Until I started coaching two years ago, I was a brokerage executive. My job was keeping top agents happy, developing rising talent, and recruiting new agents. I loved it, especially the creative problem-solving and the business development strategy. Recruiting was the hard part.

I liked meeting new people and catching up with agents at other brokerages. What I hated was picking up the phone. I could come up with a million reasons the timing was wrong. Mornings were their precious prospecting time. Lunch was a break everyone deserved. Afternoons, they were probably out on appointments. Somehow there was never a good moment in the workday to call another real estate agent.

I tried everything. I hired a coach. I rewarded myself for making calls. I tried scripts, then no scripts. I once spent a week opening every conversation with, “I just have to tell you how hard it is for me to make these calls.” As recruiting strategies go, that one was unconventional.

None of it worked, and the more I avoided calling, the worse I felt about myself.

Looking back, I don’t think the phone was the problem, and it wasn’t really rejection either. I loved the company I represented and I believed in what we offered. The trouble was that I felt I had to convince someone to make a change before I even knew whether the change would be good for them.

Somewhere along the way, I’d confused selling with convincing. And the more I felt I had to convince, the less I wanted to pick up the phone.

The Difference Between Selling and Being Salesy

Picture two prospecting calls. In the first, you’re calling because you want the listing. You’ve prepared your pitch, rehearsed your differentiators, and you’re hoping for an appointment. In the second, you’re curious about what someone has planned, you have some information that might help, and you’d like to find out whether there’s a reason to work together.

Both calls have a business goal. Let’s not pretend otherwise. But on the first call you’re trying to get something, and on the second you’re trying to find something out. That shift changes how the whole thing feels.

I’ve worked with agents who can walk into a dinner party and leave with three new friends, two referrals, and an invitation to someone’s house in the Hamptons. They’re funny and warm and truly interested in people. Then I ask them to sit down with a list of names and make ten calls, and they turn stiff and self-conscious.

Their charm didn’t disappear. They stopped trusting it. Because it was a sales call, they decided they had to act like a salesperson.

What Are You Actually Resisting?

Sometimes resistance is fear of rejection or plain old procrastination. Sometimes it means the way you’re going about something doesn’t sit right with you. Those are different problems, and they don’t have the same fix.

Most of us reach for discipline first. A bigger goal, an accountability partner, a spreadsheet. Before you try harder, ask yourself something else: What is it about the way I’m approaching this that makes me not want to do it?

A lot of my coaching work is helping people build a business development practice that feels natural to them. It won’t always be comfortable, because growth rarely is, but it should be something you’ll actually keep doing. For one agent that’s five calls every morning. For another it’s 25 real contacts over a week. For someone else it’s bringing interesting people together or becoming the go-to person in their neighborhood.

The method can vary. The responsibility doesn’t. You still have to reach out, follow up, and ask for the business. Authenticity isn’t much of a business development strategy if nobody ever hears from you.

Coaching Corner: Change the Intention, Not the Ambition

The next time you’re looking at a list of people you should contact, forget about the appointment for a minute and get curious. What’s going on in their world? What might you have to offer? You may find an opportunity you’d have missed if you’d gone straight into your pitch.

And when you find one, go after it. There’s nothing salesy about asking for business once you’ve established a real reason to work together.

I’ve been an agent, a brokerage executive, and now a coach, so I’ve seen sales from just about every side. The longer I do this, the more convinced I am that consistent, proactive business development is the most important habit a salesperson can build. I don’t believe there’s only one way to do it, and I don’t believe getting better at sales means becoming someone you’re not.

You can be an ambitious, highly effective salesperson without being salesy. When you find a way to sell that feels like you, you’ll be able to keep doing it.