• Where each transaction came from
• Where your advertising dollars were spent
• The market absorption rates in your niche markets
2. Compare To Your Plan - If you are right on target: congratulations! Keep up the momentum and find the additional or existing areas where fine-tuning will leverage where this year’s business is being generated from to enable you to maximize what is already working.
If you are behind: What is the gap? What will it take to get on target by the end of the 2nd quarter? What new strategies need to be employed? Do you need a new niche? Do you need to go back to basics? Prospect FSBOs or Expireds? Learn about the REO and short sale markets?
Take a look at where you have gotten business so far this year. What actions need to be increased? Is your marketing plan aligned with the results you are getting? In other words, is where you are spending your money where you are getting business from? If the Internet is generating 20 percent of your income and print ads are generating 5 percent, is your marketing reflective of this? Where can you tweak your actions and dollars to be more effective?
If you are ahead, great job! I like to see my coaching clients have their financial objectives met by the end of October so they can relax towards the end of the year, if they want to (or just get real picky about working with the perfect clients, instead of the high maintenance whiners). What IS working? Can you go deeper with your impact in these areas to take advantage of the trend?
3. Strategize For the Future - Regardless of which category your numbers fell into, the most important action you can take from this business planning session is to look for the trends.
Are the niches you are focusing on the ones where the activity is occurring? Look at the MLS data to see what trends emerge. If you do geographical farming, review last year’s numbers vs.. this years.
What new areas are emerging? A young new home subdivision (3-5 years old) is a great place to establish a foothold as an expert before anyone else does.
What changes in consumer buying trends should you be taking into consideration? A need for homes with offices could be an opportunity
Real estate can be held in an IRA or as a self-directed IRA. Let your sphere know! Learn how to explain these options and build relationships with people who can help your clients take advantage of this. These vehicles are a great opportunity to generate sales that weren’t going to happen anyway by contacting your clients to share this opportunity with them. Write a blog post about it. Link your Facebook profile to the blog post. Invite a client to lunch each week and talk about how this or investing might be a good strategy for them. You’ll be enhancing your expert status and become even more valuable to your sphere.
Build alliances with lenders and banks now to yield new business in the foreclosure or short sale markets, if that’s a fit for your skills.
Wayne Gretsky also said, "You'll always miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take."And "The fundamentals of the game are never going to change, but the things you're going to do, that changes."
Every marketplace offers individual and unique opportunities. The agents that are aware and awake to shifting before others see the trends will have an edge! Will you be there?
