How to Accurately Assess Yourself - the Strategic Business Assessment
A real estate founder walks through a scoring tool that rates your business across six areas: attracting clients, converting leads, delivering service, planning ahead, understanding finances, and building a team. You rate yourself 1 to 5 on specific skills in each, then get a focused action plan instead of trying to fix everything at once.
I feel like one of the biggest problems I had, you know, when building my business was a simple way to two things, be honest about where I was at a specific point in my journey and then a way to, you know, quantitatively look at where I was. And so when, you know, when I look back on my business growth journey, it started in 2007 as a solo agent. Took me about five years to build a business that ran 95% without me. And, you know, during that time, I was constantly looking at every part of my business. What was weak, what was strong, what had to be, you know, where do I need to focus next? You know, there's always sort of parts of the business that, that need help. And so over the years, and this is every bit of, you know, real estate B school, launched in 2013. I started in real estate in 2007. Still have a team today. And so I know the good, bad, ugly about doing real estate in tough markets, in hot markets, sometimes it's even harder. And we still need a tool that we can use to figure out where we are in our journey. And so we came up with what we call a strategic business assessment. And I'm going to share my screen here. This is really something that we use in every level of real estate B School. And I think it'll be helpful, you know, giving you an inside look in terms of how we look at our members businesses and how you might be able to look. And even as I go through this, you know, you can kind of think about where you are in your journey in terms of, you know, there's six parts of the business, technically there's four drivers, but I'm going to break it down into six parts of the business that you have to be honest with yourself, where you are, and then get to work on the thing that needs attention next. And not everything can get your attention. I'm trying to think of, I went to this event, it's born to be brave. And it was with my son. So it was the male version of. I forget what the daughter mom version of this is called. But at this event with my son, it said the tagline was do the next right thing. I think that was it. Do the next right thing. And essentially it's like, no matter where you are, all you can do is the next right thing for you, for where you are, for your journey. A lot of times in real estate, we want to look at others and what they're doing and, you know, it's really, it'll sabotage your success. And so a Tool like this allows you to just be honest with yourself about where you're at in your journey and what to work on next. So in real estate B school we break the business down into attract. So we need to attract high quality, low cost, not junk leads, not paying Zillow, not, you know, paying some seller, you know, lead platform, not paying someone else to be a better marketer than us. We need to build systems that attract high quality buyers and sellers. So we're going to do an assessment there. Convert, right? We need to convert them to a consultation and then to a client, then deliver.
Right?
We make promises as a salesperson and we want to deliver on those problems. This is promises, not problems. This is where most agents, you know, even team leaders, fall flat. They don't have a real system for delivering a world class experience to clients, buyers and sellers. That is referral worthy. You know, your business, the future. Real estate, I think in terms of lead generation levers is client care. Nobody talks about client care as a lead gen lever.
Right?
It's a massive lead gen lever if you do it right and then create your future. So in terms of scale, there's three parts of scaling your business. One is creating your future, that's planning. Two is knowing your numbers, you know, becoming the cfo. And three is growing your team, building a team worth owning. So in terms of attract, you know, we talk about. Let me move my camera, camera here for a second so I can see the screen. Do you have a system for past clients in sphere that consistently generates inbound referrals? That is a client touch program. And each of these in your mind, even as, even if you're not doing this assessment, you know, you don't have this template. I want you to challenge yourself one through five, you know, one, I strongly disagree. I do not have a system that consistently generates inbound referrals to 5. I am crushing it. I'm getting multiple referrals, you know, every week, high quality referrals, that sort of thing. So the first one is about inbound referrals. Second is we have a system for generating listing opportunities for our team outside of our database. Expired, FSBO social, those sorts of things, Right. How many inbound leads systematically are you generating via your listing marketing? And then the same thing for buyer marketing. We have a system for generating buyer opportunities for our team outside of our database. Yard signs, open houses, et cetera. So rate yourself, even if it's in your mind, one through five on each of those. So then convert. We have a system in place for Managing and converting leads that are followed by all team members. And if you're a solo agent, you could still be entering these things. These are still pretty, pretty, pretty important. Massively important, not pretty important. This is for anyone that's looking to ultimately scale their real estate practice into a real estate business that doesn't require them grinding all day long with their hands in every bit of their business. So we have a system in place for managing and converting leads that are followed by all team members. And the fortune in any business is in the follow up. You know, probably 95% of people you talk to or respond to an inquiry, you know, a lead gen, a lead magnet or something that you put out there, probably one out of 20 are going to be ready to meet right away.
Maybe.
Yeah. Even if that.
Right.
So you've got to have this system in place. And then we use proven scripts and have a consistent process for setting new appointments. Right. Every day. Are you setting new appointments and do you have a cadence around that? We use the same sales processes and materials when meeting with prospective clients.
Right.
Do you have a buyer sales process? Do you have a seller sales process? You know, we call them buyer consultation framework, seller consultation framework, buyer packets, listing packets, the whole process laid out so that you can do it if you need to, but if someone else can step into your shoes and do it at a higher level than you can, then deliver. We deliver consistent high level service to our active buyer and seller clients. So active buyers and sellers. You have a system in place where you're leveraging, you know, technology or a person to help you service active buyers and sellers. We deliver consistent high level service to under contract. Do you have a kick butt contract to closing that just doesn't safely get someone to closing without, you know, losing their life.
Right.
They get to closing and they're more enamored with you than they were when they went under contract. Most real estate agents fall out of love from contract to closing because the wrong person is handling all that paperwork.
Right.
You can't be a great salesperson and be great at contract to closing. It is, that's just. God doesn't make people that way. And if you are great at contract closing and you're an agent, then maybe you should just do backstage stuff and hire other people to do your front stage stuff. We consistently use technology at a high level in our business, but we do not get distracted by squirrels. One to five. Where do you rate yourself then? Create your future, Putting your life first. This is awesome. This is planning. We have a clear Three year plan. And we know the best way to structure our team to achieve that goal. Second part here, I take breaks at least monthly to delegate tasks off of my plate that are not serving the business at the highest level. Third part of create your future, putting life first. I consistently crush my rocks, which those are the next right thing, the projects in your business by fulfilling my weekly commitments and completing my daily top three tasks. You don't know this yet because you're not in our world, but we have a very specific process that we follow from a three year vision to a one year plan to a 90 day world to, to weekly commitments to our daily planning including a top three. So 1 to 5, how do you resonate with that statement? Then knowing your numbers, becoming the CFO of your business, this is where I lose some of you. Don't worry, this is not hard. Number one here I'm following an economic model that allows me to build a truly sustainable business. As you scale a real estate team, you're going to be lulled into thinking you need to comes to economic model. Are you actually following an economic model? Number two, we know and track money in the bank. Those sorts of things track my net worth and I've been making moves to systematically increase it. You can't be a business owner, you can't be out there slaying dragons trying to, you know, make money out of thin air.
Right?
That's what real estate agents do. We're not looking to someone else to pay to pay us.
Right?
We're entrepreneurs. You cannot track, you can't be an entrepreneur and not track net worth. You can't have your head in the sand on that. So 1 to 5, if you're not tracking your net worth then it's a one and you got to deal with it. It doesn't matter what it is today. So there's no shame. Even if, even if it's negative. Lots of guys and girls have started with negative net worths that have multiple seven figure net worths.
Right?
Then grow your team. Building a team worth owning. We have a documented effective recruiting process that is consistently generating prospects. That's a hurt, a pain point for most small, medium and large teams. We have a documented onboarding and training process that equips new team members to perform at a high level. New team members can come in, learn the systems, learn the processes, get good at the position they're hired for and make money as quickly as possible. One to five, that's another pain point for pretty much every team I know. And then I Have a clear weekly and daily cadence on my team and a thriving culture of productivity. It's going to be hard to win in real estate if you don't have a culture of productivity. You, if you're a solo agent, but then as you scale into surrounding yourself with others, it's going to be real hard to compete in an ultra, ultra, ultra competitive market if you don't have that thriving culture of productivity. So hopefully that was helpful. You know, we were doing a training on this with our members and that one tool, we have eight foundational tools inside of our member portal. That's just one of them that like these are foundational tools. These have to be in operation in your business for you to really achieve something special. Some, you know, build a business that's really going to have an impact. If you're at the point in your journey where you're just struggling a little bit, maybe you don't. You weren't real happy with your answers on some of those. You know, you were averaging out two threes on most of them as I went through them. It doesn't take, you know, actually entering those numbers and doing the averages and coming up with a cumulative average.
Right.
You know, in your heart, if you're down on some of those and if you want to build this thing the right way, you know, what we can offer you is a conversation. There's no obligation at all. It's just a coaching conversation. We call it a business growth strategy session. We look at where you are today, where you want to go in the future, three years from now, and what is holding you back. And if we can help you get to where you want to go and it makes sense, we'll have a conversation about it. If it doesn't make sense, we're not going to have a conversation about it. Real estate B school isn't for everybody. But if you're at the point in your journey where you need to have a higher level conversation you've been able to have before, take action right now and book in for a business growth strategy session. And there's like six questions, a brief set of questions we'll have you answer so we can best prepare for the call and we'll see you there. Be good.
