Question: "Everyone tells me that you have to 'List to Last' and that I should focus my prospecting efforts on finding sellers instead of buyers. But I prefer working with buyers! Will I fail if I don't have a lot of listings?"

Answer: No. As a new agent, you may be better off working with buyers, actually! Why?

You typically develop closer relationships with your buyers, thus increasing the potential for referrals.

When you work with buyers, you work harder. And that's good? Oh yeah, that's good. When you're new, you need to stay busy. An active buyer will keep you hopping. An active listing? Not so much.

You learn more about the overall home-buying process when you work with buyers. You're intimately involved in almost every step of the transaction, from showings to offers to inspections to loan approval. This knowledge will serve you well when you act as a listing agent.

When working with buyers, if you're observant, you'll see most (but certainly not all) of what a listing agent does. You'll learn a lot about both sides of the deal, where when you list you don't see much of what the buyer agent is doing.

You will learn your market!

The reason experienced agents advise you to focus on listings is because once you get busy, you can only handle so many buyers, since buyers are more time-consuming than listings. And this is true.

One agent, working alone, can theoretically handle dozens of active listings, while it's probably not practical to try to handle more than a half-dozen active buyers at a time. (Another reason given for "Listing to Last" is that when you have listings, you will generate calls from buyers, although I don't buy that one. There are plenty of sources for buyers outside of a For Sale sign in a yard.)

Anyway, do you have to 'List to Last?' Probably not. As you gain confidence in yourself, you'll likely want to handle both buyers and sellers, but for now, know that if you're "only" working with buyers, you're doing just fine!