Last week I had a couple of clients in my office for a day of consulting, and something very interesting came up. They told me they sent out a mailing piece that did well, and they pulled in somewhere north of $250,000 dollars in real estate commissions from it.

My first response to this was, “Great, what happened the next time you sent the piece out.”

Dead silence…

You see, there never was a second mailing.

The problem is, sometimes people are so wrapped up in the “process” of what you’re doing, especially when you’re always chasing “freshly killed meat”… you don’t stop to ever consider the RESULTS of what you’re doing. So basically, you could be sitting on, as Russell Cronwell once said, “Acres Of Diamonds” — and not even know it, simply because you didn’t take a step back and evaluate or measure your results.

This just goes to show you how deeply ingrained habits and behaviors are, in spite of any outcomes or results you may be getting.

Here’s a light-hearted story showing you EXACTLY how habits work — and you’ll see, even I’m not immune to them, I’m just more aware of them: Yesterday the weather was absolutely GORGEOUS here in Tampa, and the cool breeze blowing across my lake was even better.

At 5 o’clock, my good friend Chet Rowland came over and we spent a couple of hours enjoying the weather, fishing out on my boat. Besides the ass-whipping I put on Chet, beating him 4 to 1, something else happened that got us talking about marketing.

We’d been working each dock around the lake, for around 10 to 12 minutes, with no luck at all — not even a bite. Fishing like this isn’t fun at all, believe me.

Suddenly, I caught a decent-sized bass just as we were leaving one of these docks to move on to the next one — probably around 2 and a half pounds or so. After bringing the fish in and letting him off the hook and back into the lake, I was just about to continue onward as we’d been doing — moving on to the next dock.

Suddenly, in mid-motion, I stopped myself and said “Wait a minute. If there’s one fish here, there’s likely to be more of them, so why am I moving on?” I knew it was habitforce and nothing more.

Just like the ad that worked for my client, I knew that finding a receptive marketplace means you need to stay there until you’ve worked every single piece of business out of it. Only in this case, I was prospecting for bass and not clients.

And sure enough, not 5 minutes later, I pulled another nice one out of the very same spot.

Be aware of your habits and make sure you’re not operating on “autopilot.” Because while “autopilot” may work if you’re flying a plane, it’s NOT a good “business” strategy to rely on.

Now go sell something, Craig Garber

P.S. $1,391 Dollars in FREE Gifts awaits you when you test-drive my Offline Newsletter, right here: http://www.kingofcopy.com/ssnl

P.P.S. To learn more about consulting days: http://www.kingofcopy.com/consultingday

P.P.P.S. Mark your calendars for my radio show this week when I have a VERY special guest — a man who’s been the “secret weapon” behind LOADS of direct-response marketing mailers for the last 20 years. The show airs live at 1pm Eastern time on Thursdays, and you can listen in at http://www.kingofcopy.com/radio