How to Overcome the Fear of Asking for Business

SUMMARY

The three steps to overcoming the fear of asking for business are:

1. Action. Face the fear and break through it with massive action.

2. Belief. Have the belief: “They need me.”

3. Competence.

When you’re great at what you do, it creates a sense of responsibility and confidence that “…if you don’t hire me…you’re making a huge mistake.” Competence breeds confidence.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Agh! How do you overcome that fear of asking for business? It kills everybody, kills all the agents, they’re like, “Ah, I’m so afraid of asking for business.”

Hi, my name’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YESMasters Real Estate Success Training, helping you get more yesses and more successes in your business and in your life. And yeah, sometimes fear is just a part of the real estate game. But let’s talk about how to overcome the fear so that it doesn’t stop you and keep you broke and stuck.

So there’s three keys to overcoming the fear of asking for business, whether you’re talking to people that you know or talking to people that you don’t know.

Now, number one is, if you wanna overcome the fear of prospecting, you just have to face your fear. Sometimes you gotta just do it and face it, because I promise you that, when you do something that’s hard, when you do something that’s new, something that requires some skill, something that is outside of your comfort zone, you probably are never gonna get to a point where you’re comfortable with it until you actually do it.

Asking for business is almost like being a public speaker and getting on a stage in front of a bunch of people. I don’t care how much you practice and rehearse, when you get in front of people you’re gonna be scared. You’re gonna be nervous. How do you overcome that? By exposure, by just getting out there and doing it, and understand this very powerful principle of life, and that is that action conquers fear. That when you just get out there and do it, the doing of it over time, the fear goes away.

Because you get to realize, “Oh, I’m good at this. There’s no danger, there’s no risk. It’s just part of the process.” David Schwartz, in his book called The Magic of Thinking Big, which was written over 50 years ago now, in The Magic of Thinking Big he said, “Do the thing that you fear, and the death of fear is certain.”

So I wish I could give you a shortcut, I wish I could give you a magic bullet or magic pill or something that would help you just be able to catapult past the fear so you don’t have to deal with it. But the reality is you just got to deal with the fear. You face the fear, you do it anyway, and you understand that, “When I take the action, the death of fear is certain, once I do it over and over again.” It may take a little bit of time, but do it. Just face it, bam. Jump in with both feet, that’s the fastest way to get through your fear.

The second key to overcoming your fear is the power of your belief. What do you believe about what you are doing and how you’re doing it? And here is, I think, the most powerful belief that you can have when it comes to talking to people and asking for business, and that is the belief that they need me. You gotta believe.

You gotta believe that, when you’re talking to people about business and you’re asking them for business, what you’re really doing is you’re offering a service that they need.

See, here’s the deal. You’re not selling candy bars. You’re not selling something that’s actually bad for people. You’re selling something that’s good for people, you’re offering a service that, if they wanna move, and they’re buying a house or they’re selling a house, they need a competent, skilled professional to help them through the process.

So I’m not putting myself out there, asking people for something that just makes me money that nobody needs. I’m offering them something that they need desperately if they wanna buy or sell.

Because look, if somebody is dealing with a $1,000,000 asset, or a $500,000 asset, or a $300,000 asset, they’re selling a piece of real estate, it’s a massively complex transaction. The pricing of it, the process of it, the closing of it, the whole journey, the marketing of it, all of that is done better when somebody that knows what they’re doing does it. There’s expertise.

And people don’t need you for information, what they need you for is they need you for expertise, they need you for skill, they need you for knowing how to deliver a result. And if you believe, “I’m really just trying to get people to sign up with me so I can make money,” then your belief is gonna always play against you because you’re going like, “I feel like I’m trying to give people something they don’t need.”

You have to believe that buyers and sellers actually need what you have to offer. That’s the belief. I can ask for business because I’m like, “If I don’t ask for business, these people are gonna be left high and dry.”

That leads to the third principle here of how do you overcome the fear of prospecting, and that is by your own competence. By your own competence. What that simply means is you gotta be good. Because, when you’re good, it’s easier to have this belief.

“I’ve gotta be competent, which means I’ve gotta be the best at helping them get the result that they want. So they need me. If they hire somebody who doesn’t know how to get them the results, if they hire an amateur, if they hire an incompetent agent, it’s gonna be a huge mistake for them, it’s gonna hurt them, it’s gonna cost them money, it’s gonna cost them tons of stress, time, potential lawsuits, all kinds of problems, but mostly it’s just gonna cost them time and money and stress. They need me.”

And when I’m competent, I can believe and know that, if I don’t put myself out there, if I don’t ask for the business, if I don’t let them know that I wanna help them, or I wanna get referrals for them, that it’s not about me. It’s about their friends who need to buy or sell, when you ask somebody for a referral, say, “Hey, who do you know?” If they have a neighbor that’s selling, I don’t want that neighbor of theirs, and they don’t either, want them to get stuck with an amateur agent that’s gonna hurt them because they’re incompetent.

You and I both know that the number of incompetent agents in the industry is huge. In fact, the NAR commissioned a study that was done a few years ago now, that said the number one threat to the real estate industry is the high number of incompetent agents in the industry. They said it is the single greatest threat to the industry. Which just tells you, there’s a lot of incompetent agents out there.

“I gotta be good so that I’m not one of them, and then I can believe that these people need me and I can help them.” Now, I’m gonna tell you this idea of competence, here’s what competence does. Competence is what leads you to have confidence. And what is confidence? It’s the opposite of fear, right? It is the opposite of fear.

Confidence comes from “fidelis” which means “faith”, “belief”, con which means “with”. With faith, that I show up with faith that I can help them, with belief in myself. And when you have belief in yourself, then the people you’re talking to, they’re gonna have belief in you as well. That comes from being good at what you do.

Now, here’s how I think that belief must show up. You gotta believe so strongly, number one that people need you, and number two that you can help do a better job for them than anyone else. So much so, that your belief is, “If they don’t hire me, or if these people don’t refer me, and their friend goes with some other agent, they’re making a huge mistake.” I’m talking huge mistake. Why? Because they hired somebody that wasn’t as good as you.

You gotta believe that, you gotta commit to becoming so good at what you do, so competent at what you do, that anybody who does not hire you in your market area, they’re making a huge mistake. Does that make sense? It is so critical that you become that powerful.

This is the magic bullet for overcoming all fear that you have of asking for business, of doing lead follow-up, of handling objections, it all comes down to number one, taking action, number two, believing that people need what you have to offer, and number three, believing that you’re the best at giving them what they need, and if they don’t hire you they are making a huge, huge mistake.

Now, if you’re brand new, or you’re just getting started going like, “Yeah, but I don’t have that belief, I don’t have that, how do I get that competence?” Then I’m gonna invite you to get a free copy of my number one best-selling book, The Book of Yes, The Ultimate Agent Conversation Guide, just as a way to get you started. Get you started in what to say and how to say it and how to create the belief and the competence to do it.

Now, this book isn’t gonna be an end-all, do-all, but it is a starting point, it’ll give you a framework, it’ll give you those steps to take to start building that confidence and overcoming that fear, so that you can crush it in your business by helping other people get what they need in buying and selling real estate. You can do this. It’s a journey, it may be a little painful, it’s gonna be a little scary, but when you do it, on the other side of it there is success, there is a feeling of great confidence and fulfillment, that, “Yes, I helped other people.”

So if you got other challenges or other fears, post them down below, I wanna know what you’re struggling with, what’s stopping you, what’s getting you. If you have other ideas or anything, any other ideas, please post them down below. Make sure that you give the video a thumbs up, get your free copy of The Book of Yes, we’ll post the link down in the description of the video below, subscribe to the channel if you haven’t done that, and I’ll see you on the other side. When you do this, the beauty is you’ll always be able to expect “Yes”.