There was a time when John McManus considered giving up real estate.
He was young, new to the business and downtrodden after getting knock-back after knock-back every time he picked up the phone to prospect for new listings.
“I had a fear of picking up the phone and talking to people and being told ‘no’,” he said. “I was being told ‘no’ or ‘I’m too busy’ every time I picked up the phone and that was very disheartening. I got to the point where I thought that maybe I should give up.”
Instead, the present director of LJ Hooker Willoughby/Artarmon decided to stick it out a little bit longer. A big change came when he employed a personal assistant.
“A major frustration was doing it all on my own,” he said. “Now I had a partner to do the call-backs with. We’d make a challenge out of it and see at the end of 100 calls how many appointments we each had made. We shared the challenges together.”
Mr McManus said another key change that helped him get his foot in the door with clients was altering his phone dialogue.
“I changed my focus from trying to get a listing to trying to understand the person at the other end of the phone,” he said. “I would ask people if they needed anything… and I’d tailor the call to suit the person at the other end.”
Mr McManus is a proponent of hard work. He has gone from writing $150,000 to $250,000 GCI to $3.5 million GCI.
When he started in real estate in 2007 things were tough. A good portion of his seven-day work week was spent door-knocking and letterbox-dropping.
When results started coming in he used them in his marketing and word of his success spread.
“In 2007, when the market was quite strong, I’d put a signboard up and the property would sell in a week or two,” Mr McManus said. “I was getting record prices in unit blocks and I got more listings from that.
“I also started doing call-backs on Saturdays, which would free me up on a Monday to get more listings. Hard work pays off!”
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