It’s all about PUSH-everence
You can’t just persevere in this market; you have to push through to excellence
By Bill Briggs (LORE Magazine) // Photographs by John Barone

Every industry has its own language, and a lot of bosses have their own pet phrases.

But Creig Northrop, head of one of the most productive real estate teams in America, should probably come equipped with his own translation guide.

Simply put: In the rush of the work day and in the height of emotion, while revving up his agents individually or in groups, Northrop has been known to abruptly make up his own words. "Creigisms," as they are called around the five Maryland offices of Northrop’s Long & Foster Real Estate team, usually become law.

His latest linguistic concoction perfectly captures current the spirit of Northrop’s company and the passion of the man at the helm: "Push-everance." It is, he explains, like "perseverance," only infused with more positive energy.

"I love push-everance," Northrop says. "Recently, I had been hearing all this ‘perseverance, perseverance, perseverance.’ I didn’t like the word. It didn’t do anything for me. I needed a word to indicate what I was looking to do next, and that was ‘push-everance.’ Push through it."

This is more than a passing mindset for Northrop. It is his core belief that unbridled optimism and enthusiasm will always conquer even the slowest month or leanest year. In other words, he won’t let the 57 members of his team stop to survey the carnage of the market. They know the score; their orders are to push on through.

How can anyone argue with the results? In 2007, Northrop and his agents nearly pulled off a rare real estate double play. They finished the year ranked No. 2 nationally in team sales volume, missing the top spot by $20 million, and they were ranked No. 3 in the country in team transactions, recording 836 sides – all that in a sluggish Maryland economy.

But Northrop, a man who drips raw energy yet never touches a cup of coffee, is not just about selling an attitude. He has long melded goal-oriented planning with keen market research. In 2007, he added even more muscle to both of those areas.

For the first time, instead of dictating the company’s overall ambitions from the top down, Northrop asked his agents to list their individual sales goals for the year. With those numbers in place, he then mapped out the team’s combined targets in weekly or monthly chunks. At meetings with his agents, the numbers were jotted onto a flip chart and placed on an easel for all to see – a constant reminder of the promise they all made.

"I’ve found in negotiations, or in anything you do, if you break everything down piece by piece and just focus on the smallest piece instead of the big picture, people are more likely to grasp and achieve it," Northrop says. "They can own that piece of it, and want to do it. And if you don’t want it, you’re never going to achieve it."

Another change came in marketing. Northrop reoriented his team to be more buyer focused. He reassigned one of his agents to the role of lead manager and installed a system to convert more of the incoming cold calls to warm sales leads.

"Most of our agents had been through the 2002-2005 market where it was easy. So I said, forget that," he says. "I said ‘you guys are now rookies again. Let’s start over. Let’s work from the premise of: remember when you were hungry? Remember when you wanted it and needed it? That’s what you have to go back to.’

"One of my goals 10 years ago was get to a place where I was consistent instead of riding the waves up and riding the waves down, living day by day," says Northrop. "Be consistent regardless of what the market does. Well, we’re still selling houses. We’re pushing through."