The most successful people spend time thinking, evaluating, and re-evaluating their progress. In order to be successful, you will need to spend a minimum of half an hour planning and evaluating daily. Good agents should evaluate where their business is coming from and the trends in their market. Why not know the trends in the market so your labor will be fruitful? Why not know where you business comes from exactly, so you can put your labor there?

Far too often I see the market adjusting and agents not adjusting with it. If the high end is not selling, why list lots of homes in the high end? Always move the bulk of your listings to where the market is most active. This adjustment will provide you an opportunity to move the product quickly and effectively with little time, money, and energy invested. You want to have inventory in all price ranges and all areas you work, but you want the bulk of it in the hot selling pocket. Having inventory in all price ranges enables you to track the market better and react quickly to changes, but you do not want too many listings in a market segment that is not moving.

If you wish to create clarity in your business of real estate sales, you need to determine your area of competitive advantage or expertise. Is it buyers or sellers? Is it expireds, FSBO’s, investment property, or new construction? What is your area of excellence? What is your competitive advantage? If you do not have one, I would suggest you work on one or two areas in real estate that you enjoy in order to create an area of excellence. You need an area or two that you do better than most of your competitors. You need to develop something that will differentiate you from the competition.

Once you have decided what your area of excellence is, you need to determine the one or two skills that will translate into success in that area of excellence. As an example, in my career I worked expireds very heavily. I did 60% to 70% of my business from expireds. The areas or disciplines I needed for success in expireds were a strong command of scripts and dialogues (sales skills) and solid evaluating and qualifying skills. These sales skills enabled me to set a few appointments daily with people who needed my services. The evaluating and qualifying allowed me to cancel the unmotivated, overpriced, and overly confrontational people before I invested the time to do a presentation with them. What are the skills you need in your area of excellence to achieve massive success in real estate? Once you identify these skills, then dedicate yourself daily to improve the skills in those areas. Set specific goals to improve these disciplines or skills.

Ultimately success comes from proper planning. You need to plan for success daily. You must reserve a half-hour to one hour daily for planning. When you are in your half-hour to one hour daily planning block evaluating your skills, you need to determine where you can improve? Evaluate your staff, if you have them. What are the skills they need for you to increase your business by 20%? Sometimes the difference in how you handle and coach our staff can increase our business dramatically. Clearly define their roles so you and your staff know how they are going to help you achieve success. Too often they are thrown into the firestorm without clear direction and the guidance to improve and prosper.

One of the most crucial functions of the planning time is future forecasting, which is spending time viewing the future of your life and your business. In my initial coaching sessions with clients we spend a lot of time looking down the road three to five years. Most of my clients had never looked further than this year, if at all, prior to working with Real Estate Champions. It is hard to achieve clarity when you first view things on a daily, weekly, or even yearly basis. You have to view long term then work backwards. You must work to craft the vision for your life and your business.

It is vital to decide what your business or life will look like in the future. If you do not make that decision, you are just making it up as you go along. Success does not follow people who make it up as they go. Success looks at your long term plan. Success says that looks good, you have thought this decision out well. I will follow you. Success is not acquired, it is attracted. The only people who attract success have thought it out well. Have you ever noticed that some people make success look so easy? These people attract it at every turn. The truth is they have worked diligently at planning and attracting success. You did not see them up late thinking, planning, then writing out their plan of success. You only watched them collect the fruits of their labor.

The long-term plan will act as a target or a magnet. You will be drawn to it. Creating the plan is not enough. You need to clarify it and work backwards to the present day. You need to create the steps for you to get from where you are today to where you want to be in the future.