It’s the fourth quarter, quick, what’s the score, who has the ball, and how much time is left? Don’t you expect everyone on your favorite football or basketball team to know these simple facts? Of course you do. Everyone expects the players on her team to know the key information about the game at any point during the game and after. You’re in business, you’re treating it like a game, and you’re no different. You and everyone on your team need to know your key numbers at all times!
The Eight Goal Categories of the Millionaire Real Estate Agent is about knowing your numbers. You simply cannot run a business properly without tracking expenses and the results you net from your efforts. It is also about guiding you through and focusing you during the goal setting process. Any CEO (worthy of the title) should be able to tell you exact performance numbers for her company (expenses, profit, market share, etc.) for the previous year and year-to-date. You could then pick any single set of numbers and ask her what her goal is for the year. This is what you expect from someone who responsibly runs a business. And as a real estate businessperson, you’ll need to start expecting it of yourself. So you’ll need to track numbers and set goals in key categories, and, as CEO of your business, you’ll have to know those numbers backward and forward. There are two sets of numbers the Millionaire Real Estate Agent is always aware of:
1. goal numbers
2. actual numbers The first set defines your annual goals for your business.
The second set, if monitored on a weekly (or at least monthly) basis, acts like a compass. Each time you assess your actual numbers, you’ll get a pretty clear picture of how you are doing in regard to your annual goal numbers. If you are falling short in one area, you can throw your resources at the shortfall and get it back in line before your next assessment. When you find yourself on track to exceed all your goal numbers, you know it is time to consider raising the bar. Even with all the billion-dollar prognostic equipment available to NASA, their average shuttle mission is not a simple matter of charting the course and then logging the milestones of the journey. Because the stakes are so high, they monitor progress in nanoseconds and make literally thousands of course corrections during an average mission. NASA takes the “know your numbers” and Red Light, Green Light concepts to the ultimate extreme.
Millionaire Real Estate Agents know their goal numbers and track them to make sure they know how they’re doing at all times. They set big “someday” goals, three-year, annual, monthly, and even weekly goals. And they set them using a consistent set of goal categories. In our experience, these categories can be effectively narrowed down to the eight most important areas of a real estate sales business.
By creating key goal categories, goal setting becomes simpler and highly focused. You simply have to run down the list and fill in the blanks:
1. How many leads must I generate this year? this month? this week? to be on track for my three-year and “someday” goals?
2. How many listings must I take this year? this month? this week? to be on track for my three-year and “someday” goals?