Archive for business plan
How to Use Those Business Plans to Coach all Year
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You worked hard to help your agents gain business plans for the coming year. Now, optimize that work!
Are you using your agents’ business plans to coach all year? If not, you’re missing out on leveraging that plan!
First, congratulations! You’ve helped your agents each gain a business plan. That’s a huge key to their success–but only the first step. Now, how can you capitalize on all that work (both you and the agents?) It’s not enough to teach them to plan, or even to sit down with each agent and work through their plans. In order to really help them use those plans as a guide all year, use that business plan as a platform from which to coach the agent all year.
Here are the basics of coaching to a business plan.
How often should you coach?
That depends on the agent. For newer agents, coach more frequently (at least monthly). For seasoned agents, coach a minimum of quarterly and better yet, monthly.
What should you coach to?
You’ve provided your agent with a method to set goals in finding, working with, and closing clients (I hope you’re using my Beyond the Basics of Business Planning system.) You have provided your agent a method to measure results. You’re going to use the numbers that the agent is generating by measuring the results of his business plan:
First, the goals: Lead generation, listings, listings sold, sales.
Lead generation
Listing/sales appointments
Listings
Listings sold
Sales
You’re going to help the agent translate the activity numbers into ratios so the agent knows the work he must do to reach his goals.
Why bother to use the business plan as a foundation for coaching?
Because, otherwise, you’re just giving advice or doing ‘crisis management’. You want to be perceived as a trusted business coach, helping the agent grow his/her business.
Big questions: Is the planning system you’re using
1. Helping the agent assess his business–where he’s been?
2. Helping the agent set realistic goals and an action plan that translates into daily activities?
3. Includes an accurate method to measure the activities and results of the activities so you and the agent can make fast adjustments?
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.
Do Your Agents Have Their Business Plans for this Year?
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Do your agents have their business plans for this year? Have you been avoiding the issue, hoping they would do it on their own? Not going to happen…..What’s YOUR plan to get them business plans?
What Doesn’t Work
It doesn’t work to hand them those planning documents and tell them to get them done. It’s useless. You need to teach them the process, be involved in the process, and coach them through the process. Then, you’ll motivate them to complete those plans. Also, when you treat this as important, they will respond.
What Does Work
Here are 3 ways to get your agents to do business plans:
1. Get the best planning ‘templates’ you can find, so your agents have a good planning process to follow
2. Do a class on business planning, using a proven step-wise process, along with the planning templates you’re going to use (In my online business planning system, Beyond the Basics of Business Planning, I have 2 webinars for your agents to take them right through the process, along with the documents. I also have provided you the outline for a class, if you’d like to teach it. You can use my agent webinars in your class, too).
3. Sit down with each agent and help that agent flesh out the plan. It may take more than 1 meeting. Are you willing to commit?
Level of Support
If you’re willing to provide that level of support, you will have much a better chance of getting business plans for each of your agents.
Question: Did YOU create a business plan for your office? It’s not too late to get that done, too. Then you’ll know exactly how to make a plan. (See my online program, Beyond the Basics of Business Planning, for the documents and guidance you need to create a great office plan.)
Want Some Support to Get Your Agents Business Plans?
Why not 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.
Don’t Start your Business Plan Yet
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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.
Agents, managers, and trainers: If you’ve been in the business any length of time, you know how much more challenging this business is than it used to be! That’s why creating a real #strategic business plan is so important now.
(See the complete process, templates, and samples in Beyond the Basics of Business Planning.)
Biggest Business Planning Mistake
Yes, we all want to know what to do next year to be more successful. So, we want to create effective action plans. That’s great. But, if we don’t take the step below first, we end up with
badly thought-out action plans
indecision as to what to do
The point is: Don’t try to start with the action plan. Start with the analysis of your business.
Why Business Analysis?
Here are the tools you’ll need in your #business planning toolkit, whether a manager or an agent:*
- 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 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? Managers, does your tool ask you the numbers of agents you interviewed, and your conversion rate? 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.
Real estate leadership: Here’s the #strategic business planning process I created to put together a strategic business plan for your office or company. After working with this and companies for years, I was able to customize the thought process to address our major concerns. Grab it here.
Complimentary Business Planning Webinar
Complimentary 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. (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.
Connections, not Sales
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Connections, Not Sales
The biggest change in your agent’s real estate business plan has to be in their short-term goals. All business plans have a lead generation component. That means we’re actively looking for listing leads and buyer leads. Our dialogues and our marketing materials are designed to bring us those leads.
What does that mean? That means our communication needs to be- Supportive
- Positive
- Helpful
- Meaningful
- Relationship-based
That means we’re not looking for that big, money-making result. We’re really in a
“pre-lead” phase.
Why Connections?
Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? It states that we must meet the lowest unmet need before we can be motivated to meet higher needs. What are the majority of people’s needs now?
- Comfort
- Shelter
- Enough food and supplies (toilet paper!)
- Fear of sickness
- Fear of losing one’s job—or of making payments
Where are we on Maslow’s Hierarchy? We are close to the bottom—that need to meet very basic needs. Maslow calls those Safety or Security needs. That’s why agents’ messages have to be reassuring. You have to establish trust. You have to provide a safe harbor for your clients and potential clients.
Re-Designing that Business Plan
Instead of thinking ‘how am I going to get leads’? Think ‘how am I going to connect’? Help your agents design messages to their best target markets with connection as their goal. That means, too, that you must identify those markets and make your messages meaningful to those markets.
I just did a complimentary webinar for Real Estate Professionals called “Build Your Business Right Now to Position for Success Later”.
You can see the video and grab the materials at my website. I also have a 60-Day Business Plan template for all attendees so they can easily complete their plans.
Outcomes of a Re-Designed Plan
The irony of this re-design is that your agents are going to create listing and sales opportunities because your client base is looking for that connection now. When they find it, they will walk one step closer to a transaction with you—even when you didn’t ask. The danger in ‘laying out’ (as we say in the music performance business when we’re told not to play) is that you’ll be way behind the curve when the market comes back. Those people agents considered clients found the agents were a ‘secret agent’ when they needed connections and information. They have turned to a new source of connections because you didn’t communicate. Don’t let that happen.
Start Today
From working with hundreds of real estate professionals during this time, I know clients are so grateful for these connections. Each agent has something to offer. Don’t keep it a secret. Help your agents share information, concern, and a positive attitude today. Not only will you reap real estate business in the future, they will feel better for having given value to their clients.
Do You Have Your 60-Day ‘Pivot Plan’ In Place?
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Do you have your 60-day pivot business plan in place?
Congratulations to you if you made a 2020 business plan. However, none of us could have foreseen the events of the past two months. Those events have called for a different plan–both for you and for your agents.
5 Big Questions to Answer Right Now
Next Thursday (April 23), I’ll be doing a 45-minute webinar exclusively for leadership on actions to take right now to retain agents and plan for profits. Here’s more information on that.
To prepare for this webinar, here are some questions leadership needs to ask themselves to evaluate whether they’ve got everything they need in place to lead in this uncertain environment.
- What are you doing right now to communicate regularly with each agent in your office? Do you have a schedule? Have you helped each agent with a pivot business plan? (I’ll be providing a template for you to use with your agents after the webinar).
- What’s your agent mix? How many new agents, growth agents, mature agents in your mix? Do you have a plan for each group to move them forward? (I’ll provide you a tool to segment your agents).
- How have you changed your training to continue it without disruption? Are you doing ‘live’ online events, or have you contracted with an outside source to assure your training has continuity?
- Who else have you enlisted to help retain your agents? Do you have any teaming in place?
- What’s the morale like in your office? With each agent? What actions are you taking to improve each person’s outlook so they will continue their business in a meaningful way now?
Answering these questions will prepare you for the actions I’ll be suggesting to you during the webinar next Thursday, April 23, starting at 10 am Pacific Daylight Time.
The good news: This is the time when leaders can LEAD. The feelings of insecurity, of fear of income loss, fear of sickness–all can overwhelm our agents unless we step forward with positive leadership actions. The actions I’ll be suggesting to you next week will build loyalty and retain your good agents, preparing for a market re-emergence.
Leadership:
The Actions
to Take Now
to Preserve
Profits Later
Join me for this fast-paced, 45-minute webinar exclusively for leadership April 23 (Thursday), at 10 am PDT. Click here for more information and to register.
Got Your Training Calendar Done?
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Why do you need a training calendar?
I’m going to focus on training, presenting, and facilitation for these blogs. Why? Because I see a real need for us to become masters of these areas, to help our agents and affiliates succeed at a higher level.
No Training Calendar…..
–with little rhyme nor reason as to why those events are put on the calendar. Don’t let that be you! Without a training calendar, you don’t know if your training is working to help you meet your goals. You don’t know if your training is getting results. And, your associates certainly don’t know if you have a busines plan with a training component.What That Training Calendar Will Do for You
It will:
1. Organize your training as part of your business plan for next year
2. Have a time-saving guide to implement the training you need for your company to move forward
3. Use the training calendar to recruit (internal AND external)
What percentage of real estate trainer/managers organize their training events on a calendar? From my experience, less than 20%. In fact, I doubt most managers make training a part of their business plan! Yet, training is the second-most important component to move our productivity and profitability up (recruiting the right people is #1).
Problems with Most Training Calendars
Before you read this paragraph, if you don’t have a training calendar, grab a calendar and write down the training events you intend to do next year. Now, let’s take a look at the 3 biggest problems with training calendars:
1. They don’t focus on the training events that can change the profitability and productivity of the office (too many ‘technical’ courses, and not enough sales courses)
2. They don’t focus on training events to meet the needs of each of your career life cycles (new, growth, and maturity)--they are skewed to one group of agents–usually new)
3. They don’t consist of measurable training, so you know what works
Take a look now at my analysis tool, to help you figure out if your training calendar is doing the job:
Your Training Calendar.
Affiliates: Share this blog and training calendar analysis with your brokers. They will thank you, because they’ll save time, effort, and get more agents into those training programs.
Question for You
What did you learn from your analysis?
Let Me Help Your Trainers Refine Their Skills
I help associations and companies help their trainers become masters, try new methods, keep their audiences, awake, and become more creative. Contact me and we’ll talk about how I can help you.
You as Business Plan Coach: 3 Areas to Help Your Agents Review
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In these posts in November and December, I’ll be featuring business planning strategies. Watch for checklists, processes, and systems--ready to use, too. I want to help you and your agents create a great business plan for next year!
This post’s ‘gift’ is my after sale survey. See the link in the body of the blog.
Coaching your agents: Before your agents launch right into that business plan for next year, take a look back. Why? Your history will provide clues about how to save time and money for next year.
1. Where’s your money been going? It makes sense that the money you invest in your career should be giving you pay-offs equal to your investment. Unfortunately, many agents don’t know where they spent the bulk of their money last year. Go back over the past four months.
Add up the moneys you’ve spent to generate business in each of your ‘target markets’–those identifiable groups of people that you build programs around to get business (geographical farm, first-time buyers, etc.) Where are you spending most of your money? Are you getting a good enough ‘return on your investment’? You’ll use this analysis to build your budget for next year, too.
From working with agents in my business planning course, I’ve observed that many agents don’t build a business plan around their best source of business: ‘sold’ customers and clients. Marketing surveys show that it costs six to nine times as much to get a new customer as to keep an old one. So, if you spend more money on your best source, and less on your other sources, you’ll optimize your investment.
2. What are your ‘success’ ratios? Most agents don’t know this one:
What are your ratios of listings taken to listings sold?
How many of your sellers are you making happy?
How many of those sellers are so delighted with your service that they will refer more people to you? In my opinion, a good agent should target a 80-90% success ratio in this area.
Why? We all know we need to promote ourselves. The most successful, believable promotions are based on our success records–what we’ve done, not promises. If you have a sign on your desk that says “If you don’t list, you don’t last”–tear it up. Instead, put up a sign that reads, “If your listings don’t sell, you don’t last. Small adjustments, big dividends. (Plus you’ll save lots of marketing dollars.)
3. How ‘delighted’ are your customers? Most so-called ‘business plans’ in real estate merely are goal-setting grids. Focusing only on the ends suggests that the ends justify the means. However, the consumer sure doesn’t think so! These goal setting grids alone lead agents to miss the point of the decade: Top-flight customer service begets more business. That is, not just what you do, but how you do it.
What level of customer service are you providing? Is it just good enough to get through the transaction? Or, is it so great that your customers and clients are thoroughly delighted? (Delighted consumers refer business to you–less cost and more effort equals big pay-offs, right?) What can you build into your business plan to assure that you’re regularly delighting those you work with?
One of the agents in featured in many of my books, Rick Franz, now provides surveys weekly during the time he works with buyers and sellers. He wants clients to know he cares how they feel about the service, and that he’s dedicated to providing the best service they’ve ever had. Pretty competitive, yes?
Click here to get my after sale survey, one of the dozens of strategies ready to use in my business planning system.
Although there are dozens of areas to scope in your plan, just taking one hour out of your day now to assess these three areas–and plan adjustments–will assure you make more money this year–and create a better, more pleasant long-term career.
Be Strategic In Your Planning this Year!
Why not create a great plan, with the flexibility to change with the times? It’s all online now, and you can plan as you go. There’s a planning system for leadership, and, when you buy the leadership plan, you also get entry to the agents’ planning system. Take a look at Beyond the Basics of Business Planning.
Help Your Agents Create Great Missions for Purpose
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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).
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 everyone 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
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 online resource Beyond the Basics of Business Planning.
Grab My Online Business Planning Program and Make Planning Easy!
Thought you’d get it done but it’s still on your ‘to do’ list? I want to help!
Managers: Frustrated because you can’t get your agents to plan? Problems solved! I’ve put my exclusive planning pages online–plus webinars to help you get through that plan fast. Don’t wait another year for business success. See more here.
Managers: I’ll teach your agents how to plan, too! Included in your Manager’s Package!
Ready to order? Click below:
Beyond the Basics of Business planning for Managers (includes agents’ planning system)
First Step in Business Planning: Analyze Where You’ve Been*
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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, and systems--ready to use, too.
Agents, managers, and trainers: If you’ve been in the business any length of time, you know how much more challenging this business is than it used to be! Yet, most of the information we are still getting is about day-to-day selling and managing.
However, we’ve learned that we can’t just keep completing tasks and get ahead. We know that, after we’ve conquered sales and management basic skills, we still have a whole group of other skills to master. Those are called ‘business skills’, and they require as much dedication to master as do those sales and managing skills. One business skill is we need is analyzing your business.
Why Business Analysis?
If we don’t know where we’ve been, how can we decide on best strategies for the next year?
Here are the tools you’ll need in your business planning toolkit, whether a manager or an agent:*
- 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 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? Managers, does your tool ask you the numbers of agents you interviewed, and your conversion rate? 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.
*Grab All the Tools You’ll Need
All these analysis tools all in one place–my online business planning program, Beyond the Basics of Business Planning. Take a look here. There’s a program for agents and a program for leadership. The leaderhship program includes the agents’ program, so you can share that with your whole office.
Want to Go Into Management? Try ‘Perfect Practice’
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Want to go into management? Try ‘perfect practice’ to get the skills you need BEFORE you jump into the job.
This month, I’m taking what I’ve learned as a musical performer from age 4 to the world of leadership and sales. (And, read my musical quotes at the end of each blog. I hope you’ll get a chuckle!)
Are You Prepared–or Just Hopeful?
My son owns a real estate company, and I help him initially screen candidates for manager and assistant manager. He has created a very detailed job description for any of those applying. Yet, we see two problems:
- Most of the candidates do not meet the qualifications the job requires
- Even the borrderline candidates have done nothing to prepare themselves for the job
For several years, I was a regional director of now the largest real estate company in the world. One of my jobs was finding and screening leadership. Boy, did I learn a lot! So, with that experience, I’m writing some tips here for those of you who want to step from sales into management (and for those looking for leadership). I’m not going to address the first problem. For example, some candidates just haven’t had job experience of any type in real estate. Although I know there are exceptions, generally, if you haven’t successfully sold real estate, you won’t understand, emphasize and be able to ‘develop’ agents successfully.
The Principle to Prepare: Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
Of course, this principle comes from my world of music. I learned this from my college piano professor.
. That means hundreds or thousands of hours in the practice room, not in performing! (In other words, you have to practice your little heart out before they’ll let you loose in front of discerning people!) It’s drudgery and you wonder what you’re accomplishing. But, this perfect practice pays off when you have to perform in front of thousands and put to use your ‘muscle memory’. When you’re performing all those notes so quickly, you don’t have time to consciously figure out where your fingers should go (just like you do’t have time in an interview to figure out a good interview process!!!!)What This Means to Your Preparation for Management
Here’s a straightforward job description for a successful leadership-manager:
Find and develop people
Skills you need to effectively develop individuals:
- Lead generation/recruiting/presentation skills
- Interviewing/selection skills (both for agents and staff)
- Coaching skills (along with a proven coaching approach)
- Training skills
- Management: Ability to create and implement a business plan
- Ability to create and implement a training plan as part of your business plan
- Ability to create and implement a leadership council, for participative management/ develop that leadership
- Ability to create meaningful office and staff meetings
How Are You going to Develop Those Skills–Before You Get into Performance?
Go through the checklist/description above. Ask yourself: Have you devleoped those skills? If not, are you going to wait and ‘wing it’ on the job? As a pianist, I wouldn’t dare ever get in front of people to perform without having practiced!
Next blog: Suggestions in how to do that perfect practice in each of these areas.
Managers: Share this blog with those who are interested in going into leadership. In later blogs, I’ll share some analytical tools I’ve developed to help you help others develop their leadership skills.
Just for chuckles:
“I can’t listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.” — Woody Allen