Your Business Needs a Wanted Poster, Not More Random Leads
Your Business Needs a Wanted Poster, Not More Random Leads
Most Agents Are Hunting for Outcomes, Not People
Most agents say they want more business. That sounds reasonable until you realize how useless it is.
Think about it– how many times have you heard different versions of, “I’ll help anyone, anywhere, any time buy or sell anything”? I know I’ve heard it many times. Who is this message for!?
More business from who? More listings from what kind of seller? More buyers in what price range? More referrals from what kind of relationship? More conversations with what kind of person who actually fits the kind of work you want to do?
This is where a lot of agents quietly sabotage themselves. They say they want growth, but what they really have is a vague appetite for better results. And vague goals create vague prospecting (and a vague business that stands for, well, vague– or, more precisely, nothing).
Phil M Jones put it plainly: "You cannot search for the results. You can search for the people that can provide you the results." That is the whole game.
A lot of agents are out here looking for closings, commissions, referrals, and opportunities as if those things float around in the air by themselves. They do not. Those are outcomes. Outcomes come from people. And if you are not clear about the people, you will stay unclear about the path.
If You Try to Appeal to Everybody, You Become Forgettable
That is why his next line matters even more: "If we don't put boundaries around the things that we're looking for, we will remain in the place of looking for everybody."
And looking for everybody is one of the fastest ways to become forgettable.
When an agent describes their ideal client, they often give soft, flattering nonsense. They say they want someone kind, motivated, family-oriented, serious, respectful, coachable.
Fine.
But you cannot spot "coachable" across a room. You cannot build a referral strategy around "nice person." You cannot walk into an event, airport, conference, restaurant, Facebook group, or open house and identify "respectful with good values" from twenty feet away.
That kind of description feels thoughtful, but it is operationally useless.
A Wanted Poster Is More Useful Than an Ideal Client Worksheet
That is why the Wanted Poster idea is so useful. Jones joked, "I'd love thousands of people to draw missing person posters."
Funny line. Serious lesson.
A real wanted poster forces specificity.
Not behaviors you discover later. Attributes you can identify now.
What do they look like demographically? Where do they live? What stage of life are they in? What kind of work do they do? What kind of property problem are they likely to have? What rooms are they already standing in before they ever meet you?
That shift matters because it changes prospecting from random motion into intentional hunting.
If you know exactly who you want, you start noticing where they gather. You start recognizing the events, businesses, referral partners, neighborhoods, online groups, and life situations that naturally surround them. You stop hoping the right people show up and start putting yourself where they already are.
That is the difference between being busy and being dangerous.
The Right Description Should Help You Find People in Real Life
An agent should be able to describe visible attributes like geography, approximate age, family stage, profession, ownership status, likely pain point, and referral environment. If the description is too vague to picture, it is too vague to use.
And there is a second benefit here that matters just as much: better messaging.
When you know who you are looking for, your language gets sharper. Your examples get better. Your stories land harder. Your referrals improve because people around you finally know who to send. Instead of saying, "I work with buyers and sellers," you start describing a type of person with a type of problem in a type of situation. That is memorable. That travels.
Weak Leads Are Often a Targeting Problem in Disguise
It also saves you from a common trap: chasing people you do not even want.
A lot of agents create their own frustration because they market too broadly, attract too randomly, and then complain that the leads are weak, the conversations are scattered, and the fit is poor. That is not always a lead quality problem. Sometimes it is a targeting problem disguised as a lead problem.
If you’re saying things like, “I don’t ever want to work with someone like this again”, you have a targeting problem.
Jones closes this discussion with a line agents should probably tape to their monitor: "You've got the right to be able to decide who are the fish that you're fishing for. Where do those fish hang out?"
That is the assignment.
Stop asking for more business. Start defining the people.
Stop chasing outcomes. Start identifying environments.
Stop calling random activity prospecting. Build the wanted poster.
Because if you cannot describe the person you want to find, there is a very good chance you are just wandering around hoping a commission bumps into you.
Most agents say they want more business, but that goal is too vague to be useful. Phil M Jones makes the distinction clearly: you do not search for results, you search for the people who can produce those results. That means agents need to stop describing ideal clients with soft traits like “nice,” “motivated,” or “coachable,” and start defining visible, practical attributes they can actually identify in the real world. A better target creates better prospecting, better messaging, and better referrals. If you are trying to appeal to everybody, you are probably becoming memorable to nobody. The real job is to build a “wanted poster” for the kinds of people you want to serve and then put yourself where those people already are.
