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At the end of each year, I dedicate these blogs to all my real estate friends who are doing business plans.
Don’t Start at the End of the Planning Process!
We managers have heard these questions many times: “What actions should I put in my business plan for next year?” “What should I do?” “Give me what to do so I’ll do everything right next year.” Unfortunately, that’s doing your business plan backwards. It’s like starting at the end of a piece of music and playing it to the beginning.
What You CAN ‘Copy’ for a Great Business Plan every Time
Another thing you may have heard from agents: “Give me a business plan.” or “I want to use _______’s plan.” That’s another big mistake. It’s your business and it needs to be your plan. However, what you can copy is the process for a great plan. In fact, Dwight D. Eisenhower (former US President), said, “The planning is everything. The plan is nothing.” What that means is that it’s the thought process that’s important. So, use a planning process that takes you through the necessary steps. (See Beyond the Basics of Business Planning, for an online business planning system based on the strategic planning process).
10 Questions to Ask Yourself so You Create the Right Action Plan for You
Recently, I did a business planning webinar for an association. I provided attendees with 10 questions to ask themselves. The answers to these questions provide the guidance needed to create that effective, individualized business plan. Here are those questions for you to use as you create your plan. [pdf-embedder url=”https://getarealestatecoach.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Strategic-Business-Planning-10-Questions-to-Ask-1.pdf” title=”Strategic Business Planning 10 Questions to Ask”]
Let Me Help You Create that Plan
Contact me to find out how I can educate your company or association on business planning and support and coach you. Give me a call at 425.392-6914 or email me at carla@carlacross.com. I can do a webinar series for you, supply you will all the planning documents, and help your leadership coach your agents–at a very affordable cost with big pay-off for you.
During December, I’m focusing my blog on business planning, as well as in my managers’ blog, Management in a Minute. Look for ready to use checklists, processes, and systems. Let’s make awesome plans for 2021!
Today, real estate agents capture much more of the gross commission dollar than ever before. At the same time, they must become real businesspeople, because they must allocate some of these dollars to marketing—to increase their business. But, how do you know how to spend those marketing dollars?
Here are two basic principles of marketing dollar allocation
Principle One. Spend a proportional amount on your best source (s) of business—it will beget more business (your best source of business is from your past clients and people who know and trust you).
Most Agents are Not Spending Their Marketing Dollars Right
A recent study showed that agents spent the largest amount of their marketing dollars on direct mail, advertising, and the Internet. Yet, the majority of their business came from traditional ‘people to people’ sources
•IVR Technology (interactive voice response)–the only ‘technological’ lead generating source
Repeat Business
•Open Houses
•FSBO/Expired Leads
•Face-to-Face Networking
Do you know how much you spent on your best source of business last year?
Only one percent of the agents do. That means they aren’t treating that group of people as a ‘target market’. You must segregate your best sources and allocate funds directly to marketing to them. You must make a marketing plan directly to these people, and attach a budget to this best source.
How much Money Should You Spend?
Principle Two. Spend between 5 and 10% of your projected income on marketing to your best source of business.
Example: If you were to project for next year that you will get 20 sales from your past clients, and that income would be $4000 per ‘revenue unit’ or $80,000, you would allocate $4000 to $8000 to marketing to that source.
Simply reviewing how you spent your 2020 and allocating adequate marketing dollars for 2021 will, in the end, save you money. Also, you’ll have something to measure and adjust.
Your Best Business Planning System
Why not step up to a real strategic plan this year? My system is the only one published internationally for real estate professionals. Check out Beyond the Basics of Business Planning. There’s a program for agents and a program for leadership. Why not create a plan to work for you in 2021?
During November and December, I’m writing about business planning, to inspire you to get your business plan done for next year. Managers, see Management in a Minute for managers’ business planning tips.
Part of your business plan should be your lead generating plan. In Up and Running in Real Estate, we teach you how to prioritize those leads. Do you know which lead generating sources were your best for this year? Have you done a review? Do you know how much money you’re spending on them?
Prioritizing those Sources
When you’re prioritizing your sources, think of these evaluations:
Easier. Which is easiest?
Some lead generating sources require a great deal of sales skill, ability to handle objections, and ability to overcome low trust (like for-sale-by-owners). I’m not telling you NOT to call on these sources. But, you just have honed those sales skills and be very tenacious.
Trust. In which sources is there the largest trust already established?
The larger the trust, the easier it is to get to a ‘close’. Also, you are much more apt to retain the customer long-term–which is worth lots and lots of money to you!
Least marketing cost. Which costs you the least?
If you’re putting money in mass media (like newspaper advertising) to gain leads, you are spending lots of money per lead (figure it out). Do you math and review to see where all that marketing money is going.
Competition. In which is there little competition from other agents?
If you calling on expired listings, along with 40 other agents, you have lots of competition. Do it, if you can be tenacious, develop a great process, and keep at it until you wear out the competition.
Return business. Which will provide you the best long-term business?
To gain return and referral business, you must create high trust and confidence. In sources where you already have a head start, you have a much better chance of creating return and referral business–which costs you much less than new business.
It’s time to do your #business plan! So, my next blogs will focus on helping you create that business plan. I’ll include some of the planning templates, too, from my business planning program (see below).
The Mission Creates Excitement and Inspiration
Do you have a mission statement as part of your business plan?
Why is having a mission important? How should it guide agents? You’ve heard the talks about finding your passion. But, you may be over-whelmed in your career. It’s just too much to think big when you’re just trying to find that house or convince a buyer to work with them!
The Importance of Your Mission
This time of year, we’re encouraging real estate professional to create their business plans. One of the first things you’ll do in creating your own business plan is to define your mission. Why? Because, otherwise, you don’t know whether or not the actions you decide to take will fulfill your mission. This is also true of your agents.
Tackling and Bringing Down your Time Management Challenges
If agents have been in the sales business a little while, they’ve already discovered that their biggest challenge is time management. How can they get done in a business day everything that needs getting done? That’s where your mission comes in. Creating your mission helps you prioritize all the things you’re supposed to do. It helps you decide what not to do. Most important, it helps you figure out
how to put YOU into your management and sales business successfully
#Free Business Planning: I have a gift for you right now, to help you define your mission (it works for leadership, too). Click here to get this planning tool, which is excerpted from my unique online resource Beyond the Basics of Business Planning.
How About Creating a Real Professional Strategic Plan this Year?
Ready to step up to a real strategic business plan? Here’s help. Beyond the Basics of Business Planning walks you right through my proven strategic planning process. I provide you the forms you need, so you can’t get off track. Check it out here.
Through November and December, I’m going to help you with your 2021 business plans. You’ll find free documents from my business planning system and an invitation to a complimentary webinar. Why not subscribe and be sure not to miss a thing?
Many times, we launch right into business planning by trying to create an action plan. Unfortunately, that’s like starting at the end of a tune and trying to sing it backward. Instead of struggling through action planning, start with your vision. Is your business plan missing vision? Below is an explanation of why having a vision is so important to the success of your business plan. In fact, I believe the lack of vision in a plan leads to a demotivating and certainly uninspiring plan.
Why Vision is Important
A few years ago, business professors, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, studied very successful companies to find out the differences between ‘stunning’ (high profits and highly regarded), and other like companies who were almost as profitable, but not so successful). They published the results in the best business book I’ve ever read, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
What did they find was the common difference between the highly profitable and merely very successful?
A common vision and values shared by every person in the company.
Porras and Collins’ conclusion was that the desire for profits isn’t the main driver for profits. The focused and tenacious vision, shared by all in the company, was the biggest determinant for profits.
Components of Vision
Your vision is made up of your core ideology and your envisioned future.
As you can see from the chart on the right, excerpted from my business planning system, your core ideology is made up of your core values and core purpose. If you look at your life, you’ll see that the things that inspire and motivate you are the things that adhere to your belief system. That’s what this part of the vision statement says about you.
Your envisioned future is made from a vivid description of this future, and BHAGs—big hairy, audacious goals. Those are goals five years out, that you really don’t think you can attain.
The Power of BHAGs
Surprisingly, as Porras and Collins found, when companies stated these goals, they actually attained them in three years! (Inspirational goals that are congruent with your core values and core ideology are powerful motivators!).
What Vision Does for Companies
Here’s Porras and Collins’s function of a vision statement:
Provides guidance about what core to preserve and what future to progress toward. Made up of core ideology and envisioned future.
Here’s an example of a vision of one of the book’s stand-out companies:
Our basic principles have endured intact since our founders conceived them. We distinguish between core values and practices; the core values don’t change, but the practices might. We’ve also remained clear that profit – as important as it is – is not why the Hewlett-Packard Company exists; it exists for more fundamental reasons.”
– John Young, former CEO, Hewlett-Packard
How to Construct your Vision
How do you want to see yourself in this business? How do you want people to talk about you and your business after you retire? What values are most important to you? What ideology do you follow in your business?
Looking back: Imagine you are at your own memorial, watching from above. What are others saying about you? What’s most memorable about you?
Voicing those BHAGs
What is a great goal you would love to accomplish in your business, but really don’t feel it’s possible for you within five years? Write it right now.
Why We Don’t Reach Those Lofty Goals
Is that goal that’s been eluding you congruent with your core values? What I mean by that is, does that goal feel comfortable to you? For instance, if that goal is that you’ll make two million dollars, and you don’t like the feeling of that much money, because your values are aligned differently, you just aren’t going to reach that goal. That, I believe is the reason many of us don’t reach some of our goals. Those goals aren’t in alignment with our core values.
Here’s what great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said about goal-value alignment:
You can’t consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
Finding your Alive, Powerful Motivation
Click here to get a copy of my vision worksheet.
. Yogi Berra said it well:Life is like baseball; it’s 95% mental and the other half is physical.
Business planning! Here’s how to create your action plan–the part we all love! Answer the 10 questions below and you’ll know exactly what to put in your plan for 2021.
Throughout November and December, I’m focusing my blogs on #business planning, so you have plenty of information to create a great plan. Look for #business planning checklists, processes, samples, and systems--ready to use, too.
Big Mistake in Business Planning: Launching Right Into your Action Plan
The most common question I get when I’m teaching business planning is, “What should I do next year?” or “What should I put in my action plan?”
That’s like starting at the end of a piece of music and working backwards (I’m a musician….).
The Answers to These 10 Questions will Create that Action Plan for You
In future blogs, we’ll investigate parts of the business planning process that must precede creating the action plan. Now, let’s look at the 10 questions we must answer from our businesses this past year so we can choose the right actions for 2021.
You’ll see your strengths, your challenges, your time management as you answer these questions. Grab the document here.
Getting serious about business planning? I can help.
Beyond the Basics of Business Planning, my unique online program, will show you exactly how to construct a strategic plan that will work for you for 2021.
Agents: 14 documents and 2 webinars walk you right through the planning process so you save time and avoid costly business planning mistakes.
$149
Leadership: All agent documents and webinars, plus leadership documents and 3 webinars to help you convince your agents to plan and involve them in the planning process
$249
Purchase here and create an awesome strategic business plan for 2021.
Bonus: Free Business Plan Coaching
Purchase by Nov. 23 and Carla will provide coaching to your business plan in a small group; 3 Zoom sessions to help you finish that plan–one per week, starting on Nov. 23. She’ll answer questions, and explore new ideas. This is a $500 value, FREE to you when you invest in Carla’s strategic business planning system now.
Throughout November and December, I’m focusing my blogs on #business planning, so you have plenty of information to create a great plan. Look for checklists, processes, business plan templates, and systems--ready to use, too.
Business Planning Mistake
Many people think that a business plan consists of actions to take. Yes, that’s one of the parts of a business plan. But, it’s actually the last step in creating the business plan. If we don’t think through the other steps that precede the action plan, we end up
in indecision
in a impractical action plan
Instead of leaping right to an action plan, use a #business planning process and template (business planning steps) that guides you through the right thought process.
Grab my strategic business planning template and process here. I created this process just for real estate professionals, to help them accurately think through each part of their businesses. This is a #business plan sample of the entire process I created for Beyond the Basics of Business Planning.
Start with the Past: What Happened?
Here are the business plan tools you’ll need in your business planning toolkit:
- Time analysis (watch my next blog for a questionnaire to analyze your time management)
- Business plan activity review
- Expense/budget review
- Profit and loss statement review
1. Your time analysis. Do you have the business plan analysis tools to see where your business is, and where you want to take it? With a time analysis tool, you can see what your priorities are. It’s amazing how many agents and managers have no idea where they spend the bulk of their time. Look at your schedule for the last week. Did you spend time in the areas that are most productive for you? If not, why not?
2. Business plan activity review tool. This allows you to capture the history of your business in a way that clarifies your direction. For example, does the tool you use ask you where you got your business last year? Does it ask you the percent of your listings you sold in normal market time? Find the tools that ask you the right questions.
3. The expense and budget review. How many agents have a budget? How many managers and owners? All businesspeople set budgets and review them. After all, it’s about profitability in a business, not productivity! At best, you want to use tools that are similar to the ones used by others at the same business level as you, so you can analyze like problems and solutions.
4. The profit and loss statement review. How many agents do you think have a profit and loss statement—and review it? I believe, less than 5%. Yet, if you don’t know where your money went, you can’t analyze its effectiveness. Use Quicken or Quickbooks to get a handle on your money.
Analyzing your business in these four areas gives you a great ‘handle’ on your business habits, your strengths, your challenges–and the areas you want to change for a more successful year next year. Now, you’re ready to create that next step of your business, your mission.
With the right #business planning process, templates, and samples, you’re on your way to a strategic business plan that actually will work for you next year.
It’s been a chaotic, year, where our best laid plans have been tossed upside down. That’s why doing a fresh, creative business plan is so important right now.
Register here for How to Build the Best Business Plan Ever. (complimentary webinar).
You’ll gain:
- A new way to think through your business so you have a plan that works
- The missing planning step that assures your plan will work for you
- The biggest change to make to thrive in 2021
- Insights with 10 questions to answer BEFORE you commit to action
- The seven best recommendations to put in your plan
Included: Strategic business planning handouts and 2 bonuses for managers
When: November 16 (Monday) 1-2 PM Pacific Standard Time
Register now.
I created the only internationally published book for real estate agents on business planning, and I can help you build exceptional plans.
In November and December, I’m featuring business planning. Why? Because we’re all told to make business plans. But, it’s estimated that less than 20% of agents actually have plans.
What is ‘Intentional Planning’?
It’s making a behavioral-based business plan, that focuses on action. It answers the questions
What are you going to do?
When are you going to do it?
How are you going to go about it?
The Science Behind this Component
A study in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology conducted with 8000 participants found that intentional planning was the key factor in a successful habit change. This approach increased the chance of successful change by 50-80%!
The ‘Secret’ to Change
We regularly declare our intentions. But, we rarely get specific about them. When we’re not specific, we don’t have a roadmap to chart that change. We don’t know the actions to take. In order to change our intentions from ‘general’ and ‘philosophical’ to action-based, we need to answer these questions:
What
When
How–what shall we practice? How shall we do it?
The Reason Most Business Plans Fail
As a manager and trainer, I’ve seen all sorts of business plans. I’ve seen all sorts of business planning templates. Unfortunately, many plans stay in the ‘what’–the philosophical statements or just the numbers. Inferior templates encourage this flawed thought process. So, people blithely create these business plans, focusing only on the ‘what’, set them on the shelf, and continue doing exactly what they have been doing!!! So, they get the same results.
When You’re Intentional, You’re Fired Up
I’m always looking for tips in motivating others (and myself). I found a great article from my personal trainer. It says that ‘intentional planning’ is the biggest component to obtain your goals.
My Business Planning System ‘Forces’ This Thought Process
Having used those flawed plans and having seen my agents and other managers fail with them, I built into my business planning system and templates the when and how. So, My system actually forces the user to think through the whole process–to get to the weekly/daily action plans that will help change their business habits for the better. (see Beyond the Basics of Business Planning.)
How Specific is YOUR Plan?
The acid test: Could I take your business plan, follow it, and see results? If it’s not that action-oriented, you can’t follow it either!
As Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth Real Estate Agent and the E-Myth Revisited, stated
Note: You’ll sell your business much more successfully (whether it’s a brokerage or a sales business), if you have specific systems. That’s salable! [/ctt]
Be sure the business planning system and templates you’re following direct your thinking from the ‘what’ to the when and the how. Now you’re cooking!
Complimentary Business Planning Webinar
It’s been a chaotic, year, where our best laid plans have been tossed upside down. That’s why doing a fresh, creative business plan is so important right now.
Register here for How to Build the Best Business Plan Ever.
You’ll gain:
- A new way to think through your business so you have a plan that works
- The missing planning step that assures your plan will work for you
- The biggest change to make to thrive in 2021
- Insights with 10 questions to answer BEFORE you commit to action
- The seven best recommendations to put in your plan
Included: Strategic business planning handouts and 2 bonuses for managers
When: November 16 (Monday) 1-2 PM Pacific Standard Time
I created the only internationally published book for real estate agents on business planning, and I can help you and your agents build exceptional plans.
What are behaviors that #successful agents exhibit? What are the #attributes of successful real estate agents?
Make your list here. Now, compare it to the behaviors I listed in my book I wrote to educate prospective real estate agents.
What They May Exhibit that will Assure Failure
It may be easier to make a list of the behaviors that assure someone won’t make money fast enough in our competitive, self-starting business:
- Never had a job until mid-twenties.
- Still lives at home.
- Doesn’t have to make a living.
- Has never taken initiative to try something new.
- Hates having to reach out to talk to people.
- Loves technology; fears people.
- Has had 7 jobs in 7 years.
- Doesn’t believe in having to learn from someone or be led.
- Gives up easily.
What should I add to that list?
How to Use this Information in the # Real Estate Interview Process
If you have a team, you’ll find this very helpful. Or, if you’re working in a company that rewards you for referring good agents to the company, you’ll also want to use this information.
Are you familiar with behavior-based questions? They are questions that ask a person about his past behavior. Why? Because past behavior determines future behavior. (Not always, just 95% of the time. Do you like those odds?) I don’t mean that what someone does specifically determines she will do that again. This is what I mean:
As you listen to a person tell a story about his past, listen for themes that run through the story. For example: One of the behaviors good agents exhibit is tenacity. They just don’t give up. They accept rejection and keep going. If someone or something is difficult, they wade through it.
The question: Think of a time in your life when you thought of giving up–a time when you really wanted something, but getting it seemed difficult or out of reach. Describe what happened.
Don’t interrupt. Don’t ask another question. Just hum, agree, or probe. Find out all you can about that story. As you listen, ask yourself:
Your turn. Look at my list of behaviors. What should I add?
I’m updating my book for prospective agents. Please help me create a book that’s different, insightful, and helpful to both the prospective agent and the manager/interviewer. Thank you!
New! We've put Up and Running on steroids in our new online 8-week training/coaching program. Check it out!
Want management tips? See Carla's Management in a Minute Blog
