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We are halfway through the year and now is a great time to do that reality check.
- Did you start the year with big intentions on what you hoped to achieve in 2014? I know I did.
- Did you turn these intentions into goals and set actions or activity to achieve them?
- Are you sitting back now reviewing the last six months and wondering what happened? January turned into February, you got busy and now it’s June.
- Is what you have achieved in the last six months worthy of discussion?
The good news is you now have six months left before the man in the red suit comes down your chimney; how are you going to make them worthy of discussion in December?
Review the levels of accountability you have in place. Your business plan will only be successful if you have someone working with you who will hold you accountable to what you want to achieve. Self-motivation and self-accountability don’t always work as we are all far too good at accepting our own excuses.
Who, inside or outside your business, can you meet on a regular basis to review your plan and discuss what’s working and what needs to change?
We all know consistency and discipline is the key to success. How consistent and disciplined have you been around the following:
- Prospecting
- Marketing to your farm area
- Building relationships with key clients on your database
- Communication to your whole database
- Appraisals
- Feedback to your vendors
- Price reductions
- Training
- Time management
If you were to rate yourself out of 10 on each of the above, what would it look like?
Time and time again we see the most successful agents are the ones with a plan in place and often they outperform their initial desired outcomes.
We know that 80 per cent of your results come from 20 per cent of your activities, it's much easier to list business from people who know you rather than those who don’t, and building strong relationships and becoming the trusted adviser is the key to your success.
To help you make the next six months the best for 2014 we have attached a simple one-page business plan.
I don’t want you to focus on the numbers, rather the activity required to get the numbers.
Before you start do a mini SWOT analysis on yourself – Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats – review these critically, aim for utopia and work back from there.
Build your key activities from this SWOT. As an example, if prospecting is one of the opportunities you have in your business, the action would be two hours of prospecting every day, a minimum of 200 calls a week resulting in a minimum of five appraisals every week. Imagine the difference it would make to your business if you achieved this consistently.
Review the last six months as part of your SWOT and be brutal with yourself in terms of why you haven’t achieved what you had hoped to. You may need to change some of your habits, activity, structure and focus.
It is important you build your personal goals into this business plan. If you want to get fit, lose weight, go on a holiday, have a separate focus area with actions for this.
Have you heard the saying: what gets measured gets done. Once you have your tasks or activities in place, build in your numbers; what do you need to list and sell to earn your desired income/commission.
Then share your plan with someone who is going to hold you accountable to it.
Ensure you break your activities down into small chunks. This way it doesn’t become overwhelming and it is easy to keep focused. I put my business plan on my wall, this keeps me focused and on track.
Some simple non-negotiable things on a daily basis you may want to consider are
- Number of hours of prospecting
- Number of contacts you talk to
- Number of appraisals you book
- Number of price adjustments
- Number you add to your database
- Number of weeds that you drop
- Amount of marketing that is distributed
- Number of door knock/DL drops
- Amount you review your diary and activity
- Amount of training attended
A quote that I love is: A year from now you will wish you had started today. Let’s ensure this doesn’t happen to you; use our business plan to make a start and if you need help, call us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
sadhana-smiles
Sadhana Smiles is chief executive officer of Harcourts Victoria, the state division of one of Australia’s leading and well respected real estate brands.
She is also a popular speaker and presenter, and is regularly asked to speak at some of the industry’s most prestigious events, including ARPM, AREC, AREL, RELC, the REINSW Women’s Conference and the Harcourts Conference.
Sadhana is also a regular contributor to a number of national real estate journals and publications.
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