Business Planning for Realtors Turn Your Dreams, Goals for 2006 into a Road Map for Success

As the modern axiom goes … “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Planning is the essence of winning and a good business plan, well conceived and well executed, can guide your real estate business to success. Below business planning guidelines has been provided by CreateAPlan, Inc. the largest online real estate business planning service. For more information visit them at www.CreateAPlan.com.

(PRWEB) December 30, 2005 -- Business planning is often the last thing an agent wants to do, because it is a complicated and painful process. However, there is little value attached to dreams if they only stay in your head. For a good plan to be successful, daily actions need to echo the written word, which in turn echoes your dream. In the daily competition for market share, the race belongs to the agent who knows his or her goals and exactly how to achieve them.

Here’s a road map that REALTORS® can refer to from time to time to help guide them on the road to success.

Objectives

To initiate a business plan you need to map out your objectives. You must determine where you’re going, who you’re up against and what your role is within the bigger picture. This will help you maintain a clear focus. When you begin to write your real estate business plan you can refer back to this document to see whether it still satisfies your objectives. Ask yourself the following six questions:

1. Specialization

Where is your specialty going to reside; residential, resale, new construction, single family homes or apartments? These choices may overlap because you can participate in more than one market type.

2. Your market

Now that you know what market you’re in, what is your territory … the whole state, the county, a city, town or neighborhood? Specifically identifying an area will help you later to establish your goals and objectives.

3. State of the market?

Now that you’ve pinpointed your market, you need to obtain the specific market details. You need to determine market size, recent growth, number of annual sales, home prices, and average home prices. You must know every detail of your market.

4. Competition?

It is a good strategy to know your competitors. Are they national real estate franchise brands or well-established regional or local real estate firms? Is their market share growing, stabilized or declining? What are the strengths and weaknesses of their management?

5. Strengths and weaknesses?

Some business planning courses like referring to this exercise as the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). This requires an objective assessment from you, your team or firm. Anything less than total honesty will hinder future success.

6. Preparing for change?

If you agree that the real estate paradigm is changing then you should realize that without change and adjustments, you might be looking at a completely different business cycle in the coming years. Read as much real estate news services, real estate trend reports, research and whitepapers, magazines, etc. that you can.

Here are the basic steps in creating a plan for your real estate company:

1. Analyze your business

Ask yourself what is your business. Is it real estate sales? Is it homes and homeownership? Is it making dreams come true? You must know what business you’re in before you can create a mission statement. The mission statement addresses the company’s reason for existence; the reason it’s different and unique.

2. Study the environment

Take your answers from the questions and incorporate that data into your plan. Exand that initial research to external factors that you may have little or no control over, which may influence or even threaten your business. They include political, technological and economic factors.

3. Opportunities

From the first part of the SWOT analysis, go down another level and evaluate the opportunities you have today. Are the socioeconomic structure, age and income of your area in flux? Will a new development in the area change the buying patterns of the consumers, or is there an opportunity you can benefit from because of the recent closing of a long-standing dominant player in your market?

4. Threats

On to the last letter in the SWOT analysis …Threats. Evaluate what could happen that might severely impact your company. What would your plan of action be if, say, salaried salespeople became a reality, commissions were discounted, etc. It’s not important to agree or disagree with the trends you see; the point is to be open-minded about possible threats.

5. Goals

Time to decide what you wish to achieve. There are, of course, many types of goals and you should try to include as many of them as possible. Just remember to make sure they’re all quantifiable and set to specific timelines.

6. Action steps

This is where the rubber meets the road. When putting the action steps together, you’ll see whether your goals are realistic and feasible. Be fair, logical and reasonable. Budget every action; determine how many resources you have available and how many you need to obtain externally. If achieving your goals now seems impossible, go back to the beginning and revisit earlier decisions.

7. Make it measurable

Finally you must hold yourself accountable. You wrote the plan and set the goals with the intent of achieving them. So now break each target into smaller, more measurable pieces and monitor the results regularly. A plan that can’t be measured or isn’t measured almost always fails.

Parting thoughts

Know your plan, understand it and make it a living part of you and you’ll see the beginnings of a successful real estate business. CreateAPlan, the leading real estate business planning service, offers a simple online business planning software that provides complete monitoring of all key business indicators, including marketing events, listings, sales, expenses, etc. as well as provides weekly action plans, monitoring and progress reports. For more information visit www.CreateAPlan.com.

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