Carla Cross, CRB, MA International Speaker

Brokers: if you don’t have time, here are four quick steps to a great business plan. Having helped thousands of managers and owners create plans, I’ve found an easy method to make that plan in no time. Better yet, I promise that plan will be a blueprint that will work hard for you.

  Here are the first two steps. I’ll give you the other two steps in a later blog (so you have time to work on these first two steps).

 1.      Gather and analyze the important numbers. Gather last year’s numbers so you can analyze them quickly. (Best to have your secretary/assistant do this for you). These numbers should include the results that most greatly impact on your profitability: (You may have some other favorites. Feel free to analyze them):

                  a.      Number of recruits

b.      Net number of agents (how good were your recruiting and retention efforts?)

c.      Number of listings taken

d.      Number of listings sold

e.      Ratio of listings taken to listings sold

f.        Number of sales

g.      Balance/ratio of number of sales to listings sold

h.      Expenses (what’s higher than your budget for the year? What’s out of balance with your income and profitability? What can you change?)

Analyzing these numbers give you great big hints as to what you should do as an action plan next year. In fact, you’ll find it difficult not to think ahead to your action plan! (That’s a good thing!).

             Your recruiting plan for next year

            Your retention plan for next year

            Your training plan for listings next year

Your coaching plan for each agent (balance of listings sold and sales?) (productivity)

Just with that first step, you almost have the action part of your business plan done! I call this the ‘spring ahead’ approach. You analyze what happened, and immediately start writing your next year’s action plan.

2.      Impact. What did you do differently last year that positively impacted your results? What did you differently that negatively impacted your results?

Answering these impact questions gives you great hints as to the action steps you should take next year. This really helps you when you go to all those ‘guru’ seminars that tell you what to do and when to do it. Instead of trying everything, now you can put those suggestions into context for what you want to accomplish.

For a comprehensive business planning system, with fill-in forms for each part of your plan, see The Business Planning System for the Owner, Manager, and Team Builder at www.carlacross.com.

P. S. Use this same approach with your agents. Provide them a format and template to analyze their last year’s business. That gives them the answers to the next year’s action plan (that spring ahead approach I mentioned).

(Forms for analyzing and planning available for agents, too. See The Business Planning System for the Real Estate Professional.

Carla Cross, CRB, MA, specializes in business planning workshops and systems for real estate professionals. Her book on real estate business planning is the only internationally published book for real estate professionals. She is the author of business planning courses for major franchises, and for the Council of Real Estate Brokerage Managers (CRB). Her business planning resources have been quality tested and recommended by both CRS and CRB.