Successful prospecting sessions start with a positive mindset. So, whether you’re struggling to pick up the phone or highly driven, we’ve got you covered. This article gives you nine books highly effective prospectors read.
Prospecting is Mind Over Matter
Whether you believe you can succeed or not, you’re right. That’s why without believing in your success and a drive to pursue it, prospecting is going to feel more difficult than it ought to.
A key to unlocking your “success beliefs” is to understand the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Fixed-minded people believe their abilities are fixed and cannot change. However, growth minded people believe they will continue developing and growing.
To unleash your success, here are the nine highly recommend books that top prospectors read for motivation and clarity on how to maintain a solid attitude against adversity.
1. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
If you’re in a slump or your business isn’t going the way you want, the problem could be your mindset. Mindset author Carol S. Dweck offers life-changing insights on people with a fixed mindset, those who believe abilities are fixed, versus those with a growth mindset who believe abilities can be developed.
Reading between the lines reveals an interesting fact: Highly effective prospectors don’t just cope with failure, they welcome it. Dweck’s research indicates successful prospecting comes from having a growth minded view of learning and improvement, not natural ability. No matter what your goals, this book with over one million copies sold can help you fix a fixed mindset.
“Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.”
-Carol S. Dweck
2. The Compound Effect
You get all motivated, but then discouraged when you don’t hit your goals. The Compound Effect suggests that instead of attempting big leaps and dramatic changes, first turn your goals into smaller daily habits.
Darren Hardy defines the compound effect as “the principle of reaping rewards from a series of small, smart choices.” Simply put, our habits and daily routines will determine our success in life. Instead of setting the goal to become the best real estate agent in the state, first set daily habits, like prospecting 2 hours every day, that will get you to that status.
“In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you.”
-Darren Hardy
3. Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection
What if there was a way to always ask for what you want, but never get upset when a homeowner hangs up or tells you no! Rejection Proof tells the story of Jia Jiang, who came to the US from China with big ambitions. But instead of finding fortune and fame, he found refusal and rejection. However determined to succeed, Jia discovered how to build his tolerance to rejection as he moved towards his goals and wrote this book like a training guide.
His training included asking strangers for $100, requesting a “burger refill” at a restaurant, and asking to plant flowers in stranger’s backyard. He learned to not run away from rejection, but to embrace it. His experience “training himself” revealed how abundant the world is, if he was just willing to ask.
“The world is full of far more possibilities than you can even imagine. What is possible if you just ask?”
-Jia Jiang
4. Mindset, Methods, and Metrics: Winning As a Modern Real Estate Agent
According to Mindset, Methods and Metrics, success is simple. Focus your mind, create goals, and get a plan to carry them out and the success you want will be yours. This book shares dozens of real-world practices to make it happen. You’ll discover the steps to creating a sustaining positive mindset, while focusing on the most critical metrics, and ultimately giving you a proven game plan to generate consistent sales.
The core philosophy of this book (similar to the Compound Effect) is to “have a plan. A big plan. Then, break your plan down into quantifiable and trackable everyday actions, and do them. Repeat. See your results.”
“With the right mindset, data-driven metrics, and structured methods, you will be able to design the real estate business you want, and live a life you enjoy.”
-Doyle, Dreher, and Saunders
5. Mind Over Market: The Real Estate Warrior’s Road Map to Mindset, Marketing & Media
There is only one way to get whatever you want in this life, says Tamara Dorris, and it all starts with your mind. Dorris figured out how to work as few as 5 hours per week selling homes, while earning nearly triple the income of the average real estate agent. She did this by learning how to use the power of her mind.
This book combines her study of neuroscience with decades of selling real estate. Each chapter holds a different approach to maximizing your mindset, so you can create magnetic marketing. She believes since the power of your mind can heal your body, it can create the change you want in any area of your life.
Whether you’ve sold hundreds of homes or are just getting started, this book shows how to channel the positive power of your mind into your business.
“Regardless of how innovative any marketing system is, how great a website, or how many scripts are memorized; if you don’t have the inside stuff you will never go very far.”
-Tamara Dorris
6. High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way
Choosing “the easy way” almost never results in a full life or success, especially in real estate. That’s why Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way, is a must read! He shares 6 proven habits that make up an extraordinary person and high performer.
After experiencing a near-death car accident, his life was changed forever. He no longer settled for a mediocre life, he worked for one that was extraordinary. In these pages, he’ll show you how to master that process and live a life where your full potential is in play. Through his own experience and dealing with people who unintentionally block themselves from opportunity, Burchard says that if you’re willing to put in the work, you’ll “enter a very transformational period of your life and career.”
“Just as athletes never quit training, high performers never stop consciously conditioning and strengthening their habits. Real success—holistic, long-term success—doesn’t come from doing what’s natural, certain, convenient, or automatic. Often, the journey to greatness begins the moment our preferences for comfort and certainty are overruled by a greater purpose that requires challenge and contribution.”
-Brendon Burchard
This book comes highly recommended by Jake DaRosa, an elite prospector from Sacramento, California.
7. The Resilience Roadmap: A Guide to Building Your Ideal Business
It’s no secret that resilience — the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties — is a must for anyone who wants to be a successful prospector. Author and broker-owner of Intero Real Estate (6 offices and 350+ agents) Danny Morel has seen what it takes to build that resilience.
In his book The Resilience Roadmap he shares 7 resilience principles he discovered over the last 20 years as an agent and prospector. The challenges he’s overcome will shock and inspire you. And as you turn the pages, he’ll help you understand how to transform pain into prosperity. So even if you didn’t grow up in a single-parent home or experience a series of devastatingly bad business deals, you’ll discover how to succeed no matter what.
“When you start to see big, you start to believe in possibilities. When you start to believe in possibilities, you’ll begin to take inspired actions. Those actions will lead you into the life you were destined to live, and you’ll start to believe you can accomplish anything you want to do. That’s when you’ll change the world”.
-Danny Morel
Recommended by elite prospector, Edward Estrada from Northridge, California.
8. Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline
Riding the rollercoaster of unpredictable sales is a common experience. Because so many real estate agents worry about where their next sale will come from, Jeb Blount wrote Fanatical Prospecting. This book was written solely to help any agent at any skill level understand how to get a constantly filled sales pipeline.
Step by step, Blount goes through why prospecting is essential. But more importantly, he details why his approach works every time and exactly what you should do to handle objections, get more listing appointments, and close more sales.
“Developing and maintaining a fanatical prospecting mindset is the ultimate key to success. This mindset keeps you focused, persistent, and driven to open doors in the face of inevitable setbacks, challenges, and rejection. When you adopt a fanatical prospecting mindset, you’ll grow in the face of adversity rather than shrink before it.”
-Jeb Blount
Recommended by successful prospector, John Plante, an agent from Lowell, Massachusetts.
9. The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage
Oftentimes fear is what holds us back from reaching our full potential. Whether it’s the fear of rejection or the fear of not being good enough, we let fear cause failure before we really try.
To eliminate fears, Mel Robbins explains in The 5 Second Rule that “if you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.” If we wait any longer our minds will tell us all the reasons why we can’t do something, resulting in failure.
Through the science of habits, stories and facts, Robbins explains how to reprogram your response to fear. She makes it easy. Once you apply her “rule”, in less than 5 seconds you’ll experience how to get rid of fear, stop worrying, and destroy self-doubt.
“Hesitation is the kiss of death. You might hesitate for just a nanosecond, but that’s all it takes. That one small hesitation triggers a mental system that’s designed to stop you. And it happens in less than—you guessed it—five seconds.”
-Mel Robbins
Time to get reading…
These books come highly recommended by experienced prospectors who’ve built incredible lives and businesses through tiny, small, daily actions. So when you read these books too, you’ll also begin to see how quickly rejection and fear fade from your life.
Don’t see your favorite mindset book here? Please leave a comment below and tell us what books have helped you improve your mindset.
About REDX
REDX offers real estate professionals a complete all-in-one prospecting platform for generating listing appointments. The platform includes seller leads, a dialer with up to three lines, and a lead management tool for simple follow-up. REDX maintains the position that all agents should be compliant with state and federal telecom laws – learn more here. Call (800) 731-7339 option 1 to learn more about prospecting FSBOs, Expireds, FRBOs, Pre Foreclosures, GeoLeads, and our Power Dialer – or visit www.redx.com
