Most of us really suck at setting goals.
Neuroscience and NLP say you need to have milestones on the way to large goals. What most people do is jump into real estate with a goal of making $100,000. They get their license, join a brokerage and then look around going, “Where are all of the deals?” or better yet, then they say, “So how do I find clients?”
There are four pieces to set a goal.
The first piece is the standard or bottom. These are the things you will do no matter what. How many dials will you make in an hour? How many contacts will you make in a day? How many videos will you create a week? What are the non-negotiables? How fast will you return calls?
You have standards in your life, those things that no one can stop you from doing. Figure out what those are when it comes to real estate. That’s your base. These are things you can control not the outcomes. You can talk to people but you can’t make them buy or sell. Your standards, milestones, and goals should primarily involve what is in your control. The main outcome is affected by you changing what is in your control.
If you aren’t getting enough clients with 50 contacts a week, bump it to 75. If that isn’t changing anything, work with someone to help your conversion. For the most part, you either need more resources or more training.
The second piece is the actual goal. For this example, I will use what 95% of agents tell me, “I want to make $100,000.” Is this income before or after your brokerage fees? What about real estate costs? Is this gross or net? Now take either the average price for your market, or your average price if you have been doing this awhile, and figure out how many deals that will take you to make that commission.
The third piece is to figure out those milestones. Once you have a general idea of how many closings that is, you need to figure out how many clients you need to have in total to get there. You won’t close everyone. Do you need 1.5 times as many clients as closings? How many calls beyond your absolute standards do you need to make? How many people do you need to add to your database? How many meetings, videos, social media posts and on and on? Where do you need to be in 1 month, 3 months and 6 months? As you learned earlier, winning begets winning? Having ridiculous goals can be counterproductive and demotivating. There are some people who need goals they can’t reach. This motivates them. Others need them to be attainable to keep them from throwing in the towel. The quicker you figure out or admit which you are, the better off you will be.
The fourth piece is the big hairy audacious goal. Our brains are a goal-seeking device. Creating a what-if scenario allows your brain to open up and think of possibilities. Remember The Mighty Script? Why might you double your goal? What would that look like? If you are thinking in these terms you open yourself up to opportunities. So many agents just put their head down and sell while missing out on investment opportunities, other businesses, team concepts, or better brokerages. What if that goal is to sell 100 homes but never actually show a home? Think about it.
Fuzzy goals are difficult to hit. The more concrete they are, the easier it is to see if you hit it or not. You can have a goal to be happy but that’s not as easy to quantify. Your goals should be things you can show someone else proof it happened. They should involve steps that you can easily notice happened. And you should cheer those milestones, it works your internal psychology.
Exercise: Figure out your standard week and what will happen no matter what in your business.
Do the work, get the results.
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