As we look forward to what it will take to thrive in 2025, Inman praises strong indie brokers. We spent the entire month of December looking at how independent brokers are adapting to the post-commission payments landscape, and what new tools and platforms are emerging to give indies a competitive advantage. Let’s dig into it.
And perhaps what’s more to avoid than a root canal or a business plan? In corporate parlance, “eating the frog” is when you prioritize the difficult things and end up doing the things you don’t want to do first.
The phrase “eat a frog” has been variously attributed to French writers Nicolas Chamfort and Mark Twain, with Mark Twain having several different versions.
“If eating frogs is your job, it’s best to eat them first thing in the morning.” “If you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you that day.”
It then became a productivity book by Brian Tracy that focuses on organization, productivity, and proactively overcoming challenges.
Whatever the origin of this word, most successful entrepreneurs eat the frog faster and start moving in a positive direction faster than businessmen who drag their feet, taking the most difficult tasks for last.
However, business planning doesn’t have to be all that tedious or scary if you start planning with all the necessary information at your fingertips. As real estate professionals, we often get caught up in the details of transactions, prioritize our “to-do” lists, and neglect to properly track our business as the year progresses.
To grow your business, it’s not enough to count deals and sales and plan for “more” next year. You have to start by knowing where you have been.
5 questions to ask when creating a business plan
To make your business plan more meaningful, you need answers to the following questions:
1. What are your sources of leads? How many leads do you get from each source? How many deals do you close from each source? In other words, which lead sources are worth your time and effort? Which one?
2. What did you spend on fees, dues, signage, advertising, mail, events, technology, services, supplies, education, vehicles, etc.? These items are directly related to the cost of maintaining your business .
3. On an individual level, how much did you spend on things like mortgage, utilities, food, entertainment, childcare, medical care, debt payments, education, and charitable donations?In other words, maintaining your current lifestyle? How much money do I need?
4. What do you actually want to do with your life over the next 12 months (besides selling a lot of real estate)? Do you want to take a long vacation or luxury vacation? Pay off your car? Would you like to buy your own investment property? How much does your life goal cost?
5. Next, you need to know:
Average sales price Number of buy-side deals closed in the last 12 months Number of sell-side deals closed in the last 12 months Average revenue per deal Total number of appointments and their multiples Scheduled sales closed
Evaluate KPIs
Now use that information to plan for the next 12 months. Once you know how much money you need and how much you want to make, divide those numbers by your average revenue per trade. That way you know the total number of sales you need.
Check the success rate of each lead source and decide which lead sources are worth your attention and which are costing you more money than they provide. Continually adding lead sources isn’t always the best strategy. Instead, eliminate those that aren’t worth investing your time or money in, allowing you to focus on sources that are converting at a higher rate.
What’s the ratio between buyers and sellers? If you have a buyer, you’ll probably sell one house. Then they probably won’t need you for another 10 years. I always thought that if I could post one property, I would be able to sell the house with almost 100 % probability, but at the same time, I was ready to be prepared by marketing of my property. I’ve been thinking that I might be able to get two or three capable buyers. List up.
In other words, one listing equals three sales. Focus on the type of business that is most likely to generate the number of deals you want.
Calculate success rate
Finally, knowing how many appointments you book and how many of those appointments close will tell you your success rate in encouraging people to do business with you.
Do half of the people you meet say yes to doing business with you? If so, you need to double the number of clients you need to serve to reach your closing goals. You will need to set up an appointment.
If your frog is too big to eat in 2025 because you aren’t tracking your business in these ways, the first thing you need to do is develop a better system for tracking your annual activity. That could be the case. success, failure, and finances.
This is a great place to start your business plan. And next year, the frog will become smaller and easier to swallow.
Claudia Stallings is COO of Wallace Real Estate in East Tennessee. Connect with her on Facebook or Instagram.
