Hey Everyone!  It’s Christine George, President of Marketing at Leading Edge Real Estate with offices in Boston, Cambridge and all throughout Greater Boston.  Welcome to Episode 34 of Real Estate Marketing!

We’re back together talking about business planning.  In our last episode, we reviewed last year’s business.  Today we’re going to talk about setting goals and I’m going to share with you the first of 3 major components that you need to think about when building your plan. 

First, Set Goals.  Before you go any further, it’s important to set goals.  There are two things I want you to think about when it comes to goals, 

1.   Set goals by looking back at your numbers last year and even better, over the last 3 years, then consider current market conditions as well as what you have in your pipeline.  
2. 2.Make sure you’re not only setting income and sales goals; you also want to measure your average sale price and your average commission percentage.  Your income is directly affected by these two measures.

Okay, now here comes the fun stuff.  Now that you’ve set you goals, break down your activities into 3 parts.  Today we’re focusing on professional development.

Professional development is so important especially as an entrepreneur and it is often put on the back burner because we either don’t think we should make the investment or because we get caught up in the day-to-day activities of running the business.  The most grounded, informed and successful business people invest time and money into learning.  Here are a few ways you can make yourself smarter:

1.   Attend a national conference.  Big conferences are awesome for getting re-energized, for networking and for getting a glimpse into the future or just learning different ways of doing business.  Inman Connect is by far my favorite conference.  The National Association of REALTORS also holds an incredibly robust conference each year.  These are just a couple of hundreds you can choose from.
   
2. Read books. Did you know the average CEO reads a book/week?  Reading makes you smarter and it’s fun.  Since so many of us spend lots of time in our cars, listening to books through the app, Audible, is a great way to get your reading in.
   
   
3. Hire a coach.  Hiring a coach can be a big investment so you need to be ready to make the commitment and be open to new ideas and doing things differently.  When you are, coaches can be an invaluable resource for helping you stay on track to meet your goals.
   
   
4. Attend educational sessions offered within your company.  Here at Leading Edge, we offer more than 100 in person and virtual learning opportunities every year and agents in our company who attend our training increase their income year after year.

Phew!  That’ll do it for me today! We’ll be talking about Marketing in Part 3 of Build Your Business Plan.  I’ll look forward to seeing you then!