I remember the day that I decided to take on the challenge of building my wife’s real estate business with her.
Although I had a strong sales background building businesses across multiple industries, we knew that this would be a different world with new challenges. In order for me to quickly learn the business and develop the skills of a powerful agent without experiencing the struggles of other newbies, we decided to work with a personal coach
In no time, while working with her and with my coach, it became obvious to me that nearly all of the highest producing agents had a coach and/or tracked their daily activities. They all used a similar approach.
I quickly realized why real estate success is not spread equally. The top producers, the 20% who take this approach, are dominating the game. I'm no statistician, but it certainly seems like they're bringing in 80% (or more) of the revenue, too.
The Top Producer's Approach Isn't Complicated
Industry leaders and coaches quoted to me that ‘just by tracking your numbers, you will increase your income by over 25%.”
It was too simple to not give it a shot.
I thought they might have been referring to some "secret numbers" or ratios, but it really was as simple as they told me.
Track your contacts, appointments, clients under contract, etc. and you'll grow your business.
It's an accountability approach. Every output could be broken down to a required input. Want to sell two homes this month? Based on your historical performance, that should take you about 400 contacts. This is the kind of approach my coaches took with me. As long as I time blocked and did what was required, I would hit my goals.
So, when broken down, the approach of top producing agents take to managing their business is not that complicated. It's just complete.
- Set purposeful goals
- Back into the activities required to achieve those goals, based on past (or expected) performance.
- Carefully measure those activities.
Did It Actually Work?
What better way to test the approach than on my wife’s team and on myself? We got started right away.
My coach knew my income goal and helped hold me accountable for the activities required to reach it.
Based on an average sales price of $280,000 with agents in my area, we put an action plan in place for me to sell 40 homes, which would be over $11,000,000 in volume. In order for me to close those 40 homes, I needed a specific number of clients under contract. That required a specific number of clients with a signed deal, and subsequently an amount of buying/listing appointments and contacts (dials) to set those.
Tracking all my numbers also helped my coach improve my conversion ratios. For example, if I was making a lot of calls without a lot of appointments to show for it, he could help me improve.
It sounds so simple. However, the truth is, those who block time and commit to these activities are the ones who become top producers and hit their goals.
This is the approach of agents who are making over $200,000 each year.
I was able to achieve similar results just by mimicking their process. In my first year of business, I sold over $11M in volume. I’m confident that if I had set higher goals and held myself to an even higher standard of activities, I would have performed at an even higher level.
Anyone Can Do This
I realized that if I could achieve such incredible results with relatively little real estate experience, anyone who tracked their numbers and focussed on the process could do the same. We felt as if we had discovered the secret to real estate success - the secret of those industry leaders who sell so much more than the rest.
My wife simultaneously set up a tracking mechanism in place for the rest of her sales agents and saw similar results. Their incomes also increased dramatically. The new system created quite the buzz around the office. Goals that once seemed unattainable were now being met. We moved our focus from the goal to the process, and in trusting the process we achieved the goals we desired.
The system was great. It revolutionized our team. We doubled our sales in just one year!
There was, however, one problem: spreadsheets, paper, and whiteboards. They created a messy and inefficient tracking process. In all cases, I saw agents entering their numbers on a Sunday night to be ready for Monday morning. It was clear that although this had an impact on their business, the numbers were likely far from accurate because of the cumbersome methods being used to input them. It was still effective, but there was a lot of improvement to be done.
And that's that's how I ended up here, building a better (and the industries first) complete solution.
