Maxwell's 17th Law: The Law of Priorities

Go to The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership Follow Them and People Will Follow You. Nelson Books, 1998)p. 175 for this one, The Law of Priorities: "Leaders Understand that Activity is not necessarily accomplishment." There's a funny quote from Stephen Covey that says, "A leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, 'Wrong jungle!'"

I knew a lot of real estate agents who never got this distinction. They mistook activity for production. Activity is doing stuff, production is settling deals. You have to do stuff to get deals done, but you're judged on what you produce, not what you do.

A few years ago, I joined a prestigious business and social club here in Philadelphia. My objective was to make contacts that would lead to referrals that would lead to sales. Members were very prominent and had a lot of money so I thought there was a lot of potential. There was, but just potential. So I went to work and made oodles of contacts. It was costing me a bundle of money, but I figured from the commissions I would get, all I would have to do is settle one decent sized deal a year and I'd more than pay for my initial investment and over time would actually make a lot of cash. Fast forward several years, despite lots of money going out and lots of contacts and lots of referrals and lots of activity on my part, no sales. I decided to treat it like a non-performing asset, climbed up that tree Covey's talking about and yelled out, "Wrong forest."

With any marketing activity, you have to monitor your progress and change course where warranted. Sometimes you have to just cut your losses and take a different route.

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Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

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