Ralph Roberts wasn’t born being the best at what he does. In
fact you’ll read that he was pretty hopeless at other
businesses. The key was that he found something he had a passion
for, turned it into a dream and didn’t mind working harder than
anyone else he knew.
Ralph Roberts manages to sell 600 houses a year! In 1995 Time
Magazine named him ‘America’s top realtor.’ Ralph is so good
that real estate agents from around the country pay for the
opportunity to ‘shadow’ him so they can learn about the methods
he uses.
Born in 1956, he got a job as a teenager cutting a neighbor’s
lawn for $10 a time, while all the neighbor hood kids were
charging $5-because he convinced the neighbor he would do a
better job. As a recent high school graduate in 1975, the
Warren, Michigan dynamo took $900 and invested it in a
three-bedroom house. ‘I moved in and rented out all three
bedrooms to different people,’ said Ralph, author of Walk Like A
Giant, Sell Like A Madman. ‘I lived in the hallway.’
Over the next 15 years, Ralph lived in 23 houses, selling each
one at a profit and moving on to the next opportunity. Although
Ralph seems to have been born with a knack for selling, he
wasn’t born knowing how to succeed. He claims that he was the
class clown at school and could have been voted the ‘most likely
not to succeed.’ In fact, he failed at several business ventures
before he discovered his gift for selling real estate. Despite
the heartache they caused, Ralph says he’s grateful for the
failures, which preceded his success because each one taught him
valuable lessons that brought him closer to realize his dreams.
‘To be successful you must surround yourself with successful
people’ says Ralph who runs his real estate sales business with
the help of a secretary, two listing agents, two buying agents
and one closing coordinator.
Ralph believes that setting goals, writing them down with
specifics about how you want to achieve them and visualizing
them are absolutely essential for success. One of his goals is
to pay $1 million a year in taxes. Another is to do $1million a
month in business with a particular investor group he works
with. To symbolize this goal he often passes out fake $1 million
notes to those investors.
Twice a year, Ralph’s key staff comes to his house for a workday
during which they storyboard the area in which they work. They
set goals, brain storm and put good ideas down in an ‘idea of
the week’ book. Employees are encouraged to write ideas in the
book whenever they occur, even if the timing isn’t quite right
yet for implementation. Ralph and his department heads look
through the book regularly. Often they find a good idea that
they had forgotten about and realize that now is the time to
implement it.
The book is also used to ‘educate’ new employees. ‘When we hire
someone we have them read the book and buy into the concept,’
Ralph notes. ‘If they don’t we don’t want them working for us
because we only want people with us who share our vision.’
Although Ralph is a Sales Genius, he’s not infallible, so he
encourages his key people to give him feedback ‘They have to be
able to tell the truth for your success to be long lasting,’ he
explains. ‘You can’t hire people to give you advice and then
ignore it.’ He admits that some of the feedback occasionally
wounds his ego and that his initial response is often ‘I can’t
believe I said that!’ but after the initial sting he considers
what has been said and makes changes if he feels they are
justified.
One such situation involved changing Ralph’s strict policy that
business attire should be worn at all times. One of his managers
suggested establishing a casual day to help office morale. Ralph
finally gave in after agreeing a dress code he was comfortable
with, and everybody was happy.
Being truthful has helped Ralph’s business succeed, he says
‘There’s no shame in making an honest error of judgment, but
dishonesty will hurt you in the long run. The only way to be
successful is to tell it to people like it really is: here’s the
problem and here’s the solution and only suggest solutions in
their best interest, even if it means you makes less money or
none at all.’
Ralph set himself high standards in being an expert: ‘I make
sure that I know more than anyone else. This starts by
surrounding myself with knowledgeable people, going to
professional meetings and reading all the time.’ Ralph scans
newspapers and magazines for articles of interest, highlights
the salient points, rips them out and reads or rereads them
later. He considers himself to be a ‘speed scanner’. Recently,
before being interviewed about foreclosure – a topic he knows
extremely well – he nevertheless had an assistant research the
subject for the latest information. Being less than the very
best simply won’t do in Ralph’s book!
Another source of information for Ralph is his advisory board.
Four times a year he meets with six friends and acquaintances
from different lines of work. He tells them what he has done and
what he plans to do and they give him feedback. One valuable
outcome was persuading Ralph to put a monetary value on his time
so he could use it more wisely. He also gets together twice a
year with a group of agents who all make a $1 million year or
more in commission to discuss the same sort of topics.
Because he only sleeps three or four hours a night Ralph has
mastered ‘power-napping’. He closes his eyes for 15-20 minutes,
visualizing whatever situation he is involved in and his brain
works on problems and ideas, such as going to high school
football games and throwing his business cards up in the air the
first time the crowd jumps out of their seats. ‘I don’t have
brainstorming days, I have a brainstorming life’, he says.
Adapted from: Tony Buzan & Richard Israel, Sales Genius, (2000),
pp. 3-9.
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