“Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without Vision just passes time. Vision with Action can change the world.” ~ Joel A. Barker

Want to serve more clients this year? Today we’re going to set goals in a way that will ensure you will achieve them.

How you set goals matters. Have you ever set an exciting goal only to watch it slip by? Most of the time it’s not that the goal was too big, it was how it was set.

We’ll dive in.

Montreal real estate agent Bekir shared his goals on our Mastermind this week. He has big plans for the year and jokingly commented that he’s competing with Las Vegas agent Windy Goss to see who hits their goals first. And it prompted a big discussion. But most of all, it highlighted how often we set goals but aren’t achieving them. Goals are not meant to be simply inspirational, they are meant to be actionable.

If you have big dreams but are struggling to realize them, brace yourself, this is your year and we’re going to set goals that will enable you to play full out.

First up, let’s set our minds for success.

Business is driven by 3 things. Lead generation, client relationships, and referrals. As Florida agent Gina Wade says, “If you aren’t generating leads, you aren’t reaching your full potential.” The same can be said about investing in your client relationships (past and present) and asking for referrals.

Fact. All growth in business requires investment. When we set goals we are setting the direction we will go. And we hold ourselves to it. But it will take something to make something. It could be your time, or your money, or your energy. Or all 3. But the results are always worth it.

If you’re an agent expect to invest somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500/month on your marketing budget. That’s $6000/year. And it’s a starting budget. For some of you that will be more than you were hoping to hear. But for others it will be far below what you already spend.

Tom Ferry, real estate coach, recommends budgeting 10% of your commission on lead generation. That’s marketing that drives leads. Why? Because, leads are the lifeblood of your business.

What does this have to do with goals?

Well before you can achieve the goal you have to be willing to do the work, put in the energy, and invest the money to achieve them. Otherwise it’s wasting your time. You are building a business. And you’re treating it as such. Of course, you say.

Excellent! Now that we have that out of the way, let’s dive into structuring goals that makes sense.

👉 There are two types of goals. Vision goals and action goals. This is the secret.

Step 1: Writing your vision goal

A goal is just vision quantified. It’s that simple.

For example, let’s say you can see yourself serving 50 clients this year. That’s a vision. 50 clients is the outcome.

Another example would be you may want to do $100 million in volume. That’s your vision quantified.

Your vision can be as detailed or simplistic as you desire. You can describe how you will spend time with friends and family in 2023. Vacations you want to take. And the moments you want to create.

Take a minute to write down some of your goals. I’ll wait right here.

✅  [Action step: Write down 1-3 goals for your year]

Step 2: Writing your action goals

Now that you know what your vision (direction) is. Let’s set some action goals that will get you there.

Ask yourself, “What has to happen to achieve 50 new clients this year?”

This part is easy to miss. But miss it at your peril. But, set the action goals, and the vision goal will happen.

An example of action goals. 👇

To get 50 clients I need to:

👉 Generate 1000 leads = 10 clients
👉 Call clients 500 times = 10 referrals & 5 repeats
👉 Host annual movie night = 2 referrals & 1 repeat
👉 Drop off seasonal listing marketing package (4 times) to 2000 houses and hot leads = 5 clients
👉 Send 52 email newsletters = 5 clients
👉 Send 500 neighborhood CMAs and add to Homebot = 5 clients
👉 Add 100 leads I had positive response from as Facebook friend = 3 clients
👉 Post 50 unbranded client (congrats on your new home and congrats on your home sale) praise reports on Facebook = 5 clients

Do all those activities and you will generate 51 clients. YAY!

Next, break those goals into your weekly goals. To make things simple. Let’s pretend there are 50 weeks in a year.

Weekly action goals

👉 Generate 20 leads per week = 1000 leads / 50 weeks
👉 Call 10 clients per week = 500 client calls / 50 weeks
👉 Host 1 annual movie night per year
👉 Drop off 40 seasonal listing marketing packages
👉 Send 1 email newsletter
👉 Send 10 neighborhood CMAs
👉 Add 2 leads as Facebook as friends
👉 Post 1 unbranded client thank you and congrats to Facebook

You can then break those goals down to daily goals.

But already you can see how big goals are really super attainable. It’s only 1 email newsletter a week. You can do that, right? And it adds up pretty quick.

This becomes your score card. Print it out. Put it on a whiteboard. And every day you can track that you are hitting your weekly goals. Achieve your action goal and time will take care of the rest.

How to calculate how many activities you need to do:

You may be wondering, how many activities do I need to do?

Start with last years outcomes. How many clients did you serve? And what you did to do to get those relationships? That will tell you how what activities you want to do more of this year. And how many of those activities you will want to do to repeat that year.

But you don’t want to repeat, you want to grow.

So multiply that number by the increase you are setting for yourself.

👉 Last year, let’s say you worked with 40 clients. You will need to increase your pipeline by 25% to serve 50 clients.

(Activities that produced 40 clients in 2022) x 1.25 = 50 clients

You can then work backwards to find out how much you will need to increase.

👉 If you worked with 20 clients last year and want to double to 40, here’s the math to figure out how much more pipeline you need.

(((Goal clients: 40) / (Previous year clients: 20)) – 1) *100 = (Percent you need to increase your pipeline 100%)

✅ [Action step: Now take 3 minutes to write down 1-3 actions goals for your year]

There you go. You’ve just set yourself your goals for 2023.

And remember it’s not about being perfect. It’s about learning and improving. Here’s to your year of growth!