Prospecting is a sport.

AREC 2017. Charles Touma walks the stage and reframes prospecting from a cold-calling chore into a craft built on three pillars: process, persistence, passion. The talk lands because Charles isn't theorising. He's describing the exact mechanics that built his database to a thousand active relationships inside three years — and the discipline that maintains it a decade later.

Watch the full talk above. Below: the three pillars, in his own words.

Process

"How do you build a high-quality database quickly and effectively?"

Hyper buyer work. Hyper product knowledge. Charles inspected 90% of all listings in his core market — Redfern, Surry Hills, Darlinghurst — his company's AND his competitors'. Every condition note, every opening bid, every final clearance, tracked in an Excel spreadsheet. Still does it today.

Then the buyer work. Three buckets: hot, B, and C. Each gets a different cadence. Each gets the same standard.

"If a colleague listed a property, I'd go straight to my hot buyers. 'James — it's Charles. We just listed 28 Telopea Street. Drive by, it might be of interest. I'll see the photos in a week, I'll call you back with my take.'"

The B buyers got Friday calls. The C buyers got six-month check-ins. The hot buyers got daily attention. Every conversation built trust before it ever asked for a transaction.

Persistence

Once the database existed, the work changed from acquisition to maintenance.

Every listing in their street: SMS, then phone call. Every sale in their street: SMS, then phone call. Every off-market intel from a competitor: emailed across with the link, the quote, the result. Annual market forecast in October–November to the entire database, religiously.

That's the work between the work. Most agents skip it. Charles built a career on it.

Passion

"Anybody can have a good prospecting day once a month. Anybody can have a good prospecting day once a week. When you have passion, you have strong prospecting days when other agents don't."

Prospecting like a sport. The team that works hardest wins. The team that's most enthusiastic wins. The team that's most disciplined wins. None of those require a skill or an education. They come from within.

Charles closed the talk on a single instruction: every prospecting call, focus on building trust. Not the transaction.

Eight years later, that's still the method.