We’re at the midpoint of the year. Are you on track to reach your yearly goals? 

The first half of the year is over. And while most are out vacationing and celebrating, I look at this time of year as something a little different. 

It’s a time of year to evaluate how the last six months went. Typically, you want to see 60% of your business pending and sold by the time you hit June 30th every year. 

Tracking Your Goals

When you evaluate where you are midyear, there are three possible outcomes for how you are tracking toward your goals. You’re either:

  • Ahead
  • Behind
  • On pace 

Those are the three buckets, and you’re going to fall into one of them. There’s no in-between. 

Step one in any evaluation of yourself and your businesses is to determine how you’re tracking. Here’s the problem—a lot of agents don’t track and measure anything, so they have no idea what’s going on in their business. 

The best way to do this is to look at how many homes you have pending and sold for the year, and how much income is on the books. That is the best way for anyone to track, and most people will have that number. 

Once you determine which bucket you fall into, then you want to act appropriately. 

So let’s start with the easy ones. 

What to Do if You Are Ahead of Your Goals

If you’re ahead of your goal, congratulations, way to execute on your plan. 

You may want to consider upping your goal a little bit, and I’m not talking about upping it for the year, but try to increase your short-term goals. Some examples include:

  • Close one extra deal this month
  • Over the next 90 days, take three more listings (one per month)

Look at how you can keep the momentum going and keep doing what’s worked. Don’t make the mistake of saying, “Oh, I just did a lot of business. I’m going try something totally different.” 

Real estate agents do this all the time. Don’t make that mistake. Keep running the plays that work and do more of what’s working. That’s what you want to do if you’re pacing ahead. Maybe up the goal—but keep doing what you’ve been doing. 

What to Do if You’re On Pace for Your Goals

If you’re on pace, I have a couple of questions for you:

  • Did you consider seasonality in the market? You don’t want to be at 50% for the year right now, you want to be at 60%. 
  • Do you have to make any adjustments to account for the seasonal flow in the business? We haven’t had a seasonal market in a few years now. This year is very seasonal, very normal in terms of seasonal patterns, especially in the Northeast.  

Keep doing what works—because you’re making great progress. But determine if there are any adjustments you need to make, and then break down your activities into daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. 

Again, you’re having success, you’re on pace for the year. Don’t mess with it now. Try to work a little harder and maybe up your production over the next 90 days. How can you have 10 to 20 more conversations a week? How can you go on one extra appointment a week? 

Look at those objectives and lead indicators in your business and see if you can up that number. 

What to Do if You’re Behind Your Goals

Now, if you’re behind here’s the good news: there are 180-plus days left in the year. So you have time to catch up as long as you have a plan. 

One of the observations I have is that a lot of folks say, “Well, I’m just trying to sell as many homes as I can.” 

That is not a plan. “As many as possible” doesn’t give you anything specific. It’s not measurable and it’s not time-based. You want to have SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-based. 

So if you’re pacing behind, determine your goal for the next six months. Is it selling 10 homes? Is it selling 18 homes? 

Once you come up with the goal, break it down on a monthly basis. How many homes do you want to put under contract in the month of July, in the month of August, September, October, November, and December? Plan it out like that. 

You want to plan out month by month what you want to get done. And then, once you have the monthly goal, forget planning the next six months— plan the next 30 days. Let’s keep it simple and chunk it down. 

So if you want to sell two homes over the next 30 days, here are the questions you want to answer: 

  • How many new appointments do you need to go on? 
  • How many conversations do you need to have to set those appointments?
  • How many offers do you need to write? 
  • What’s your listing sign rate or offer acceptance rate?
  • And what other income-producing activities do you need to partake in on a daily basis to hit those numbers? 

You have to pick up the phone to set appointments. So again, how many conversations do you need to have on a weekly basis to hit your weekly appointment goal? And then once you have that weekly appointment goal, how many appointments do you need to go on write an offer or get a listing? And then once you write an offer or get a listing, what’s your listing sign rate and what is your offer acceptance rate? These are all the numbers you want to break down. 

The real issue here is that people just keep saying, “All I want to do is get to this number.” But in order to hit that goal, you need a daily, weekly, monthly plan for the next 30 days. That will get you on track.

Determine those four numbers—conversations, appointments, offers, sign rates—then break it down by week. And if you don’t hit the number in the first week, adjust for the second week. That’s the way to do this. That’s how you get back on track if you’re running behind.

The most important thing here is to remember that without a plan, you’ve got no direction. There’s no number to hit. You’re swimming without a guide, you’re going nowhere. So figure out the six-month goal, chunk it down, and come up with a plan. Then execute. 

That’s the game.

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