There’s no situation that doesn’t have possibilities.  The key is to think creatively or think big as some describe it.

One on of our family vacations we met a man at an airport while we stuck with a 3 hour delay due to weather conditions.  It just so happened that his family stayed in the same resort as we did in the Caribbean.  During that time we got plenty of time to talk and find out quiet a bit about this person.

This gentleman was in his 60’s and immigrated to Canada from Europe in his 20’s.  He didn’t speak English at the time and literally had no money.  Not having a career, he ended up in sales, in real estate.  Back in those days, there weren’t any Do Not Call Lists and so the way real estate agents were prospecting is mainly by phone.

He spoke little English at the time and looking from the outside he had a disadvantage compared to other agents in his office.  But he decided he will simply do more than others and expected great things to happen.

The name of the game was to get listings.  And so what he decided to do, is instead of calling people asking them if they were thinking of selling their house, which is what most other agents did, he called up people out of the phone directory and told them “I know you’re probably not looking to sell your house, but do you know of anyone in your neighborhood looking to sell?”  He told me that out so many people, I forgot the exact number, some people actually said, yes, I’m looking to sell my house.  Not only that, but the ones that weren’t planning to sell, were not turned off by his phone call, and weren’t rude, but some actually did refer him to other people.

In a few years he was one of the top selling realtors for his company and became a millionaire selling real estate.  Later on he found his own real estate investment company and also became partners in a lending firm.

Here’s someone who didn’t even speak English, and became an incredible success.

I asked him, as I always like to ask people like that, what he attributes to his success.

He said two things, enthusiasm about what he did and how he did it, and just outworking others by thinking creatively.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Marketing, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.