As the year wraps up, entrepreneurs, CEO’s, small business owners, and even real estate agents are already thinking about next year. It is natural, and even trained, to begin thinking about how you can continue to grow your business in the next year. The feeling that we can “take over the world” comes over us, and we have a renewed energy. Goal planning, statistical analysis, and masterminding sessions are already beginning to take place in preparation for the next year. We all want to be innovative and creative in the way we expand and grow in the next year of our businesses. But what about the basics? You know, the foundational tasks and activities that got us where we are now? In an effort to innovate, do we move on from those things?
The answer to that is a resounding no. However, it is so easy to lose sight of the basics when we begin to plan and innovate our way into the next business year. In our onboarding and ongoing educational workshops here at our brokerage, we are building that foundation with new agents that come on board with us. Most of our agents come to us fresh out of real estate school, or having little experience. We have been fortunate to grow our sales team into a very solid group of new but smart agents. As agents grow and finally begin seeing success, too often they lose sight of the fundamentals that got them where they are while pursuing the next big thing that will innovate their businesses into the future. This is a huge cliff that I hope this article will help you avoid falling over.
As a new agent, hopefully your brokerage is providing you with the tools, resources and training you need to build your new business. Some of those tools might include a CRM, technology suite, virtual training drive, etc. Some of the resources you should be getting should include leads, contract forms, administrative staff, and coaches. Training might include in-person and virtual classes each week. Through all of that, you will learn the basics of how to contact a lead, qualify them, set appointments, meet for showings and listing appointments, convert, and close. This is the basic workflow of how an agent makes a living in this business. Forgetting this, or spending too much time outside of these activities can result in an unexpected loss of business as your pipeline atrophies.
While forgetting the basics of the real estate sales funnel can be costly, that’s not to say we don’t innovate, change, or add to our activities to some extent. What this means is while we possibly add to our list of activities to grow our business, we don’t take time away from the money generating activities that bring about converted leads. If you add in 3 extra hours of activities into your week that are not tied to contacting potential clients directly, qualifying, setting and meeting appointments, converting, and closing deals, then you need to create 3 more working hours in your week. Don’t remove time-blocks for calling your leads in order to have time to design a Facebook ad. Alternatively, wake up an hour earlier 3 days per week or hire a professional to handle your social media ads. This is just one of many examples of activities that you might be thinking about doing, but could take you away from the basics.
As we all look forward to growing our businesses next year, I encourage you all to remember the basics! The basics got you where you are, and will keep you closing deals. Be innovative, improve your time management, create better workflows, and continually level up at the same time.