Statistics were recently published indicating that the number of NAR-licensed real estate professionals is over one million. These figures make me reflect on how much the business has changed in the last five to 10 years. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that you could have your license, help a few friends or take a couple referrals, and you could have yourself a nice little business.

Today, real estate is attracting people from all walks of life—people who recognize the tremendous business opportunity provided by this industry. Those you need to fear the most are the ones who are coming from outside real estate – from the corporate world, from medical backgrounds, from education or engineering – and bringing much more of a business mentality to their careers than has traditionally been employed in real estate.

To survive and succeed in today’s changing environment, you need a plan and you need to bring a business mentality to your career.

Here are five crucial areas of concern that will help put your career on the right track for success.

Step #1: Have a Business Plan

It seems like a simple idea, and most real estate agents would probably tell you that they do have a plan. But here’s the distinction: A plan isn’t really a plan unless it’s written down. You need a well-thought out, strategic business plan committed in writing before you can do anything else.

Consider any other small business. Let’s say you were opening a store or a restaurant and seeking a bank loan to help get it off the ground. The first thing the bank is going to ask for is to see your business plan. Yet almost no real estate agents have a written plan.

Planning is crucial in many ways. You need to set goals for yourself. You need to define a specific direction in which your business is headed. You need to know how you’re going to get where you want to go. Without a plan, agents often end up jumping from one strategy to another and never making any real progress as a result.

Your plan should be comprehensive and include detailed information about your goals, your marketing plan, your business and servicing systems and training. If you don’t have a written business plan, now is the time to schedule some time and commit to developing one. This activity is crucial to adopting and implementing your newfound business mentality.

Step #2: Put Your Business Systems in Place

Any businessperson will tell you that trying to do everything yourself is not a wise plan. When you spend time putting stamps on envelopes or answering every phone call, you are drastically underutilizing your time and efforts. You are, in essence, performing an $8-an-hour job, when your time is worth much more than that. This is where business systems come into play.

Running a business successfully means leveraging your time and delegating lower-dollar work to your staff or outside vendors, allowing you to focus on the truly important aspects of your career. You need to begin thinking of yourself as the president of your business and delegate other tasks to your staff. Agents often tell us how they’ve spent days or even weeks trying to learn new software for their database management, maintaining their web site or performing similar tasks. Again, they need to make the president analogy. Does the president of a company need to know how the accounting programs work? Does the president need to know how to change the toner cartridge in the printer? Of course not. Neither do you.

I’ve found there are four primary reasons many agents refuse to delegate tasks:

1. Too Controlling – You don’t have to do it all. Once you learn to trust others to help you get where you want to go, you will get there a lot faster.
2. Too Cheap – It might be a cliché, but only because it’s true: You have to spend money to make money. Face it. Your business cannot reach superstar status without a significant investment on your part. If you’re content with mediocrity, fine. But if you want to reach that next level and enjoy a better life, you need to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goals.
3. Lack of Understanding – Some people simply do not understand the concept of leveraging their time. Tasks are divided into two categories, urgent and important. True growth is possible when you focus your efforts on the important and delegate the urgent to others.
4. Path of Least Resistance — For some agents, the only thing holding them back is themselves. They spend all of their time working on minutia and then convince themselves that they are busy. Don’t fool yourself. You are only truly busy when you are meeting with clients regularly and doing dollar-productive work.

Many agents understand that they should have help and that success requires sacrifice and spending money, yet they simply do not act on it. Those agents are in danger of being squeezed out of the industry if they continue to refuse to act on their instincts.

Step #3: Market Yourself!

Once you’ve recognized and accepted the fact that your career is a self-owned business, you need to think of it in terms of any other company. Think of a neighborhood restaurant or store. What happens to those restaurants that no one ever hears of? Does it matter how good a restaurant’s food is if no one knows about it? Likewise, does it matter how good your service is if no one knows who you are? That’s where marketing comes in. Most successful businesses – both large and small – have made a name for themselves through powerful marketing campaigns. You need to do the same thing within your target market.

Whether or not you realize it, as an agent, your name is your brand. Your job is to build brand awareness through personal marketing. You need to develop a strategy for reaching your target market – either through direct mail, mass-media, or a mix of various methods – and then deliver a powerful, emotionally compelling message to prospective clients.

Your marketing plan needs to be a huge component in your overall business plan that I discussed above. If you do not have a written plan that includes a proven strategy for generating new business, you are really just hoping to be successful. That approach may work, or it might not, but what are you losing by writing down your plan? You need to realize that your business is marketing, which means you need to study it and learn it. You need to factor the time to learn into your schedule and practice marketing. This is time spent working on your business, the most critical aspect of your career.

Step #4: Systematize Your Service

Agents often tell me that they just can’t find enough hours in the day. When I take a closer look at what they’re doing, however, the problem becomes crystal clear. They have no systematic approach to the way they serve their clients, so each day starts by figuring out what they should do for the remainder of that day. This is a prescription for failure.

The service you provide should be consistent and predictable for every client. What’s your listing service plan? What’s your buyer service plan? You need to devise these systems as step-by-step, written processes that get applied to each and every client you work with. That way, you never wonder what to do next. You just do whatever is next on your plan.

When you systematize your service and follow-up with current and past clients, you’re again leveraging your time and making progress with minimum effort. When you have developed and implemented a system to regularly reach out and touch your past clients, you can have your cake and eat it, too – staying in touch with clients without running yourself ragged trying to constantly reach everyone.

Create a schedule and delegate the tasks to ensure that letters and marketing materials are mailed, E-mails are sent and periodic phone calls are made on time. Not only will the consistency and follow-up impress your clients, it will allow you to focus your time in more dollar-productive, face-to-face work with clients. This is how an organized business handles servicing. In real estate, we need to do the same.

Step #5: Training for the Long Run

Here’s a good question to determine if you’re adopting the right mindset for success. As a real estate agent, what skills do you need most to succeed?

If you said things like personal marketing, business building and planning, you’re on the right track. Some of you probably answered that you need to know the floor plans of houses in your farm area or that you need to be a good negotiator. While those things may play a part in your business, they are not essential to your success.

The point here is that too many agents are technicians who allow themselves to be consumed by the minor tasks they need to perform while missing the bigger picture. In truth, your ability to negotiate a contract or stage a home has absolutely nothing to do with building your business. If those are the things you’re focused on, your energy is being misplaced.

Look at any company and surely it has a plan for its future. That plan will include growth strategies and a budget for training. You need to make a similar commitment to your career. Your business plan needs to establish your training budget for the coming year and plan what, when and where you will get this training. You need to become an expert marketer and a savvy businessperson.

Taking advantage of training opportunities will make you more accountable to your career. More accountability means that you are operating more like a businessperson and less like an employee.

Comparing Mindsets: Businessperson VS. Employee Implementing these five steps will not only completely change the way you do business, but it should bring a fresh, positive approach to your career. When you compare agents who treat their careers like a business with those who don’t, many of the petty issues are not evident in those who treat their career like a business. They don’t whine and complain about others not doing enough to help them. They don’t bother themselves with in-office politics. They don’t obsess over commission splits.

Instead, the agent who treats his or her career like a business recognizes that he or she is the only person ultimately responsible for her success.