The end is near! The stores already have started selling Christmas decorations, and swimsuits are relegated to the clearance rack. The end of 2013 is coming, and with it is coming the temptation to slow down the pace we’ve been keeping up all year. After all, in the next three months are holidays, vacations, large meals, and plenty of potential down time…
If you want to succeed, really want to succeed, you need to reframe this thinking. There are still three months left, a quarter of the year – and potentially a quarter of your business!
So take a few minutes and watch this video, the first one in the new Real Life Real Estate series from Real Estate Coach Dan Smith. His tips on how to prepare for the next few months (and get the edge on your competitors who are already searching for turkey recipes) are motivating, and will hopefully help you get enough business over the next few months that you can splurge on really good champagne for New Year’s Eve.
This week, what I want to talk to you about is the fourth quarter. We’re here at the fourth quarter now. There’s 25% of the year left. There’s 92 days left in the year. And a lot of us real estate agents are thinking to ourselves right now: “you know what, I’ve had a great year, it’s been a long year,” “I’ve had a not so great year, it’s been an even longer year, it feels like,” and “I am going to start taking my foot off the gas pedal. I’ve got to worry about getting kids’ costumes in October, I’ve got to worry about turkey dinners in November, and I’ve got to worry about Christmas trees and all that good stuff or whatever it is in December.”
So we’re going to start taking our foot off the gas pedal, we’re not going to keep working through the end of the year, we’re kind of closing up shop right now, and I’m here to tell you this: Stop it! You can’t do that! You have to work through the end of the year!
There’s 25% of the year left. There are 92 work days available to you. Now you might not work them all, but they are available to you in the rest of this year. Do not stop and just start planning for 2014. You’ve got to continue working for this year. Working for what you can accomplish this year.
In order to help you do that, what I wrote down here is, you need a little mini business plan. Right? Now we’ve had a big business plan, we do those every year, we set our goals for the year, we do business plans for the year, or we think we’re going to, we try to, we don’t get around to it. But in any case, even if you have it, you don’t have it, we don’t want to pay attention to it right now. What you want to pay attention to is a brand new plan. We call this the mini business plan.
I want you to focus on just five things in this mini plan. These are five things that you’re going to focus on, and diligently work towards achieving in the fourth quarter. And it’s going to give you a sense of direction. It’s going to give you a sense of purpose for why you’re going to work each day and what you’re looking to accomplish each day, and I want you to picture what your life would be like if you accomplished all of these things come December 31st.
We’ll worry about 2014 in 2014. Right now, let’s worry about finishing 2013 in the best, most profitable, most productive, most powerful manner ever.
Number 1. How much money do you want to make in the next 92 days, in the fourth quarter? How much money would you like to make? That’s a very important component of this mini-business plan.
The second thing you want to write down is “How many listings do you want to take?” Now, you might have taken a lot of listings over the course of this year, you might not have taken very many listings over the course of this year. Again, that doesn’t matter. How many listings do you think you can realistically, if you put your mind to it, if you just totally, just went at it, and you got a little lucky… How many listings could you take? Ok. That’s the second thing we want to put down.
The third thing we want to put down is how many sales could you make. All right? Same focus. Same amount of luck. How many sales could you make?
So now we’ve got how much you would make dollar-amount-wise, and we have how many listings you would take, and we have how many sales you would make. The fourth thing I want you to write down is this: Is there some place you’ve been wanting to go? A trip, a location, that you’ve been wanting to take or plan or book. Either in the fourth quarter, or maybe in the beginning of 2014, that it would be fantastic to get it booked, to get it paid for, to get it taken care of in this fourth quarter. Because you had such success, you could get that done. Is there some place you’ve been wanting to go, some thing you’ve been wanting to do, that’s what I want you to write down. That’s your fourth step.
And then your fifth step. All of us always have something we want to buy for ourselves, buy for loved ones, buy for our family. Is there something that you’ve been wanting to purchase. Kind of a big ticket item or something that’s just real, real important to you or your family. It might not be a big-ticket item, but it’s still very important, and you haven’t gotten around to doing it. And if you made your goals, if you achieved your goals and made those sales and took those listings and made that money, you would be able to do it without even having to think about it, without even batting an eye? What is that thing? What are those things? I’d like you to write them down, that’s the fifth part of the mini business plan.
Now you have this mini business plan. Here’s what’s important. You look at it every day. Ok. You use it to inspire you each day, you use it to help you focus each day. And then you see what kind of progress you’re making to achieving those five steps each and every single day that you work for the remainder of 2013.
Thank you for tuning in this week. Remember, to get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.
I’ll see you next week.
Great job Dan!