How does your future look? This year is 50% complete! Right now, there are some important actions you can take to make sure that your year and your future are what you want. Alan Lakein, author and time management specialist noticed, “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”

Mid-year planning time is as important as designing the plan for the year, if you want to be successful.

An old study done by Harvard Business School showed people who had written business plans made 10 times more than those who did not. While I see many agents embracing the concept of business planning, there are far fewer that truly use their business plan as their map for the year. The power is not only in knowing where you want to go and but then adapting your actions as the year unfolds to course correct as needed. This adaptation step is woefully overlooked.

So, get out your Palm or daytimer and block out 3-4 hours of business planning time in the next week. The three areas that you’ll want to include in this exercise are:

1. Checking in with your goals
2. Reassessing your market's conditions
3. Planning for at least 30 percent reserve

Checking in with your goals

Pull out your business plan (or lacking one…write down the numbers in your head of what you wanted to accomplish this year) and then for each category, research what you have accomplished in the first six months of the year. Minimally, this includes:

• Gross production
• Net production
• # of Transactions
• # of listings taken
• What the source of each piece of business has been.

Then track other statistics that fit with your niches and needs.

Knowing where you are right now is critically important to make course adjustments.

Reassessing your market's conditions

When you created your plan last December or January, you had one set of market conditions. Are the assumptions you made then about the year accurate? What’s new in the market you didn’t account for? What new opportunities are on the horizon you should be positioning yourself for? What isn’t working that used to?

The ability to be flexible and change your strategies, is more important than ever before. The numbers and research you did on where you are will give you insights into what is and what isn’t working this year. Research where the hottest prospects will come from and what their needs are.

Especially be on the lookout for e-commerce solutions or ways to implement more systematic approaches to segmenting your leads/your market and in keeping in touch with these people. The top producers capture a higher percentage of the business by seeing every inquiry as a possible piece of business! They “lose” fewer people. For instance, do you have people in place to refer to on leads that don’t fit for you or do you just tell these people you can’t help them? Or, even worse, are you spending lots of time struggling with people who don’t fit your perfect client profile and suck lots of energy?

Planning for at least 30 percent reserve

Once you know where you are and what is going on in the market, you can then reassess the goals you have set and determine what actions are necessary to bring them to fruition. This is where the course correcting comes in. What is working and how can you leverage that to have it work even better? Perhaps increasing your budget to a media that has brought the most business and decreasing it from what isn’t. Are open houses working? Are your print ads? Is your website? What should you stop doing or spending money on?

As you do this planning, give yourself a goal of creating 30 percent more than you need to make your goal. I can promise you something will happen to some of the business that you have counted on and it will cause you to scramble. Be proactive and plan to take the necessary actions to get more than you need. I also encourage my coaching clients to meet their goals by the end of November so they can just work the business they want to over the holidays and know they have already made their goals!

Now use that planning time to block into your time management system the actions you need to take daily, weekly and monthly. Plan also what tools or education or support you need. Taking a class, buying a new digital camera or getting a coach may make it easier for you to reach your goals for this year.

It’s also good to remember what General George Patton said, “A good plan, vigorously executed this week, will always be better than a perfect plan executed next week.”

Taking action will make it happen. Do not get stuck in the getting ready or perfecting mode. Schedule a blitz to last for a couple of weeks. Starting the momentum for the 2nd half of the year will give you a good Christmas or holiday season!

Published: August 5, 2002

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Joeann Fossland GRI, LTG, MCC is a dynamic speaker and business coach. Creator of THE REAL ESTATE GAMETM, she provides coaching solutions enhance your effectiveness and life balance. You can subscribe to her free monthly newsletter, attend free monthly telephone seminars, and find out about classes delivered by email and personal coaching by visiting JoeAnn.com or e-mail her at .