Rich Levin’s Success Corps Rochester, NY       Phone: 585.244.2700       Fax: 585.442.0011         © 2007 Rich Levin  

Goals, Measuring Progress and Results - What are your goals for the year, for this month and next month?  Are you ahead or behind your goals?  Are you ahead or behind last year’s numbers so far this year?  What are your goals for this week that ensures you will stay on track?  Do you have goals for your number of appointments with new clients, listings and sales?  Do all of these track correctly in relation to each other?

To have goals that answer all of these questions and more; set goals in the following way. You will then be able to measure your progress and know where you stand every day, each week and monthly. This may start out similar to goal setting you have done in the past. It finished in unique and very effective way.

Having goals that keep you motivated and a method of measuring toward those goals that gives you the information, the feedback to know where you are in relation to them and at the same time clearly identifies strengths and weakness is a critical part of your business plan.  If you do not have that it is a weakness that you must choose as a high priority to strengthen.

Warning: If you are not comfortable with numbers this will be extremely challenging for you.  If you find it difficult to complete this section for any reason, simply skip to Lead Management below it.  You will be missing a truly crucial part of your plan.  However you will get a great deal of value from completing the other parts.  So, I don’t want this to stop you here.

1. Set income or production goals.  (E.g. $4,000,000 in sale price volume or $100,000 income)

Calculate the income from that.  (E.g. $4,000,000 in production is income of $84,000 at a 3% co-broke rate and a 70% split with no other fees)  The easiest way to do this is just trial and error using your co-broke rate and your commission split.

Or if you set the income, calculate the production from that.  (E.g. $100,000 income is approximately $4,800,000 in production at a 3% co-broke rate and a 70% split with no other fees)  Again, using your numbers trial and error will get you there.

If you are not able to do this I strongly encourage you to learn from someone in your office, someone who is comfortable with numbers or a one of our coaches.  Having a handle on this is extremely basic and necessary to your successful business plan.

3. Calculate how many sales that is to hit your goal at your average price range.  (I know your price range may be all over the place.  Don’t let that stop you from choosing a likely average.)  (E.g. At a $250,000 average price range divided into the production number of $4,000,000 is 16 sales.)

Here is the key.  Estimate how many appointments with a new buyer or seller it takes to make a sale.  In other words, how many initial appointments does it take to make a sale?  For average experienced Agents the number will be 2 to 1 which is 50% or better.  For top Agents it might be as high as 80% or higher.  If you are doing this on your own, I suggest you use 2 to 1.  In other words if you have two appointments with new buyers or sellers.  One of the two will turn into a buyer that buys or a listing that sells.  (By the way if your average is much lower than that working on your lead conversion and presentations skills is a priority.

       One of the keys to your peace of mind and continuous growth is recording those   appointments each week so that you discover this ratio.  You then very simply track both    the number of appointments each week, your sources of appointments and your success   rate.  From this you can quickly identify many very important strengths and weaknesses        in your business.

5. Calculate how many appointments you need for the year to hit your goal.  (In this example multiply the number of sales, 16, times the number of appointments per sale, 2 which means that if you conduct 32 appointments with new buyers and sellers throughout the year with a 50% success rate you will hit your goal.

Finally divide that number of appointments necessary to hit your goal by 40 working weeks in the year.  We use 40 working weeks instead of the actual 52 weeks so that you have 12 weeks when you may focus off of going after new appointments.  You use a few of those off focus weeks around the December holidays.  A couple in the summer.  That still leaves a half dozen or so the rest of the year for things anything that may come up; visiting relatives, playing in a sports tournament, illness, tragedy or celebration. (In this example 32 appointments needed to hit your goal divided by 40 working weeks equals .8 (that’s point 8 like 8/10) appointments per week to achieve your goal)  That means if you have a real listing or buyer appointment with just one new person a week for just 40 weeks out of the year and you are successful just half the time you will exceed your goal.

I have coached hundreds of Agents to extraordinary numbers, levels of production beyond what they imagined they were capable of achieving using this goal and measured results method.

This method of setting your goals based on appointments with new people gives you the most effective measure to manage and control your business on a weekly and daily basis.

We have a full set of charts and records using this method on line.  You can subscribe to it.  Simply go to
Rich Levin Charts. When you set these goals using our charts and records online or with one of our coaches we actually set them at three levels, an Exceptional level, a Tiptoe level, and a Disappointment level.  There is a great deal of psychological power in measuring against this small spectrum of goals.

With our clients we also set goals and measure the following.

1. Open Sales Volume (e.g. $10,000,000 in sale price volume based on contract not closing date)

2. Open Units Sold (e.g. 40 sales, 26 of them listings sold and 14 sales to buyers)

3. Listings Taken

4. Anticipated Income (e.g. $26,000 scheduled for this month, $31,000 for next month

Notice the word ‘Open.’  We measure by contract date because you have so little control over closing dates.  Follow this methodology and I promise you greater success.  In fact don’t be surprised if your production increases 50% to 200% or more.  That is common for our Client.

If you choose to work with a Million Dollar Business Plan Coach he or she sets these goals with you and introduces you to the tool to easily track them for yourself with all of the detail described above and more.

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Lead Management - Are you generating enough leads to achieve your goals; following up effectively or staying in touch with the leads you generate? What is your lead conversion rate for buyers, for sellers?  What system do you use to stay in touch with the leads until you discard them or you convert them?

There are four parts to your Lead Management System.  Answering the above questions determines which if any of these parts is a strength or weakness that should be a priority for you.

The four parts are:

1. Your ability to generate enough leads to achieve the number of appointments per week that will achieve or exceed your goals.  (See number 6 above under Goals, Measuring Progress, and Results)  Are you generating enough leads to do that?

2. Your habit of contacting enough of the leads you generate to achieve your number of appointments per week that will achieve or exceed your goals.  Do you contact enough of the leads you generate?

3. Your skill at converting the leads you generate into buyer and seller (listing) appointments.  Are you able to convert those leads to listing appointments and buyer appointments?

4. Your tool or system to organize and retain contact with the leads that don’t convert immediately and the appointments that will be future business. Do you have an effective system for staying in touch with your leads until they convert or you choose to discard them? Does your strength or weakness in any of these parts of your Lead Management System lead you to choose one or more of these parts as priority to strengthen or strategize over? 

If you choose to work with a Million Dollar Business Plan Coach and choose one or more of these as a priority he or she will create action steps with you to strengthen that Lead Management skill or habit so that you will rapidly increase your production.

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Marketing - What is your direct mail program?  What results come from it?  What web sites do you have?  What leads, listings and sales have come from them?  What personal marketing ads have you done this year?  What results have you seen from that?  What marketing efforts do you want to continue?  What efforts do you want to put permanently in place?  What marketing efforts do you want to experiment with?

An effective marketing plan is much simpler than it sounds.  There are five parts of marketing the third is your actual plan.

They are:

1. Your Markets: What group or groups of people are your best sources of business?  Two are probably your past clients and your Spheres of Influence.  What geographic areas do you want to farm?  What groups, organizations, or causes do you want to network?  In what communities do you want to build your branding, name recognition and reputation?

2. Your Message: What is your marketing message?  Not your slogan, although a slogan can reinforce your message or you slogan may just be a memory hook.  Your message should always reinforce the fact that you are in Real Estate and you are good at it.  You want to always ensure that your marketing methods and efforts are communicating that message.

3. Your Media: This is your plan.  Will you use direct mail?  How often?  I suggest nine to twelve times a year to your Spheres of Influence and past clients; four to nine times a year to your farm.  Will you incorporate a Web strategy?  Will that strategy reinforce your message or generate leads?  I suggest that you own your name or some variation that is directed to a main site.  There are strategies using generic domain names, blogs, podcasts, pay per click strategies, ‘ask’ pages and new ones arising all the time.  Do you want to employ web strategies or focus on traditional direct mail and print media?

4. Your Budget: My standard is that you generate at least a four hundred percent return on your marketing expenditures.  Agents often ask me what percentage of their income they should be spending one marketing.  The answer is that Agents spend between 5% and 35% depending on many factors.  The key is the fifth part below.

Your Measurement: You want to be measuring the sales you make from your marketing efforts to ensure that you know what your return is on your expenditures.  Sure you may have to employ a campaign for six months or a year to see the return.  At the end of that time you should be able to measure whether you achieved an acceptable return.  You want to be careful to judge your return by actual sales made and income earned verstus leads generated, web site hits, phone calls or some other measure that may lead to sales and income but for return on expenditure purposes it does not have that value. (Using a charts and records tool like the one discussed at the end of Goals, Measuring Progress and Results above provides you with the tool to do that.) 

Is your marketing a high priority?  Do you need some help with this?  If so, who could help you?  What vendors do you need to conduct the efforts and campaigns that will work best for you?  If this is a high priority brainstorm some of the efforts or campaigns you would like to put into your marketing plan.  Schedule time each week to create and implement your plan. 

If you choose to work with a Million Dollar Business Plan Coach and you choose marketing as a high priority you will create a Marketing Plan customized to your choices of media and markets that has proven to a high return on expenditures because it creates a steady flow of business that increases year after year.

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Quality Service - Do you speak to your listed sellers weekly so they are confident in your efforts?  Do you communicate weekly with clients who have pending transactions so they know you are there for them to the end and beyond?  Do you have checklists or whiteboards for your listing, buyer, and pending systems?  Do you get back to people when you say you will?  Do you speak regularly to the people to whom you are sending new listings?  Do you step up your contact between mortgage commitment and closing?  Do you stay in touch a few times the first month the clients are in their new home?

Your service to your clients can be one of your major sources of lead generation.  Of course leads generated from people who are delighted with and raving about your service are high quality leads.  Quality service is the reason that those top Agents have an appointment to sale ratio of eighty percent or higher.

Quality service combined with an effective marketing plan takes your business to its highest levels.  Combine that with a competent team and there is literally no limit to your success.

I suggest you focus on service to pending clients first since problems with pendings are the biggest energy drain.  Plus your attention right up to and after the closing is the greatest determinant of referral leads.  A whiteboard and/or checklist assures quality and makes the effort simple to delegate and supervise while maintaining high quality.

Then service to listed sellers is next priority. 

I want you to consider that your service extends to your past clients, your Spheres of Influence, your leads, and the community. 

Is your service and quality of service costing you business and/or peace of mind to the extent that this is a first priority for you to address? 

There is a lot here that can significantly increase your repeat and referral business.  If you choose to work with a Million Dollar Business Plan Coach and you choose Quality Service as a high priority you will choose which areas have the greatest potential for your individual business to increase referrals through client satisfaction and decrease your headache calls to improve your quality of life and peace of mind.

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Presentations – Seller: Do you get at least seventy percent of the listings you go on presentations for?  What needs attention in your listing presentation?  Is it preparing, pricing, and building strong rapport, your marketing plan, or the strength of your fundamental presentation skills?  Are you confident in your price recommendation?  Are you continuously trial closing?  Do you ask for a decision?

Buyer: Do you sell more than seventy percent of the buyers you start working with?  Are you showing less than ten houses to each buyer?  Do you meet with the buyer early in the relationship?  Do you ask a lot of questions about their wants, needs, and lifestyle to identify their level of urgency?  Do you review the entire buying process and provide them with copies of all the documentation?  Do you explain what they can expect from you and do you request their loyalty?  Of course, do you ensure they are financially qualified? 

Negotiating: Do most of your negotiations end in two rounds or less?

Included in this topic are your skills at Showing Property, Writing Offers, Presenting Offers, and Obtaining Price Reductions.

You want to have a system for each of these presentations.  You want to have checklists for some parts; for example, listing preparation and the first 24 hours after you take a listing.  You want to have a methodology for how you set up showings and show a property; for writing and presenting and of course for getting largest easiest price reductions.

Are any of your presentations or presentations skills stopping you from achieving your potential or do you lack so much confidence in them that they are costing you success and peace of mind?  If so, which of these presentations would you choose as highest priority?  I know there is a temptation to impatiently say, “All of them.”  Which means none will get addressed.  Fight that urge.  If there are priorities here go back through the Presentations section and choose the one highest priority presentation to strengthen or strategize over.

Most experienced Agents have strong presentations.  If you choose to work with a Million Dollar Business Plan Coach and choose one of your presentations as a high priority you will plan a strategy to strengthen your presentation which then increases your success ratio, increases the confidence and loyalty the client has toward you and the referrals they send to you.  Or you will strategize around a weakness in that area.

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