As real estate professionals, we tend to get wrapped up in the day-to-day—especially when we’re juggling multiple clients, deals, properties and, well, life! Plus, it can feel like we’re on a rollercoaster of emotion in this career, so it’s essential to take steps to achieve calm, balance and forward movement.
But how?
The key to running a successful and enjoyable business each year as a real estate professional requires a few basic things:
- Leads and clients
- Annual business and marketing planning (including goalsetting)
- Scheduling/time-blocking to support the plan
- Ongoing support/training/professional development
1. Leads and clients
Most of us make money only when we sell properties, when we refer a client who sells or when we get a percentage of another sale. Even the best of the best in the real estate industry can only be successful with actual leads and clients to SELL to. It’s therefore vital that you have a solid plan to attract and retain leads and clients on an ongoing basis.
Sphere or circle of influence/database
Whatever you call it, your list of contacts (people who know who you are, like you and, ideally, trust you) is GOLD as a real estate professional. It’s said that attracting a brand-new prospect or lead is six times more expensive than fostering an existing relationship. That’s a lot of extra cash to throw around.
As you get into the new year, ensure that you have a functional CRM (customer relationship management) tool or database system in place to track your contacts and your interactions with them. Include key details like their name, phone number, email, address and birthday. Do some research and choose the system that fits you and your business best.
Pro tip: If you already have a database system, do a relationship audit and choose a few contacts on social media to see if you have them in your database.
2. Annual business and marketing planning (including goalsetting)
January is a time with many business planning sessions, and the people running them are passionate about helping. They run through key areas of business:
- Mission, vision, plan
- Word of the year for the upcoming year
- How did you do last year? This includes numbers, celebrating accomplishments and lessons
- How do you want to do next year? This includes numbers and goalsetting/vision boarding
- How will you keep in touch with clients?
- How will you grow your client base?
- Client appreciation
- Marketing ideas (in line with budget)
- Professional development/accreditations
- Coaching
- Networking opportunities/groups
If you can join in on a business planning session—either in person or virtually—with successful colleagues, you’ll also be able to help each other mastermind, idea-share and problem-solve. These sessions tend to be shared by word-of-mouth, with agents taking time each year as part of their commitment to giving back and deepening their referral relationships.
3. Scheduling/time-blocking to support the plan
The best part (and worst part) about the real estate industry is the ability to be your own boss. As many of our colleagues have noticed, our bosses might be too strict, too lax or just a mess sometimes. Jon Acuff noted the key to things that are important but may be difficult is to allocate roles according to the mindset we have in the evening or the morning:
“Morning me is in charge of actions. Morning me is a great order taker but will talk me out of anything difficult if it’s asked to decide.”
Jon Acuff, New York Times author and leadership speaker
It’s also important to know how and when you work best as an entrepreneur. Some people crush the day if they start at 6:00 am, others work best in the late evening hours. It also depends if you need quiet or silence to work or if being around too many people makes you incredibly unproductive because you’re a social butterfly.
Brian Buffini talks about the Win the Day formula:
- 2 hours of solid lead generation every day = win the day
- 4 days a week of winning the day = win the week
- 3 weeks a month of winning the week = win the month
- 8 months a year of winning the month = win the year
This seems low, but the two hours a day is a solid two hours of being face-to-face or voice-to-voice or writing a personal note to clients and contacts. As a professional real estate agent, you also need to take time to market, network, complete paperwork, do professional development, etc. Surprisingly, the two hours a day is more than most real estate professionals put into that lead generation.
4. Ongoing support/training/professional development
One of the most common things we hear about in the real estate industry is that real estate as a career can feel very isolating and very lonely—especially if you’ve chosen it as a second career. The way to circumvent that loneliness is to connect with your colleagues.
To ensure that you feel supported, here are a few tried-and-true things I recommend to agents that you can…
Source link
This article was complied by AI and NOT reviewed by human. More information can be found in our Terms and Conditions.
