or large group. They created a climate where people felt free to disagree without fear of consequences. And that was so true of Lincoln in his putting all of his rivals into his cabinet. Q. How could real estate brokers employ this approach? A. You can create a climate in your office where people feel free to question what you’re doing and to be honest about their disagreements with you. You have to make it clear that you’re going to respect people who say, “No, I don’t agree with what you’re saying.” For example, FDR was once in a meeting with Gen. George Marshall, who was then a young Army officer, and Marshall disagreed with what everyone else in the room said. Everyone thought that would be a crimp on his military career, but Roosevelt promoted him to general precisely because he thought it was important to have somebody who was willing to say what he thought. Q. If you’re not a “born leader,” can you cultivate those skills? A. You can learn, grow, adapt, and use some of these techniques as you work your way into various jobs and up a ladder. Learn through mentors, which may mean sometimes going against a natural instinct. For example, Lincoln was fantastic about not feeling the need to retaliate against people who hurt him in the past because he just didn’t want to spend precious hours doing that. Q. A lot of real estate salespeople don’t lead large groups; do these lessons still apply? A. They all are dealing with people who are under pressure at times, excited at times, or upset at times, and how they keep their emotional intelligence is a core aspect of leadership. Q. Of the presidents you’ve studied, who’d have made the best real estate broker? A. I’d choose FDR. He really had an aesthetic sense with houses. Besides his beautiful house in Hyde Park, he was building a cottage for himself once his presidency was over, and he had it furnished in the way he wanted, which was very simple. He also created Warm Springs, the rehabilitation center in Georgia, as a place for polio victims to come and have hot baths and gain a sense of confidence. Everything was wheelchair-accessible and made people feel they could lead as much of a normal life as possible. He created something really important in that larger sense of a home. Q. What could President Bush have done differently to enhance his stature as a leader? A. I think the big moment when things could’ve been different was right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Here was a moment when the country wanted to be pulled together, wanted to sacrifice, and would’ve been willing to do whatever was asked. If Bush at that moment had brought in a kind of coalition cabinet, Democrats would’ve been so willing to become part of that process of figuring out how to respond to this terrorist attack. Just as Roosevelt had a Manhattan Project for atomic energy, one could imagine Bush having some great project for alternative energy so that we might be so much further along now than we are. People would’ve been willing to sacrifice, and maybe they would’ve moved earlier toward Priuses and different kinds of cars because it would be part of the patriotic spirit. He could’ve asked for more people to be involved in the public health service to worry about biological attacks. If Bush had asked for more soldiers to volunteer at that time, we wouldn’t be caught with not enough soldiers to carry out his missions in Iraq. If there had been enough people in the first place, Iraq could’ve been stabilized to some extent so that the whole insurgency couldn’t have taken hold as it did. Q. Do you have any memorable homebuying or homeselling experiences involving real estate professionals? A. When we were selling the house where our children grew up in Concord, Mass., the potential buyers who really loved it said they couldn’t buy it until their house was sold. Our salesperson worked out this incredible deal where we would actually buy their house for a couple of months, and they would pay rent on it. Anyway it all worked out. Our salesperson came up with an incredibly inventive solution. Return to Top Scott Bedbury: Branding Matters  As leader of the marketing team behind Nike’s wildly successful Just Do It campaign, Scott Bedbury has tied his meteoric career as a brand developer to that same philosophy with a notable addendum: “It’s not just what you do, but how you do it.”When he became senior vice president of marketing at Starbucks in the mid-1990s, Bedbury essentially helped define the coffee-drinking experience in the United States. As CEO of Brandstream Inc., a brand-development consultancy, Bedbury now works with a range of companies, enabling them to rethink their customer relationships with regard to strategy, branding, and advertising. He’s the author of A Brand New World: Eight Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century (Viking Press, 2002). Q. Should real estate professionals be conscientious about developing themselves as a brand? A. Absolutely. Branding is all about trust. Every brand packs a promise — General Electric, Nike, or a political candidate. We trust brands that are consistent and clarify their intentions to us. We know what to expect, and those brands respect our time and investment with them. Q. Are most people in real estate sales doing a good job in this area? A. I think everyone could do a better job. Think about the fact that everyone receives at least 30,000 images or brand messages a day, including logos, butcher paper at the supermarket, images on the Internet. And then you cut that by 90 percent, and that 3,000 is all you remember. Most of it’s junk, perfectly unremarkable. Half the time it irritates us, so remembering it isn’t necessarily a positive. I don’t think the situation with the real estate profession is worse than any other. But as a profession, it’s what I call a high-involvement category; it’s not like carbonated soft drinks that you buy mindlessly every day. Buying a home or commercial property is a big decision; particularly for the first-time home buyer, it’s pretty emotionally charged. You’re very sensitive and attentive to a lot of things. I have a family member who just bought a home for the first time, and he was all upset because of his bank’s probing questions about financial records and tax returns from five years ago. It’s as if the bank didn’t trust you. You lose some privacy in that process. My point is that it’s all very personal and potentially powerful. So in a highly charged situation like that, getting branding right can be a pretty powerful thing. Q. How can REALTORS® improve client relationships? A. Do what you can to put customers at ease. Make them feel good about what they’re doing, and if they’re repeat buyers, respect their intelligence and the fact they’ve been through it before. Don’t talk down to them. It’s like in the hotel business: Every hotel should know when you check in whether you’ve stayed there before. As the primary engineer of Nike’s 1988 Just Do It campaign, how surprised were you that it became such an enduring cultural catchphrase? And how did you keep the campaign from becoming stale? I don’t think any of us thought it would last more than a year or two. We spoke those words only once in a commercial. The best way to kill something is to be reckless with it and drive it into the ground. Too often companies do that. We also never ran a commercial more than three or four weeks while I was there. A lot of companies will do one commercial and run it to death for a year or two. They don’t realize that they wear out their welcome pretty quickly, and you never want to see that brand again. Part of my philosophy was impact over frequency. If you say something really well and produce it really well, and it’s meaningful, you don’t have to say it too many times. Most companies just miss that entirely. They make up for mediocre messaging with ridiculous amounts of advertising. At Starbucks, you reinvented the coffee-drinking experience in the United States. Was that the plan, or was it a side effect of your marketing efforts? That was very much the plan. But we had a difficult choice. We didn’t have much marketing money. When I left Nike, the total media budget was about $200 million, but the total marketing budget at Starbucks was $2.5 million, of which the overhead for my department was about $1.8 million. So there was really no money for advertising. Since we were trying to amass money to do something significant, the traditional school of thinking would have been to talk about product quality; you know, talk about the fact that all the beans are grown at a high elevation on the flanks of volcanoes usually 10 degrees north or south of the equator, and so on. Our point of view was that quality has become one of those words that are like gum with the flavor chewed out. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. We don’t trust brands that talk about themselves as if they were better than everyone else. We reengineered everything to focus on an amazing experience around the coffee. That meant everything from lighting to furniture to color palettes to cleanliness to the way you’re treated. I think Starbucks stores still have the best restrooms in the United States or the world, for that matter. Q. How did you set that vision in motion? A. It all started in 1995 with some very simple focus groups. We asked people to close their eyes and imagine the best possible coffee experience and tell us what that felt like, tasted like, and looked like. We asked what they heard, what they touched, and what they smelled. We found that the emotional rewards of a great coffee experience go way, way beyond having your double tall, not-too-hot, half-caf, caramel macchiato, one Equal, no foam done perfectly. Every consumer has a slightly different reason for really enjoying a break at a place like Starbucks. Q. Were there any missteps that could have derailed the whole Starbucks phenomenon? A. Oh, yeah. Shortly after I got there, we hired a bunch of refugees from McDonald’s as executives. Someone came into the food and beverage group who, within two weeks of landing there, wanted to create wholly different cups with animals on them for children and put toys in every Starbucks. He was probably one stop short of anointing a clown, so I jumped on it like a live hand grenade. That was a near disaster. But what really became clear to me as we were evaluating that suggestion was that Starbucks has always treated kids, whether teenagers or five-year-olds, like adults. If you’re a kid, they’ll look right at you, and if you want to order for yourself, you can do that. I think that perhaps Starbucks’ secret weapon is that it has conditioned multiple generations of young people while serving the parents. Q. What other approaches can real estate practitioners use to brand themselves more effectively? A. Presentation is key. I once took a ride in a real estate salesperson’s car, and the thing was a complete mess, with fast-food wrappers on the floor. It was shocking to me. There’s also the importance of being present in the moment. It’s no different from waiting on tables. How many times have waiters walked up to your table after you’ve been waiting and waiting and then barely looked at you? They’re looking away at something else in the restaurant, and when they finally ask, “What can I get you?” they’re really not focused on you. Q. How can REALTORS® avoid similar mistakes? A. They must be present and not respond to every voice mail and every little thing on their Blackberry; otherwise, they’re being disrespectful. It’s no different from being in a conversation and turning and talking to someone else who happens to walk by. You may lose business because of that, but even if your transaction goes through, the person you’ve been dealing with might not recommend you to others. Q. What do you think of offbeat marketing strategies designed to help you stand out from the crowd? Is there a risk of being too silly? A. As humans, we’re all capable of being silly. So there’s no way to avoid that risk. My neighbor across the street who works in real estate sends out 3,000 pumpkins every Halloween with a personal note. He takes advantage of the moment, knowing that everyone could use an extra little pumpkin at Halloween. He focuses on that and does it very well. He doesn’t do St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or Christmas. It’s not a hard sell. He basically just sends a note wishing the recipients an enjoyable Halloween and adding that if they ever need help with a house, they can give him a call. He’s been doing it for 15 years. It’s not as if he were saying, “I’m the No. 1 guy in the area.” You have to be careful about such self-promotion. Too often we boast, when really what we want is to create relationships. Q. Who are the most effective real estate professionals? A. Those who are perceptive, those who can look at you and get your sense of style, what kind of home would be appropriate for you, and what kind of home wouldn’t even be worth mentioning, because nobody likes to waste time. Sometimes you don’t even have to ask questions. You can look at people and see the kind of car they drive, the clothes they wear, the way they speak. What’s impressive in today’s world is when people take the time to observe and listen rather than launch a barrage of questions. Some of the questions are inescapable, but I’m always impressed when people seem intuitive, and I think, “Wow, they really get me” without my having to tell them every detail. Return to Top Bill Cosby: Favorite Things About REALTORS®  Taking care of business means making time for one of the most influential funnymen of our time: Bill Cosby, the featured speaker at this year’s General Session. Cosby’s wry and insightful commentary on the roles of parents and children, the importance of education, and the insidious onset of aging have made him one of the most celebrated observers of contemporary American life. We asked the comedian, TV star, and author to turn his attention to the subject of real estate for a few moments and share exclusively with us his five favorite things about REALTORS®. His list:
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