What Would Happen to Your Business If You Stopped Prospecting for 90 Days?
Here’s an interesting question: What would happen to your real estate business if you stopped prospecting for the next 90 days?
No calls to potential sellers, no checking in with people in your database, no conversations with homeowners who might be six or 12 months away from making a move, no deliberate effort to create new opportunities.
What would happen? For some established agents, the answer might initially be: not much, and that’s exactly where the danger lies.
You’d probably still be busy
If you've built a solid real estate business, stopping your prospecting today probably wouldn't mean your phone suddenly stops ringing tomorrow.
You may already have listings on the market, there might be appraisals booked for next week, you could have sellers preparing to come to market next month, and past clients may continue referring people to you.
There may be enough activity already in your pipeline to keep you extremely busy. In fact, you might feel relieved.
Without prospecting taking up part of your day, you'd suddenly have more time to service your current listings, attend appointments, negotiate deals and deal with everything else that comes with being a busy agent.
And for a while, everything would probably look fine. Until it didn't.
Real estate has a lag
One of the most important things to understand about prospecting is that today's activity doesn't necessarily produce today's business.
The conversation you have this morning might lead to an appraisal in three months. That appraisal might become a listing three months after that. Someone you speak to today may not sell for another year.
That doesn't make the conversation unsuccessful. It means you've started a relationship. And that's why prospecting can be one of the first things agents stop doing when business gets busy.
The immediate consequences aren't obvious: Skip prospecting today and you still have tomorrow's appraisal, skip it tomorrow and Saturday's open homes still go ahead, stop for a week and your current listings don't disappear, but slowly, you're using up the opportunities you created earlier without replacing them.
A full pipeline can create a false sense of security
When listings are coming in, prospecting can start to feel less urgent. Why spend time looking for business when you already have more than enough of it?
But here’s the thing… the business you're servicing today isn't necessarily the business you created today. Often, it's the result of relationships and conversations that began months or years earlier.
A healthy pipeline can hide a future pipeline problem. You can be having your best month of the year while simultaneously doing very little to create business for the months ahead.
That's the strange thing about real estate. Your current results tell you what you've done well in the past. They don't necessarily tell you how healthy your business is today.
Prospecting isn't just cold calling
It's also worth being clear about what we mean by prospecting. For some people, the word immediately brings to mind sitting at a desk working through a list of cold calls.
That can be part of it, but prospecting is much broader than that…
It's following up the buyer who mentioned they need to sell before they can purchase.
It's checking in with the homeowner you appraised six months ago.
It's calling a past client simply to see how they're going.
It's having conversations at open homes.
It's keeping in touch with people in your community.
It's knowing what's happening in your marketplace and making sure the people in your network know you're there when they need you.
Good prospecting isn't simply asking, “Are you thinking of selling?” It's consistently building and maintaining relationships.
The pipeline needs to be replenished
Think of your pipeline like a reservoir. When it's full, you can draw from it comfortably. Listings come out. Sales come out. Referrals and appraisal opportunities come out.
But if nothing is going back in, eventually the level drops and by the time you notice, you're already behind.
That's when agents can find themselves suddenly scrambling for business. They start making more calls. They chase every lead harder. They increase their marketing. They wonder where all the opportunities have gone.
But the problem didn't start when the pipeline became empty. It started months earlier when they stopped filling it.
Consistency removes the panic
Prospecting shouldn't be something you do only when you need business. If you wait until your pipeline is empty, you're prospecting from a position of urgency. Every appraisal becomes more important, every potential listing feels like something you have to win, and clients can often sense that.
Consistent prospecting changes the dynamic.
You're not desperately searching for the next deal because you've been steadily creating future opportunities all along.
Some conversations will lead somewhere quickly. Others won't. Some people won't need you for years, and that's fine. The objective isn't to turn every conversation into a transaction. It's to keep creating relationships and opportunities.
So, could you stop for 90 days?
Probably. And depending on the strength of your existing business, you might not notice much difference for quite some time.
But I'd ask a different question: What would your pipeline look like six months later? Or nine months later?
That's the real test. Because the biggest risk isn't having nothing happening today. It's being so busy with today's business that you forget to create tomorrow's.
About the Author
Manos Findikakis is the CEO of Agents’Agency, Australia’s first multi-brand real estate network, ‘the only fully integrated solution for you and your people to create an unforgettable experience.’
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