In the 9 seasons that I have officiated basketball, I have seen a whole lot of basketball games. Not as many as some refs, but certainly my fair share. Some of those games have been buzzer-beating barn-burners, others have been 30-point snoozers. One thing is for certain in all of those games– one team lost, and one team won, and the measured success or failure using the scoreboard.
That’s the thing that makes basketball different from real estate– every game has a winner and loser. Not only that, but at any point in the game, you can look at the scoreboard and see exactly where the two teams stand in relationship to each other. It’s pretty simple, really.
Real estate isn’t quite so simple. We don’t really have a scoreboard to define who wins and loses. There is no mutually-agreed upon measure of success or failure. That doesn’t stop folks from trying to find one, though. I talk to agents and brokers all the time who are obsessed with production volume, sales numbers, etc. They are obsessed with their own numbers, which I guess is fine (it’s good to have measurable goals, afterall), but they are also obsessed with the numbers of their competitors. They like to watch the scoreboard, which is a dangerous habit to get into.
The scoreboard doesn’t tell the whole story
If there is one thing that I have learned about basketball during the years I have officiated, its that the game is NEVER over until the clock reaches 0.00. Never. It might seem like a team is left for dead, that the wheels are off, and then, slowly but surely, one thing leads to another and another; before you know it, your neat and tidy 15 point blowout with 4 minutes left has turned into a 2 point war with less than 30 seconds to go.
See, the problem with the scoreboard is that it is only a reflection of events that have already taken place. It has no bearing on future events, nor can it predict the outcome. The advantage that a team has earned at any given point in time exists only at that moment, and must be maintained in order to produce a win.
I have, on occasion, seen teams get far too comfortable in their lead, start watching the scoreboard, and forget to do continue doing the things that got them that big lead in the first place. As a result, they became a bit lazy, started making mistakes, allowed the momentum to change, and before they could react, their lead had vanished.
On the flip side, I have seen teams win games because they ignored the scoreboard. They chose to deal with a superior opponent by breaking the game into individual plays, rather than being overwhelmed with the larger goal. As a result, they were better able to deal with the inevitable setbacks, and recover more quickly. Oblivious to whatever their deficit or lead was at any moment, they played each possession as if it was their last chance. In the end, this lead to success.
Don’t get caught watching the real estate scoreboard
I see agents and brokers get so caught up in production numbers or sales volumes that they forget that those numbers rarely tell the whole story. The advantage/disadvantage they suffer now, relative to their competition, has nothing to do with what the future may hold. Those numbers are merely a reflection of what has happened in the past, not a prediction of what will happen in the future. Too much emphasis on those past numbers can lull someone into a false sense of security, thinking that similar future numbers are a foregone conclusion.
The best agents and brokers, like the best athletes, know better.
They know that those past successes are no guarantee of the future, and that any given team/agent/broker can change the whole game on any given day. As a result they work just as hard when they are ahead as when they are behind. They work to ensure they get better each and every day. They don’t get caught flat-footed. They don’t get caught watching the scoreboard.
