I have listened to a lot of webinars where successful realtors are interviewed. I am always looking to understand what makes them successful, so I can apply it to my own business.

One constant theme I have noticed from all the Webinars is successful Realtors do a lot of prospecting / cold calling.

Cold calling to me is a pain. I don’t particularly like to get calls from sales people interrupting my work or family time, trying to sell me something I really did not plan on buying today. I prefer to go online or call a company to get more information at a time that works for me.

When I think about other careers, for example, doctors, lawyers, contractors, etc., I don’t see them cold calling using tools like the Mojo Dialer or Vulcan 7. Mojo Dialer allows you to make up to 5 cold calls per minute, so you can really bother a lot of prospects fast.

If I go to the doctor and my treatment is not successful, I don’t get a call from several doctors asking to meet with me, but if I list with a Realtor and the listing becomes expired, you can bet I will get calls right away.

When I go to medical Websites, I am not forced to give my contact information in order to view their important content. Yet many successful Real Estate sites do just that, and you can bet within minutes of giving my contact information I will get a call from an agent. Many people will give bogus contact information, because they don’t want that immediate call from an agent.

One successful agent has a Virtual Assistant that calls thousands of people each month and makes contact with around 2,000. Out of those 2,000 people she reaches, 1,960 of them don’t want to hear from the Realtor, and probably did not want to hear from her either. When asked when he stops calling people, his response was “when they request a restraining order”. Is that what it takes to be successful, bothering thousands of people each month who don’t want to hear from us to find the few that do?

Another successful agent promoted a program called the Ten Days of Pain. It is an intensive follow-up program using the phone, email, text messaging, video, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. There was nowhere a prospect could hide from this intense follow-up. At least in this case the agent acknowledged it is a pain, probably for both the prospect and the agent doing the follow-up, and named it appropriately.

The NAR President just wrote an opinion piece where he mentioned many see the term “Realtor” to be a “low ranking career choice”. As I think about why the public has this view, one thing that comes to mind is the constant prospecting we do. There could be other reasons too, perhaps lack of education to get a license, or the perception that we are overpaid for what we do, but I can’t help but think the relentless prospecting plays into this opinion of our career.

So what do you think, are successful Realtors a pain?