Many real estate agents view their career as just another job, approaching it day by day without a plan. At some point, many salespeople want to increase their quality of life, either by getting more time off or increasing their income. Everyone has the same number of hours in a day, and there is only so much an individual agent can do.
Before diving into team building, outsourcing or retiring altogether, here are five best practices successful agents have employed to gain more control over their income and their time.
1. Begin with the end in mind. As author Stephen Covey states in his national bestseller, The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, know what your business must look like in five, 10 and 20 years for you to live the life you want to live.
2. Be humble. People don’t necessarily want you, they want your level of service. We are all gifted in certain aspects of the business. The more you view your gifts as something you can transfer to others, the greater your ability to grow your business.
3. There’s always somebody out there that’s better than you. Contrary to what we want our clients to believe, the truth is there are people out there who are better at different aspects of the business—whether it’s transaction management and marketing or showing homes and staging them. When you adopt this mindset, your ability to attract top talent to help you increases dramatically.
4. Know your hourly rate. Take your annual GCI and divide it by 2,080 (the number of hours worked in a year) and that is your hourly rate. Anything you can have someone else do that will cost you less than your hourly rate should be outsourced. This enables you to free up your time for your highest earning-per-hour activities, such as lead follow up and lead generation.
5. Block weekly time to work on your business versus in your business. It’s easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia. To take control of your business, you must make time to grow personally and professionally. Build in time for training, run monthly P&Ls and seek advice from those who are where you want to be.
By adopting these five strategies, you’ll be well on your way to building trust with your clients, learning from your Long & Foster family and achieving excellence in your business.