To Get the Most Out of Your Real Estate Business, You Must First Ask the Right Critical Business Questions
The following is adapted from The Ultimate Real Estate Machine.
There is an art and science of asking great business questions that focus on the real driving causes, not the perceived effects. As a real estate business owner, exponential growth is your goal. But how do you know what to aim for in your growth path if you don’t know where you are at right now?
Simple. You don’t.
In order to decide where to go, you must take inventory of where you are. I like to use the example of going on a diet. If I want to lose weight, I must first take the dreaded measurement from the scale to know where I am starting. With that information, I can set a target weight I can get to, plus add smaller goals to check in along the way.
The same holds true with your business; you need to take measurements of where you currently are and then decide where you need to focus your attention immediately to get the best throughput. Many real estate agents make the mistake of running by the seat of their pants, not knowing where their business really stands in all areas.
When you start asking the right questions about your business, you take a giant leap from real estate agent to real estate business owner.
Ask Questions to Understand the Problem
Socrates said, “An unexamined life is a life not worth living.” Jay Abraham took a business view from Socrates and said, “A business that is not constantly examined and reexamined is a business that is not worth owning.” It all starts with the questions that you ask yourself and your business.
Your intuition is powerful. Your gut feeling will usually tell you whether something is right or wrong. We have been there before when things do not feel so great in one area or all areas of the business. In those moments, we should ask questions to understand where the problem lives so we can come up with a viable solution. Instead, we bury our heads in the sand, hoping and wishing things will get better. We keep on doing the same thing, praying for and expecting a different result or, worse, adding more fuel to the fire.
Your business success is dependent upon your ability to face your problems head-on and ask the right questions. They do not teach you that when you become a real estate agent, so we are here to teach you.
Step on the Scale to Determine Your Next Step
The failure rate of real estate agents is high. We imagine the failure rate for team leaders who set out to build a profitable business is just as high, if not higher. In order to avoid failure, you need to know exactly what your strengths and weaknesses are and how they relate to your competition. You also need to keep your eyes open to opportunities that could be huge breakthroughs and to threats that could potentially be catastrophic if not addressed proactively.
A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) exercise is extremely helpful in determining your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can do this exercise in a macro sense of evaluating the entire business, or you can do this to break through a logjam in a segment of your business, like lead conversion.
Until you know what your positives and negatives are, it is impossible to get all that you can from your business. You need to focus first on where you are currently, and then on what needs attention and focus to get where you want to be.
You will need to “step on the scale” and see what is working great for you, things that aren’t going so great, and possibly areas that you haven’t thought of yet.
For more advice on how to improve your real estate business, you can find The Ultimate Real Estate Machine on Amazon.
Jason Williford is a serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, inventor, and consultant for high-producing real estate agents. He is a master in business strategy, strategic marketing, innovation, differentiation, agent production, selling systems, and referral generating systems, as well as training, recruiting, and mentoring real estate agents and inside sales agents. After years in the trenches of real estate, he set himself and his team apart with strategies and techniques that were learned in other industries and applied to real estate. His unique talents and knowledge fill industry voids for high-performing real estate agents and team leaders.
