Goal Setting – How do you set your goals?
One of the most important things you can do to grow your business each year is to set your goals. Most people don’t have any idea how to really set goals. The following are common problems when Agents set goals:
Goal Setting Mistakes
- Too many goals to accomplish – By setting to many goals, it becomes a burden versus a benefit. The idea of setting goals is to establish a list of ultimate goals and then pick the top 4 or 5 to accomplish this year. I will take you through an exercise shortly that will help you to determine your future goals.
- No growth goals – These are goals that set no real challenge for you and therefore are too easy to accomplish. The problem with this is that you are setting your standards to low. You will only accomplish the standards that you set. For instance, if you have a goal of only 10 homes to sell, then there is a good chance you will only sell 10 homes. However, if you made the goal 30 homes, you have a high chance of hitting this goal as long as you have a plan of action.
- No Path to Achieve – Writing down a bunch of goals is nice, but if you have no plan of action to accomplish those goals then you are just writing words that really have no meaning. Once we finish the exercise defining your goals, it’s up to you to determine the plan you will use. For instance, you might figure that if you sell 1 listing per month that will accomplish 12 of your sales. If your goal was 25, then you need to get another 13 from buyers. How are you going to attract 13 buyers? Seminars? Referrals? You must have a plan of action if you plan on succeeding.
- Too lofty goals – As much as it’s important to give yourself goals that are setting your standards high, you don’t want to be counter productive by setting your goals at levels that are impossible to achieve this year. You might have those for future years to come, but if you normally sell 15 homes a year and now have a goal of 100 homes, unless something miraculous happens, that’s highly unlikely. By setting your goals out of your reach, you won’t enjoy the positive effect of obtaining your goals.
These are the main reasons Agents make mistakes when setting their goals. The biggest mistake is not having a clear path to achieve their goals. Of course some Agents have a clear path but get side tracked along the way and do not achieve their goals. The following exercise is a strong program to decide your goals for this coming year.
Setting your goals for this year and years to come!
Once you finish this goal setting exercise you will realize how easy it is to put yourself on the right path. If you are the type of Agent that never really accomplishes your goals, or worse don’t even set goals each year, then this is a must. I can’t be in front of you to help you with determining your goals. This is something that you need to take seriously and spend a half hour setting your goals and then however long it takes to determine the paths to these goals. You can use the Business Planning section of our site to help you in building your plan. Once you have accomplished this project, feel free to forward it to our staff so we can give you our feedback if you desire.
Step 1 – Get yourself into a positive state of mind. Everyone has their own way of getting psyched up. The more positive state you can get in, the easier this exercise will be.
Step 2 – Be in an area where you can completely concentrate for at least a half hour without any distractions or interruptions.
Step 3 – Make sure you have a pen and paper with you.
Now you are ready to get rolling!
Step 4 – For the next 15-20 minutes I want you to write down every possible goal you can think of both personally and professionally. The key to this exercise is to keep your mind open and flowing. When your mind goes blank after writing a couple of things, push yourself to write more. I usually come up with two full pages of items when I do this exercise.
While you are doing this, I want you to think about things such as how many sales are you going to achieve this year, how many listings will you have, family vacations, owning your own business, building a team, buying that new BMW, where do you see yourself in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years. These are just a few examples of the types of goals you are to write down. The more items you write, the easier this becomes. Think back to when you got into this business and what you were hoping to attain. What type of home do you want to live in, where do you want to have a retirement home, do you have children to send to college? I can go on and on with this, but I want you to think of your own goals.
These goals can be general but also you need goals that are specific. The more specific you make these goals; the easier it will be to write a plan of action once we have gone through this program.
Now go ahead and write for the next 15 to 20 minutes. Don’t sit there and not write anything down. This is your chance to list all your life long goals both short and long term.
Step 5 – So hopefully you have written a couple of pages of your future goals. Now the fun begins. What I would like you to do now is to number each goal with a 1, 3, 5 or 10 based on when you want to accomplish these goals. For instance, if you want to accomplish 15 listings this year, that would be a 1. If you want to be able to buy a BMW 745 (nice car!) within 3 years that would be a 3. If your goal is to buy a new home on the lake or river in 5 years you then write a 5 next to that goal. I think you get the idea.
Step 6 – The final step of our goal setting process is to look at your numbers and pick the most important 4 or 5 goals you wrote to accomplish this year. These will become your primary goals for the coming year. This doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t be able to work on your goals if you wish, but you will put your full efforts into accomplishing your new primary goals.
This goal setting process is used by some of the most successful business people in the world. It allows you to see your future and write down everything you want to accomplish. Success isn’t all about business items, it’s about life. Without your personal goals intertwined with your professional goals, you won’t achieve balance in your life.
Step 7 – Your Plan of Action – You can write all the goals you want on paper but if you don’t have a plan of action to accomplish these plans, you are going to have difficulty fulfilling your plan. Once you have all your primary goals determined, go to: http://www.ehomesrealtynetwork.org/index.cfm/Business_Planning for help on developing your business plan.
Good luck!