Do you know where you are in your business this year?
We’re well into the second quarter, and there’s no better time than now to review your business (and your business plan) to see where you are and the changes you want to make.
You know you should analyze your listings taken, listings sold and sales and then compare them with your goals. No big deal. Go ahead and do that. But, what if you’re not achieving the goals you set? What adjustments do you need to make? Here are two areas that will surprise you, and greatly affect your business results.
1. Your Time Management. Real estate professionals say that time management is their biggest challenge. It all comes down to prioritizing your activities. Here’s the secret: Are you spending more of your time in business-producing activities (lead generation, interviewing/qualifying, showing, selling, listing, listing sells) or business-supporting activities (everything else)?
We’re creatures of habit. Without a different model, we tend to do whatever group of activities appeal to us because they’re easy and don’t take us out of our comfort zone. Unfortunately, then, we create a business activity plan that leads us to failure, not success.
2. Your Listing Habits
Make a list of listings and listings sold, then compare them to your MLS. You can figure out how to promote your successes. Here are some areas to look at:
What percent of your listings sold in normal market time?
How close was your sales price to your list price?
What are your MLS figures for these two statistics?
Now: If your listings taken to listings sold in normal market time aren’t high enough, what changes are you going to make? How high do you need these to be for you to promote your successes? How will you promote those successes in your marketing plan for the rest of the year?
List price to sales price: What’s that ratio? Is it high enough for you to promote that to FSBOs, expired listings, your farm, your clientele? If not, what do you want to do about it?
Comparing yourself to your MLS. Can you beat the MLS figures? You should. And, if you’re creating higher figures than MLS, you should let potential sellers know about it. Now, to get really fancy, compare your numbers to the competitors in the area. Are you beating them? How can you optimize that in your marketing?
So many times, you’re doing a great job selling real estate, but you don’t know it. That’s because you aren’t keeping your statistics and comparing your results with others. Your potential clients want to know about your sales habits. Help them out!
Carla Cross, CRB, MA, is an international speaker, writer, and coach, specializing in real estate management. Join her newsletter community, and receive Carla’s eBook, Getting to Yes: Ten Tools to Remove Barriers to a Decision. Contact Carla at 425-392-6914 or http://www.carlacross.com.
Tracey C. Velt is a writer, blogger and editorial strategist who specializes
in the business of real estate. For the past six years, she's been writing
and editing for REAL Trends, is the editor of the REAL Trends blog and the editor of LORE magazine. Prior to that, she served as an editor for
Florida Realtor magazine and continues to contribute to multiple real estate
publications, both in print and online.
