I've probably looked at 100,000+ different dashboards breaking down real estate teams/brokerages/agents business in the last decade.
And even though Change is about to take this industry by storm, there's one thing that won't change—winning principles. Fundamentals are still fundamentals. If you can do fundamentals at scale, you will win.
And there's a fundamental we've all been skipping over. We're too lose on it, we don't put enough definition on it, and we don't set proper expectations around it.
It's the ability to manage the Buyer Appointment Met > Buyer Signed Conversion Ratio.
👆 Is a great question to be asking right now.
And it's not one you should be asking me. It's one you should be asking yourself, based on your numbers and trends, which you hopefully have tracked throughout the years.
One things for sure, you should be figuring out how to drive that number up, and by a pretty significant margin. If you're getting 40% right now, I'd set the goal to figure out how to get 60%.
The buyer process varies quite a bit by state and by team/culture. A lot of teams, specifically in California and in the Northeast, flat out say "we don't sign Buyer Broker Agreements (BBAs) in our market. We just show homes". The Zillow Flex model actually forces this.
And we all know, that's about to change.
The most critical number for you to own in your business right now is the conversion ratio from Buyer Appointment Met > Buyer Agreement Signed.
And the fundamentals of owning and improving a number haven't changed, as much as the industry is changing.
A lot of teams/agents have loose definitions on what "Signed" means.
For a lot of us, historically, it's meant "they're my buyer. They're working with me". Whether or not that meant agreement-in-hand, or if homes were being shown, or what exactly it means.
So the first step is getting rid of loose definitions. Signed = Agreement signed. Period. You and all your team need to be clear on that.
Tracking this number should be simple.
When you take a listing, you probably have some kind of Intake Form. This sets all the key dates and processes for the listing going live on the MLS, and the marketing plans around it.
I'm recommending the same thing with buyers in this new market. Capture their information. Upload the agreements. And most importantly, start to get a feel for how much signed buyer pipeline you have built up. Build better plans around getting these buyers under contract, now that you have a formal, signed agreement with them.
Do this in a system that not only helps you manage that process, but most importantly, gives you the numbers you need to track it.
This means integrating your CRM (you need to know # of appointments set with buyers, vs. BBAs signed. Much easier if you connect your CRM to do this).
There's a lot of ways to do it. If you want to make it easy, grab a time with us and we'll show you how other teams are doing it.
One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite people, Tony Robbins.
You can grow this number in an extremely simple way....
Just put focus on it!
Talk about it in your 1-on-1s with your team.
Show it on leaderboards. Highlight success.
Train to it, and watch how that training does/does not affect the number.
I've seen teams improve numbers by 30%+ where the only thing they did was put up a leaderboard or start a contest focussing on the number they want to grow.
It might not be easy, but it is definitely simple. And with the way this industry is going to change, I can't think of a better number to be focussed on.