33 Ways to Evaluate the Health of Your Sales Career

Real Estate professionals - have you ever heard the expression “a shifting market is a skills-based market”? Or the idea that if you want to match your numbers from last year then you’re going to have to double down on your lead generation this year? Assuming that you’d like to do as well, or even better, than you did last year, which do you plan to tackle - growing your skill set or upping your lead generation efforts?

Following my recent attendance at a Keller Williams conference, called “Family Reunion,” I decided to fully revamp my entire listing marketing plan and resource guide and level up the talking points I use during listing conversations. Since I mostly work with repeat and referral Clients, I’ll admit I’ve become a little lax in my process for securing the listing. This year, competition for listings will be more fierce and I cannot afford to take for granted this year what I took for granted last year.

Since both tasks require an investment of time, and we have the same amount of time this year as we did last year, the questions we must ask ourselves are:

1. How do I know what is the most effective skill or process I should build up or work on? 
2. How do I know what to stop doing so that I can focus on doing more of the right activities? 

As an example, I spoke to an Agent the other week who expressed interest in getting more business from a new lead source this year as a way to shore up her business.

If you were at Family Reunion, you would’ve heard the following advice from Gary Keller: now is not the time to learn how to convert a new lead source. His advice to us was to narrow and lean into our top 4 lead sources and do more with each. Let’s assume he is correct and explore the possibility that there is an underlying skill the Agent could improve to get more out of her current business rather than going after a whole new audience. This would save the Agent time since building a new skill or doing more with the people she already knows would likely take less time rather than replicating a lead generation process for a whole new group of people. 

In order to help the Agent determine what underlying skill or lead-generation activities she could work on, I would ask the following questions:

1. How many appointments did you go on last year and how many did you convert?: If she went on 36 listing appointments and only converted 1 in 3, it would be more helpful for her to focus on learning how to convert more of those appointments into signed listings since she is clearly skilled to obtain the appointment. The problem lies not in getting those appointments, but in having Sellers decide to hire her to represent them in the sale of their home. 
2. Were your appointments with motivated Sellers? If, for example, 6 of the 36 Sellers never listed their home, perhaps they were not actually motivated. If the Agent had better pre-qualified them, she would have learned this before going on the appointment and potentially wasting 18+ hours of preparing, going, and following up on those non-viable leads.
3. How long have you been in the business? Are you getting the repeat and referral business you would expect from your tenure?: If she had been in the business for a few years (or even if she was a newer Agent building her business from scratch), I would want to know if she had set in place the tools for robust and value-providing touch campaigns, which include mail, email, social, see, and give, to work in the background while she proactively called them on a regular basis to build the relationship. If her closest connections haven't heard from her in a while, know that she is still in business, and that she would LOVE to work with them again or with their referrals, then she has A LOT of opportunity to build out those campaigns and be more purposeful in talking to and seeing the people that already know her, trust her, like her, have used her, or would refer her to their family and friends for all their real estate needs.

Even if going after a whole new audience is right for this Agent’s business, if these touch campaigns are not in place or her skills are subpar, that Agent is going to work twice as long & hard as she would if she did what Abraham Lincoln did - sharpen his saw for 45 minutes and chop down the tree in 15 minutes, rather take the whole hour to chop the tree down with a dull blade. You see, after that first hour of sharpening the saw, she could then use that sharpened saw and keep chopping down trees. If she didn’t sharpen the saw first, she would have the same year (or worse, depending on the market) over and over again rather than growing her business year after year. Sharpening the saw is required periodically but is much less time-consuming than starting a new lead generation campaign from scratch.

No doubt as a busy REALTOR®, you are relieved that the daunting task of implementing a whole new lead generation plan for a whole new source of clients may be unnecessary. Instead, consider what skills you have that could be leveled up to meet the current market and locating the gaps in your current lead generation. 

If you don’t know where to start, you're in luck! I developed a tool so that you could take a more comprehensive bird’s eye view of your businesses. This tool will help you get the most bang for your buck, whether it be by doubling down on lead generation, building a skill, scaling a process, or otherwise. When we pick a strategy based on evidence, it will be much easier to stick to the plan and trust that, if crafted properly (with feedback from reliable mentors, coaches, and leaders), it will help.

The tool is called the “33 Ways to Evaluate the Health of Your Sales Career” - or, put another way - it highlights 33 areas in your business that, if improved, can boost your sales. You can access it here. After making yourself a copy you can edit, fill it out on your own or if you’d like to join us on Zoom, I am conducting a workshop on Thursday, April 13 at 5 PM where I will walk you through how to use this worksheet to develop a plan customized for your business. The link to sign up is here. 

For those wanting continued support and can dedicate 1 hour to our weekly Zoom for 8 weeks and a few hours a week to do their lessons & homework at home, on their own time, join us for the Be the CEO Boot Camp. We start Monday, May 1st! You can join either the 1 PM Zoom or the 5 PM Zoom, whichever fits your schedule better. 

If you need more support, join us for FREE in the Be the CEO Boot Camp where you’ll learn how to apply the 4 Business Models of Gary Keller’s Millionaire Real Estate Agent book to your business, identify which skills or lead generation activities will shore up your business, and how to master your calendar so you can get it all done! Sign up here: Be the CEO Boot Camp.

Whatever you choose, commit to yourself that you will meet the moment of this market so you can thrive in 2023, not just survive.

Follow us on Instagram for motivational tips every Wednesday and check out our website, AgentUniversitybyStacy.com to see all of our course offerings.