“Be persistent and consistent, and manage your time.”
Albert Hairapetian has a drive to be different.
He works only 30 hours a week, takes no phone calls after 5 p.m., and works weekends only when he has an open house. Even his approach to open houses is different: He hosts a barbecue for the visitors. “I don’t ask prospective buyers whether they want to buy the house; instead, I ask them whether they want cheese on their burger. And they get to feel what it would be like to have a party with their neighbors.
“If 100 sales associates were doing it one way, I’d do it another,” he says. The different drummer approach is working well for the 27-year-old. Now in his fourth year in the business, Hairapetian closed $7 million in residential sales in the first two months of 2001 after booking $12 million last year.
The enterprising Hairapetian even owns an advertising business to deal with advertisers who pay to be in his 15,000-circulation monthly newsletter.