What’s the Plan, Man?
In my early years as a real estate agent, I never had a plan. Or if I had a plan, it did not rise much past the level of “make more money than last year” or “remember to take people out to lunch after the closing.” Over the years I have come to understand just how important planning can be. It requires you to visualize your goals. It forces you to think in an analytical and (hopefully) even-handed way about your time management skills. It necessitates an analysis of your current business practices to determine if they will be effective in helping you attain those goals. In short, a business plan provides both a blueprint and a measuring stick.
My early business plans tended to start at the end and then work backwards toward the beginning. I have noticed the same propensity in many agents and other professionals with whom I work. Since we all tend to instinctively react against pushing outside the comfort zone, we often start by looking at how we have always done things. That then all too easily becomes the ground on which we build our plan. But an effective plan actually starts with what we hope to achieve, aspirationally but realistically. In the real estate brokerage business that can be a certain number of deals, it can be greater penetration in a certain building or neighborhood, it can be more deals at a higher price level. But whatever it is, it needs to be both attainable and a stretch. It needs to compel us to push outside our habitual boundaries.
Great salesmen aren’t sitting waiting for the phone to ring. Yet that is what all too many real estate agents and other sales professionals do. As I have written before, no part of our business is more important than creating a pipeline. Each of us does this differently, but every successful salesperson is at it constantly. Our annual business plans have to include multiple strategies for filling the pipeline. How are we staying in touch with old clients and friends with information about the marketplace? Are we effectively deploying social media to expand our reach (or for that matter, are we deploying social media at all)? What is the professional personality we have created, and how do we best market that curated self through the Internet? Are we active in local organizations which both bring us satisfaction and enable us to expand our sphere of influence? And in all these situations, what tools are we using to reinforce our credibility and demonstrate the value we add for the consumer?
Most of us were raised to believe that putting ourselves forward is bad manners. Selling yourself is pushy, speaking of your own success is conceited, urging people to hire you seems desperate. But in the sale of luxury real estate, the first product any good agent sells IS herself: her skills, her integrity, her understanding of the buyer or seller’s needs. So we each have to come to terms with self-promotion and determine how we can do it in a way which is most congruent with our personal style. In my family, your name was meant to appear in the newspaper a maximum of three times: birth, marriage, and death. Yet I found, long before I became an executive, that I could cultivate relationships with reporters if I had something impactful and interesting to say. And I began writing about the market quite early in my career. As I made deals, I asked satisfied clients to write reference letters for me. So my solution, at least in part, was to let newspaper articles, letters of recommendation, and my own market reports establish my bona fides, while still deploying a number of other avenues to expand my sphere of influence.
In the end the most significant attributes of any business plan are detail and consistency. The plan must be specific enough to create a blueprint for how we spend our business time in order to achieve the specific goals we have set for ourselves. And we have to keep at it. Almost no strategy bears fruit immediately. The plan may require revision, but the consistency with which we pursue it determines its success. I love to sell, but it’s hard work and not for everyone. But if it fits for you, here’s my advice: make a plan!