Coaching makes comeback

Solano Real Estate Scene: Jim Porter

Article By: Jim Porter – November 19, 2016

The Great Recession affected many industries in America. The sectors most affected were obviously real estate and finance.

Real estate professionals and mortgage bankers had to cut expenses to stay afloat from 2008 to 2012. Tens of thousands of real estate agents and loan officers got out of the business during this period when they realized how hard it is to sell homes and sell loans when the buyers had to actually qualify for mortgages.

During the recession, advertising budgets were cut, staffing was reduced to a bare minimum and coaching and training were cut to the bone. Many sales training and motivational speaker companies suffered huge decreases in business because real estate and mortgage companies were hanging on for dear life and could not justify large expenditures on coaching their team.

Most Realtors and loan officers had their incomes decrease in 2008 and 2009 by 50 to 75 percent.

Many just could not afford the expense of hiring a coach or attending a three- to five-day Tony Robbins event. A free seminar where you could go hear a brilliant speaker deliver a compelling presentation on how to achieve greatness for three hours in exchange for a 30-minute sales pitch to buy his or her books and tapes was always affordable for sales people. Even these disappeared in our market from 2008 to 2012.

Coaching is absolutely critical to success.

Tiger Woods, in his prime, had as many as four coaches working for him: a swing coach, a short game coach, a mental performance coach and a business coach for his business enterprise. The number one college football team in the country, Alabama, has dozens of coaches including mental approach coaches for maximum performance under the pressure of the game.

The top sales people and business leaders in the country pay for coaching today and many maintained their coaching relationships during the recession even though their incomes were lower, because of the value of having an honest coach to hold you accountable and the value of having a coach or mentor that cares about you.

The past few years have produced profits for many businesses and individual sales people and over the past couple years the seminars and training opportunities are returning to our local market. Many real estate companies are nurturing their people with education and many mortgage companies are investing in coaching and sales training.

Coaching promotes growth and improvement. In the real estate and mortgage business, if you are not growing, you are dying.

Jim Porter, NMLS No. 276412, is the branch manager of Solano Mortgage, NMLS No. 1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS No. 1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.