10 Habits of Top Agents - A Series

#1 Have a Business Plan.   

 I once read a book called “The E-Myth” by Hans Gerber (highly recommended) which explained why so many small businesses fail.   The idea is that we tend to get caught up in the secondary tasks, and pulled in too many directions by the things that get thrown at us every day . We run out of the time that we need for the important things…the income producing things. The reason we don’t have the time is that  we don’t have a vision of where we want our business to be and a focused, prioritized plan to get us there. We need to regularly take a step back from our business to work ON it rather than IN it - Planning.  We need to set up systems for the business supporting activities, or delegate / farm out those that we don’t necessarily need to do ourselves.

Gerber suggests that we should have systems in place that make our business run so smoothly that we could franchise it – so that somebody else could step in and run it without missing a beat. Think about that for a minute. How much more time would we have for the money making activities if we had systems set up that looked after the secondary tasks?

Successful realtors know what they want to achieve and they have a clear vision of how to attain it. They set annual goals and plan their year accordingly….prospecting, marketing, mailings, sales goals, listing goals. They plan their months, their weeks, their days.  They review their goals and adjust if necessary. If they’re not meeting their objectives, they figure out what has to change to do so.

Have you got a clear vision of your business a year from now?

“ We wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.”
Philip Knight -