PLANNING FOR PROFIT

Continuing with our series on 'Attributes of a Successful Real Estate Agent", one of the most important attributes of successful real estate agents is that they are planners.

Let’s start off with a discussion on planning for profit.

I firmly believe that planning is the most important first step to operating a successful real estate business. How do you know where to go unless you have a roadmap of sorts to follow? What is your vision? What does your business look like? What are your goals? If you don’t have the answers to those questions, then you are just haphazardly winging it and hoping for the best.

As my friend, Ben Franklin says, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

We all want to be great salespeople, but we also should want to be great business people. It all starts with having a plan.
If you’re not sold on the idea of business planning, let me show you some compelling reasons why having a written plan in place is so important to the success of your business.

1. Having a plan is the first step to creating a system-driven business. What does that mean? It means that your business can run without you being there. Your staff/team can run your business essentially without you because you have a step-by-step plan in place for them to follow. You can be sick or on vacation and know that your business is still going strong and carrying on just fine without you.
   
   
2. Part of the planning process is creating a budget to follow which will allow for rainy days and a month or two without any closings coming in. This will definitely take a lot of the stress out of our lives,m don’t you agree? Money issues are the single most prevalent stressors of the average individual and cause a lot of physical and psychological problems if not managed properly. As entrepreneurs, we are not guaranteed a regular weekly/monthly paycheque so we have to plan our expenses accordingly.
   
   
3. Having a long term plan will assure you progressive growth in your business and that is something exciting to look forward to; and 
   
   
4. Having predictable value will improve your chances of one day selling your business and provide the basis of your exit strategy – do you even have an exit strategy? 

At the end of the day, the sense of control and peace of mind that is produced by having a well-thought-out written plan is a great state of mind to have. That alone is worth its weight in gold.

Look out for our next post where we delve into what your plan should include.