Getting to the top means being better than just great in your own role

Paul McNeive

Stock Image

June 16 2022 02:30 AM

Are you an estate agent? Or an architect or quantity surveyor?

No matter what your job title, your professional qualification and experience have brought you to the level of success you have now.

But it is important to realise that those skills alone probably cannot bring you much further, and you may plateau or regress.

Further success now means losing your dependence on much of what has worked well in the past.

The most successful people, in business, and life generally, develop new skills, and work more effectively.

And most of those qualities revolve around “people skills,” your “emotional intelligence” and your ability to win and retain clients and inspire your colleagues.

As a speaker to business audiences, I have been researching this area for a presentation and I have been impressed with a book called Atomic Habits, by James Clear, which is a bestseller worldwide.

While we are all familiar with the value of temporary “goal-setting”, Clear takes matters deeper, and suggests that we work to become what we wish to be. Permanently.

In this context, my suggestion is that property professionals should no longer think of themselves as “estate agents” or “surveyors,” but as business people.

You should think and act like a business person, who just happens to provide the service you do.

To achieve this, the author shows how to break bad habits, which are holding us back in business and life, and develop good habits, which will underwrite greater success.

His approach resonates with me because it is similar to my own experiences in recovering from losing my legs in an accident and then rebuilding my career.

In the National Rehabilitation Hospital I was taught the power of the compounding effect of “small steps” and how tiny, but regular steps, can make a huge difference.

The maths of it are that a one percent improvement in anything, every day for a year, means that you will be 37 times better by the end of the year.

If you agree that you are working at close to capacity, then your only option for growing your business and making more impact with what you have, is to widen your circle of personal and business contacts, deepen relationships and, ideally, turn them into friends.

This ability to develop business does not come naturally to most, and those that have it instinctively tend to end up leading professional firms.

But the good news is that you can train yourself into becoming one of those business leaders, by taking small new actions, which before long become habits, and compound to elevate your career.

A new habit might be to call five enquirers on your list as soon as you turn on your computer every day – instead of checking social media sites.

Or to call three existing clients at 11am every day, that you haven’t spoken to for ages, and reward yourself with a coffee.

And if you still need convincing that attention to small important actions pays off, be aware that just a 10pc improvement in each of five things – for example, the number of leads you contact x the proportion of those you turn into clients x the number of jobs they give you x the value of your average deal x your average fee – results in a 62pc increase in your profits!

That’s the compounding effect of good habits on business.