Episode 3: Why Too Many Leads Was the Worst Thing That Ever Happened to This Property Agent?

Why Too Many Leads Was the Worst Thing That Ever Happened to This Property Agent? [Summary of Audio Transcript] When I was still a struggling property agent back in 2008, I naively thought that getting more leads would solve all of my problems. Little did I know that it was the WORST thing ever to happen to me! One night while desperately searching the internet in my mother’s kitchen, I stumbled across Dan Kennedy, THE GENIUS grandmaster of Marketing from the US. I learned from him an entirely new way of getting leads and was shocked how his simple methods had transformed businesses the world over. He created more millionaires overnight than all the other ‘gurus’ combined. This was very powerful stuff! So I decided to implement it all. But the problem was, no one was doing this in Singapore Real Estate at that time. I decided then and there I would be the one to experiment on myself. I had nothing more to lose. I borrowed money, bought a website, wrote up a simple offer, and then created a simple ad offering my services. Then something very shocking happened… By the end of 48 hours, I had generated a total of 1,943 interested buyer leads wanting to buy my listings! Whoa! I got swamped!  I had no time to call even a fraction of them!  I simply got my upline to close for me and that was the first major deal I ever closed, earning a cool $79,387.27 in commissions. Imagine how happy I was! I was rich!  But my happiness was very short lived. I had unknowingly run myself straight into an even bigger problem than the one I had before! I was getting way MORE leads than I could realistically handle on my own…  I was wasting away my leads AND losing profitable deals in hundreds of thousands dollars that could have closed. I had just tasted success for the very first time. I kept telling myself I could have earned much MORE!  I actually stumbled onto this dilemma when I called back some of the original leads I had generated. They said they had listed with other agents! (I asked those agents. It was true.) I was now literally pulling my hair out & angrily banging my fists out of sheer frustration! I lamented if only I had had more time! How I wished someone experienced would hold my hands and show me the way.  So I asked from other top producers. I called them everyday. But they were either unwilling to share their real secrets or told me believable lies that only got me running in circles. My own upline wasn’t very helpful either (because she never had a flood of leads before and never ever had to pick & choose).  Eventually I stopped asking after I got too tired. This was business, nothing personal. Law of the jungle. Nobody had time for me. (Only later did I realise that, hey, nobody knew any better! It was classic monkey see, monkey do.  This was how real estate had worked for the past 100 years! Nobody bothered to innovate or change stuff.) It took me weeks of sleepless nights and paranoia to stumble across a good solution.  One day while browsing at the MPH bookshop, my eyes fell on a book with a crystal-clear message that resonated deeply with me. It said, “Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What To Do About It”  It was ‘The E-Myth’ written by Michael Gerber. When I read it, I had the second biggest Aha! moment in my young life!  Gerber opened my eyes to the reality hiding in plain sight all the while: That my business was dependent on ME!  I had to systemise my real estate business, or die!  There was no other way…  In the next episode, I share what I did next.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's podcast!