Put that Coffee Down! Coffee is for Closers!
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009A recent conversation with my friend Dan Doran reminded me of the quintessential real estate movie of all time: “Glengarry Glen Ross.” For those who are too young (or too old) to remember it, the 1992 movie was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play written by David Mamet.
In 1984, when Mamet wrote about a cut-throat, all-male real estate sales team working out of a dingy office and living on watered down booze and stale Chinese takeout, fallout from the “worst recession since the 1930s” gripped the United States economy — and the American psyche.
In many ways, the social, economic and political climate that led Mamet to write “Glengarry Glen Ross” easily can be compared to the many crises we’re currently seeing in the news– and in some of our financial accounts. Then, like now, banks were closing, the Fed was accused of sleeping at the wheel, unemployment rates soared, corporate corruption littered the headlines and real estate was in a major downturn.
The “World of Men” depicted in the movie includes Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino and Kevin Spacey. The focus was on their ability to close on real estate deals as though their lives depended on it. And indeed, they did.
When I first saw this movie, I was a little green in the business and it blew me away. Nearly two decades later, I’m still drawing upon its bare-knuckles illumination of real estate marketing and sales in the trenches.
There’s one classic scene that captures the essence of the real estate deal in a way that no other real estate boot camp, course, book video or coaching call can touch. And thanks to YouTube, I can offer it to you here. Please, only watch it if you’re not offended by a little salty language. (And by that, I mean a seemingly endless string of obscenities peppered with awesome wisdom on the fundamentals of survival in the real estate business.)
WARNING: This Clip Contains Obscene Language — Even By Today’s Standards.
(According to one source, actors in the movie deploy approximately 150 F-Bombs and 50 S-Bombs.) Please only view it if you’ll not be offended by the wanton use of words that beg for a bleep — or possibly if you have teenagers living in your house.
As Blake (played by Alec Baldwin) so vividly illustrates in the clip, the keys to success in the real estate can be distilled into two mnemonics:
AIDA
- A - Attention
- I - Interest
- D - Decision
- A - Action
ABC
- A - Always
- B - Be
- C - Closing
They’re deceptively simple to read, but can be brutal to implement because in real estate, as in life, the devil is in the details.
In my next post, I’ll take a candid look of one of the mission critical details that 99 percent of all real estate investors overlook in our real estate marketing. There’s one simple quick and inexpensive action you cantake to increase your income by $100,000 or more this year. Can you guess what it is? Stay tuned and find out.
And while you’re here, be sure to become a member of GaryBoomershine.com. Just sign in using the yellow fields on the right side of this page, or on the main page at GaryBoomershine.com and you’ll get all the information you need to conquer tough markets, fly above your competition’s radar and meet your real estate investment strategic goals for 2009 and beyond.
