By Terry Hall
How I lost $42,000 of revenue and sales commissions!
I was doing everything right, except for one thing. OUCH! One simple mistake.
In the late 90’s I was an Independent Real Estate Broker in Orange County California, talk about a “perfect storm” (I retired from real estate in 2002). By this time, my business was about 80% referral-based transactions and 20% activity based. I participated heavily in the Huntington Beach Community. I was a Chamber Member serving on the board and chairing a committee. I was a member of the Rotary Club and the Vocational Chair. I also served as a Mentor to High School Students and served on their Board. I was a busy man.
By nature, I am not a details-oriented person but more of a 50,000 foot aerial-view kind of guy. So for me, the devil is literally in the details. And contrary to the belief of most that have met me, I’m extremely shy and uncomfortable in crowds and with new people – quite awkward in fact. According to one personality profile, there only 3% of the people in the world who are as introverted and shy as I am. This is a big problem for a person who is building their business via business networking. Believe me, a big problem. Every time I leave a business networking meeting, even networking breakfasts left me exhausted.
Between my business and my extra-curricular activities (which got me most of my business), I was managing about 50 transactions, committees and projects on any given day. And this in addition to running my business. That’s a lot of details. It seemed that every meeting I attended, people mentioned “call me for a refi”, “my brother is thinking about selling his house” or “I want to buy a rental property”. The funniest networking lead I got was standing at a urinal next to a fellow Chamber Board Member at our Chamber Planning Retreat when he said “Call Me about…” Man, I love business networking!
One day I put on a jacket that I almost never wore and found two business cards with a notes on the back to call so and so about… That’s two cards, with two notes and NO DATE! I called and both people had done business with someone else and thought that I didn’t need their business. The people who had recommended me were pissed I didn’t help their friends. Over the next week, I tracked down about $42,000 of lost revenue from not having a proper system to handle my business networking activities, conversations and requests. And this is the business I could directly track down and confirm. I have no idea how many “call me” leads that I forgot.
The true cost of this mistake was the relationship with the people that knew me, liked me and trusted me. I let them down and they thought I was too busy to help them, I didn’t care about them, I didn’t need the business. I betrayed their priceless trust…
1999 was the last time I made the mistake of not having a proper system to manage my business networking activities. In Part 2 of this article, I will share what I did to make sure that I kept track of my business networking relationships, requests and referrals…
