There are so many bad business planning models for Agents being promoted it actually makes me sad.  One of my clients spent an hour on a tele-seminar going through an elaborate planning exercise.  She faxed me the nine pages of work.  By pure bulk, that’s impressive.  Unfortunately there is equal bunk.  The resulting conclusion was that she needs to prospect 25 hours a week to reach her goal.  That’s ridiculous.  The assumptions and conclusions of the plan are juvenile.  What is 25 hours of prospecting anyway?  Is it 25 hours of cold calls?  Well if that generated five appointments that lead to sales each week, wouldn’t it be a lot smarter to make those appointments a lot more efficiently than spending 25 hours beating yourself and other people up on the phone?  Is that 25 hours made of Expireds and FSBO?  Sorry, in most markets you’d run out of Expireds and for sale by owners after just a few weeks.

Another one of my clients took another of these amateur business planning sessions and concluded that he would need 118 listing appointments to reach his goal.  This is an Agent in his third year in business.  He is in an average $400,000 priced market.  Just 14 sales to buyers and sellers will accomplish his goal.  The plan suggests that he is going to make all of his sales with listings sold, none with buyers, and he is only going to have 20% of his listings sell.  Both of these ideas are unrealistic, even foolish.  Most Agents have about a 50/50 split between listings sold and sales.  That makes sense for any Agent’s business.  And any decent Agent will have 70% of his or her listings sell, maybe as low as 50% in a softer market.  This Agent doesn’t need 118 listing appointments.  He needs 20 to 24, even if he has mediocre listing skills he’ll only need 30 to 36.  And if the latter is true by the time we’re done working with him he’ll only need the smaller number because we’ll identify the listing weakness and improve those skills. 

It’s not sad so much as angry, that there are these people selling coaching, training, systems, and products that are so far off the mark that Agents must be confused, discouraged or both. 

I’ve made the following challenge a hundred times and I’ll make it again.  Examine our work, listen to our tele-seminars, go through our business analysis and tell me where you find a flaw.  You probably won’t and if you do discover something we could be doing better I promise you we will quickly improve our work to incorporate it. 

Choose your mentors carefully.  Trust your judgment.  If you are being told something that doesn’t ring true for you or doesn’t make sense.  Seek confirmation.  Call or e-mail us.  One of my coaches or I will share our views and you can decide the best decision. 

We are committed to Agent’s success and through that success raising the standard of service to the public which results in improving the professionalism of Real Estate Sales and raises the perception the public has of us.  Choose the high road in your career, in the people you learn from as well as the choices you make. 

Rich Levin