Success as a Real Estate Agent Depends on Your Uniqueness

Success as a real estate agent means being yourself.

My elevator speech about success as a real estate agent is not canned, nor do I consider it really an elevator speech. I can condense just about anything down to one or two sentences, though, so I tend to wing it. For example, when I go to a seller’s home for a listing appointment, I conduct much of my interaction based on reactions from the seller. No identical appointments. No canned presentations. Although I do complete my agent visual inspection during every first visit, and I take copious notes. Carrying a clipboard and writing notes is my method of operation. In fact, you can get into just about any private event by carrying a clipboard and making notes.

Now, you probably remember the saying about being yourself because everybody else is taken. When I first started writing a blog about 12 years ago — gosh, it’s been THAT long — it concerned me for all of 5 minutes about my reader’s perception. Blogging is about putting yourself out there. And that can be scary for some people. But I’ve never been overly guarded and once you hit your 40th birthday or so, suddenly you have given yourself permission to be yourself. I don’t know why it can take that long for most people but it does.

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my success as a real estate agent is based on my unique ability to service a listing better than any other agent. My investment in tools, resources, education and technology is immense. I strive to be the very best Sacramento agent I can be because that’s who I am. Why would I want to be anything or anybody else? My entire life has been based on doing things the way I want to do them. It gets results or I wouldn’t do it.

This means I don’t care how another agent conducts her business. It’s not any of my business. I constantly run into agents who want to give me advice and expect me to do things the way they do them. The reason I have success as a real estate agent is because I don’t follow that advice. Otherwise, I would be just like those agents, and I am not. In fact, my sellers have shared that other agents feel intimated by my success. They tell my sellers: don’t hire Elizabeth because she has too much business. She won’t take care of you. Because they couldn’t do it if they ran my business. But nobody is standing in my shoes but me. I take care of each client like they are my only client.

Sounds like sour grapes to me from the mouths of those other guys.

Everybody is unique. People worry too much about what other people think of them or how they appear. Nobody cares about you, really. They are too wrapped up in their world. I especially recall one fabulous Christmas during a solo vacation in Vanuatu at an expensive resort. The waitstaff seemed concerned about me dining alone. I waved my arms, “Look around, nobody is looking at me. They are looking at each other.”

I accept responsibility for my own actions, my own results, and enjoy spectacular statistics as a Sacramento Realtor. My sellers tend to make more money because of my efforts and they enjoy a smooth transaction. That will never change. There is no other Sacramento Realtor like Elizabeth Weintraub. So go be a maverick in your own career. My success as a real estate agent is no accident.