Archive for best business plan
Can You Add Inspiration to Your Business Plan?
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Create your mission.
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10 Questions for your Agents’ Business Plans
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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!
Managers: You’ve heard it over and over. “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 he meant was that it’s the thought process that’s important. So, use a planning process that takes you and your agents 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 Your Agents so They Can Create the Right Action Plan for Them
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.
Counseling your Agents with these Questions will Motivate Them
What percent of your agents do you expect to have good business plans for this next year? Using these 10 questions with each of your agents in a coaching session will motivate them to create plans that work. Let me know your results!
Strategic-Business-Planning-10-Questions-to-Ask
Want Some Support to Get Your Agents Business Plans?
Contact me to find out how I can educate your agents on business planning and support and coach you as a leader. 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.
The Mission: Inspire Your Agents to Create Great Plans
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It’s time to do your #business plan! So, my next blogs will focus on helping you create that business plan–and getting your agents to plan. I’ll include some of the planning templates, too, from my business planning program (see below).
The Mission Creates Excitement and Inspiration
Do your agents have mission statements as part of their business plans?
Why is having a mission important? How should it guide agents? You’ve heard the talks about finding your passion. But, you see your agents being over-whelmed in their careers. It’s just too much to think big when they’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.
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 assist your agents in defining their missions (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 to you and to your agents. The leadership program of Beyond the Basics of Business Planning gives managers guidance in how to get their agents to plan. It gives them a #course on business planning if they want to teach it to their agents. Or, Carla will teach your agents with 2 webinars. Your leadership tuition includes all your leadership planning documents and all the agent planning documents and webinars. Check it out here.
Make an ‘Intentional’ Business Plan Now
Posted by: | CommentsIn November and December, I’m featuring business planning. Why? Because we’re all told to make business plans. But, it’s estimated that only about 20% of leadership and less than that for agents–actually have plans.
What is ‘Intentional Planning’?
It’s making a behavioral-based action plan–which 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.
Fire Up Your Agents with Intentional Planning
Here’s how to use intentional planning to fire up your agents. 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.
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
The integration of your systems is your business plan.
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!
Managers: As you’re counseling your agents, be sure their plans get to ‘where the rubber meets the road’. Could you follow their plan–or is it just a series of numbers or high-fallutin’ statements?
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.