To begin with, if you aren’t already reviewing your real estate business’ activity and progress quarterly, you should be. Getting your management team together and reviewing key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals are crucial in staying on track. In addition to quarterly meetings, having a meeting toward the end of the year can give you time to reflect on the progress your business has made, where any issues are occurring and changes that might need to be made in the upcoming year.
For years, we didn’t include our management team in these meetings and, honestly, it allowed us to lack accountability and hindered our success. Now, we have weekly meetings, quarterly meetings and end-of-the-year planning sessions and we have a much better pulse on how the company is doing.
It’s easy to go day-by-day, week-by-week and not realize that you’ve veered off course from your goals. Sometimes this happens because you’re adapting to the ebb or flow of the real estate market, but it can also be because your aren’t planning and analyzing your company and individual goals correctly.
There are a lot of real estate investors I know who haven’t kept up with their KPIs this year. They know how many deals they’re doing a month and how much money they’ve made, but when it comes to knowing cost-per-lead, cost-per-deal, overhead costs, marketing costs, etc., they scratch their heads because they aren’t tracking these crucial things. Once a better system is implemented, they’re able to have a much better pulse on how their business is doing and fine-tune their business to make it a well-oiled machine.
Below are a few things we look at as a team each year:
• Business goals: KPIs for each department, smaller milestones to help accomplish larger goals and incentives for goals met.
• Personal goals for each team member: Career-based and personal goals.
• Financial goals: Sales growth goals, efficiency goals to stay lean.
• Issues that we’ve seen throughout the year: Processes that need to be modified.
Every company’s end-of-year planning will be different, but the goal is to get back on track and set yourself up for success for the following year. Sometimes we need a reset to remind ourselves of why we’re doing each task.
When talking about personal goals, it’s important to know what goals your team and each member have. Knowing what motivates your team is important as a leader. Ideally, they’re aligned with the company’s goals.
In addition to goals, it’s good to revisit your core values and the seats of your company. As your business evolves, the main seats might need to be updated. For example, if Mary has been overseeing operations and marketing for the past two years, but really she can have full capacity just working in operations, it would make sense for you to evaluate who should oversee marketing from now on so that Mary can focus on operations. Adjustments are normal when you’re in growth mode.
As a real estate business owner, you need to be prepared for these meetings and plan ahead of time. Knowing your profit and loss and the most important KPIs will allow you to review the past year and see if you’re on track — and if not, why you aren’t.
Take a day and analyze changes that need to be made. Make sure everyone is working with the same core values and performing to meet or exceed your expectations, and that you’re all rowing together.
As published on Forbes.com
