Goal Setting for Real Estate Agents
 

Goal Setting
Joan Murphy
Vice President, Education

A key part of achieving your goals rests in the goals themselves. They can’t be too lofty, or too simple, and it’s smart to give yourself reasonable deadlines. Here are five guidelines to follow as you plan your successful career:

1. Set challenging, yet realistic goals. Setting attainable goals will build your confidence. But at the same time, don’t be too timid in goal setting or you’ll fail to reach your full potential. Ask your broker or a successful colleague to help you establish reasonable sales targets. Also keep in mind market conditions and any other factors, such as a family addition or illness, which may affect the time and energy you can devote to achieving your career goals.

2. Make sure results are measurable. It’s too general to say you want to be a better real estate salesperson. It may be true, but it’s not measurable. Instead, set more concrete goals, such as learning how to use wireless technology, getting three additional listings per month, or making five more follow-up calls to past customers.

3. Define your actions. Once you have a broad goal, such as getting three listings, you need to take the next step of defining detailed actions that you must take to meet this goal. For example, if you know that your conversion rate is one listing for every 200 postcards mailed, you’ll need to set a goal of sending out an additional 600 postcards per month to get three more listings.

4. Set a timeframe. To achieve each goal, it’s important to set interim milestones to help you stay on target. Then monitor your goals on a regular basis to be sure that you’re making the progress you need. Also prioritize your goals, especially those you’ve set for each day and week.

5. Make compatible business and personal goals. Don’t feel as though all goals need to revolve around your real estate career. Having personal goals such as spending more time with loved ones or exercising regularly are also important to a well-rounded life. Keep in mind, however, that your business and personal goals need to work together. For example, if one of your goals is to have dinner every night with your family, you may not be able to achieve this at the same time that you’ve set a business goal of increasing your sales by 50 percent.

Creating S.M.A.R.T. Goals:  Specific - Measurable - Attainable - Realistic - Timely

Specific - A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you must answer the six "W" questions:

*Who:      Who is involved?
*What:     What do I want to accomplish?
*Where:    Identify a location.
*When:     Establish a time frame.
*Which:    Identify requirements and constraints.
*Why:      Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

EXAMPLE:    A general goal would be, "Get in shape." But a specific goal would say, "Join a health club and workout 3 days a week."

Measurable - Establish concrete criteria for measuring progress toward the attainment of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the exhilaration of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal.

To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as......How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable - When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true. You develop the attitudes, abilities, skills, and financial capacity to reach them. You begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities to bring yourself closer to the achievement of your goals.

You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.

Realistic - To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. But be sure that every goal represents substantial progress. A high goal is frequently easier to reach than a low one because a low goal exerts low motivational force. Some of the hardest jobs you ever accomplished actually seem easy simply because they were a labor of love.

Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to determine if you have accomplished anything similar in the past or ask yourself what conditions would have to exist to accomplish this goal.

Timely - A goal should be grounded within a time frame. With no time frame tied to it there's no sense of urgency. If you want to lose 10 lbs, when do you want to lose it by? "Someday" won't work. But if you anchor it within a timeframe, "by May 1st", then you've set your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on the goal.

T can also stand for Tangible - A goal is tangible when you can experience it with one of the senses, that is, taste, touch, smell, sight or hearing. When your goal is tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.

 

 

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