Planning Your Way to Success | Creating an Effective Real Estate Business Plan

You’re likely familiar with the saying failing to plan is planning to fail. Although solopreneurs (real estate agents included) often operate much to loosey-goosey, the implementation of business systems is imperative. A formalized business plan is one tactic found to be essential to the success of most top agents. Written down and forcing a sense of accountability, here is how you can write an effective business plan.

Your History

It’s tough to know where you’re going if you don’t know where you came from. Although this step proves challenging for new agents (with no previous history available), conducting a review of your prior business will help in building new metrics moving forward. In crafting an effective business plan, write down your last year’s sales volume, your gross commission, the number of transactions, and the number of appointments set.

Your Goals

Having reviewed your history, use the information to set new (and more challenging goals). Similar to history, your goals should include the sales volume, gross commission, number of transactions, and appointments you hope to achieve in the upcoming year. In addition to business-related goals, you might consider including life goals too. Consider writing your aspirations for your physical, relational, financial and spiritual life.

The Reason

Increasing the likelihood of achieving any goal is having a clear idea of why it matters in the first place. Your first reaction might be ‘to earn more money’, but that’s usually not the real why. Digging a little deeper, your true ‘why’ might be to have more time for your family, to create financial freedom, to become more philanthropic, to help others, or to offer your children a financial education. As part of your business plan, write down why you want to achieve your goals and the consequence of your inaction.

Marketing Strategies

Developing clear marketing strategies is also worth writing down. Clarifying your marketing efforts like your social media strategies, your volunteer efforts, your print or radio advertising, will leave you better able to remain consistent while measuring the effectiveness of each method. Consider writing down the marketing efforts you’ll employ to achieve your goals in addition to the frequency you plan to execute each strategy.

Money

According to many experts, “what gets measured gets managed”. To increase revenue, you’ll have to measure your finances. Included here should be your gross income, your total expenses (including taxes), and your net (or take-home) income. 

Tom Ferry, the #1 coach in real estate training, provides endless tools designed to help you succeed. Get started today and sign up now for Tom’s free 28-page business plan template.