There are 11 weeks between now and Thanksgiving in the U.S.
Historically, business slows down a little bit during the holiday season. And I’m not saying there’s no business to be done in December. In fact, I would argue it’s one of the best months of the year to set up your pipeline. But let’s focus on right now.
Many agents are getting back into the regular schedule of not taking a three or four-day weekend every week. So this time of year, to me, is an obvious time to recommit to your business.
And I’m a big believer in 90-day time blocks where every 90 days you should be testing, measuring and committing to an activity for the entire 90 days. So let’s look at this next 11-week stretch here.
To gain a fall frenzy of activity, you need to have a solid plan. Sit down and write out your business plan for the next 90 days following these steps:
How many days are you going to be working?
What days are you working and is it in your calendar? Because if it’s not in your calendar, it doesn’t exist. Block these days out. Know what days you’re going to be making lead generation calls, follow-up calls, prospecting calls, what days you’re taking appointments, what days you’re working and what days you’re not working. Put everything on your calendar.
So determine how many days you’re going to work and how many days you’re not going to work. I’d argue you want to be working five days a week minimum, maybe five and a half to six up until that holiday season.
If you have things you need to take off for—weddings, family events, whatever it is—time block it and put it in your calendar so when you’re on, you’re on, and when you’re off, you’re off.
What are your personal minimum standards?
What is the minimum acceptable activity you are going to tolerate a day? And that’s got to be on a daily basis and then a weekly basis because some days you might have to adjust a little bit. You might have longer conversations so your call count is down or vice versa. So we want to look at daily and weekly—what is your minimum acceptable number?
For example, the minimum acceptable number is 100 phone calls made a day. The minimum acceptable number is a two-hour time block where I’m actually making phone calls and lead generating, and having no less than 15 conversations a day.
These are things you can control. You don’t want a business plan. You can’t business plan sales, you can business plan income-producing activities.
My minimum acceptable standard is 500 phone calls a week with a goal of setting a minimum of one listing appointment per day. That’s me. You might be different, but you get the idea. It’s got to be specific and measurable, time-based, relevant and achievable (the SMART goal acronym).
What is your inbound lead plan?
Along with an inbound lead plan, what are your follow up activities? A lot of us get inbound leads. But you’ve got to time-block the type of lead you’re working on. If you go from calling a for sale by owner to a past client to an internet lead to an expired listing, you’re going to be all over the place. Your head’s going to be spinning.
Instead, time blocking your calls. Here’s an example:
- 50 calls to expired listings
- 50 follow up calls
- 10 sphere calls
Whatever your numbers are, block those calls out together and determine what your inbound lead generation and follow-up plan is. We know all the money’s in the follow up and most agents quit following up after two or three attempts. The conversion happens at six plus. So how are you time-blocking inbound lead flow and follow up?
What are your listing generation activities?
Sixty-eight percent of sellers list based on proximity, meaning from a referral or from an agent they worked with. And if you’re not spending time intentionally looking for listings every week, you’re never going to get them.
What you focus on expands. This has got to be part of your plan. It’s a theory that I’ve lived and worked, and it’s documented to get results.
So, what are your listing generation activities? Is it around conversations? Whatever it is, make sure it’s specific, measurable, time-based, achievable and relevant.
What is your sphere business generation plan?
Lastly, what is your sphere business generation plan? How many people are you going to talk to that you already know? These could be people you sold a house to, friends, family members, your dog walker, people at your previous job, your kid’s little league team, your kid’s soccer team, dance class—I don’t care.
How many conversations are you having about real estate with those people? I’m clear that a minimum of five a day is what everyone should be targeting. Personally, I target 10. I want to have 10 sphere conversations a day.
Now, let’s talk about what a sphere conversation entails. When you call a past client and wish them a happy birthday or a happy five-year anniversary on their home purchase, that to me is as good as a conversation, because you’re reaching out to those people with a personalized attempt. So making those calls is going to be productive. That to me is a conversation. That’s the one area where you don’t have to talk to them to count it as a conversation, and based on my experience selling real estate over the past two-plus decades.
What are your goals and target numbers?
You have your calendar set, and you have your minimum acceptable numbers. You also have three different lead pillars: you’re working inbound leads, listing lead generation and working your sphere.
You have this three-lead pillar system. You’re going to do a lot of business if you commit to every one of these things. You just have to follow through and do it.
Now you need to determine your end goal and target numbers:
- How many homes do you want to sell?
- How many appointments do you want to set to make that happen?
- How many appointments do you want to go on to make that happen?
Hold Yourself Accountable
This is a foolproof, bulletproof business plan to have a frenzy of business in the fall with predictable results, based on data with three lead pillars that will generate activity for you.
You have your target numbers, and you wrote it all down. The next step is to tell people about it. Talk to your accountability partner, your mastermind group, team members, team lead, sales manager, whoever. Tell people about the plan. Post it up in a visual format, and this is going to supercharge your business when a lot of agents are already quitting and talking about next year.
This is an opportunity. It’s going to be a challenging market. We know what’s going on with rates and everything else happening with inventory. It doesn’t matter. When you invest in your business like this, you’re going to sell houses.
