By now you should have done the review, and potentially adjusted your scope, focus, or system to take advantage of the last couple of months of the year. Now what? The end of the year is on the horizon and we need to buckle down and plan out next year’s strategy. More often than not, managers, leaders, and owners simply want to focus on “how much do we want to make next year?” However, they often forget that they are going to either have to decrease expenses, push their current team harder or raise prices to make that profit increase work. This is because more revenue = more clients, but to get more clients you may have to increase marketing. Further, more clients per team member often mean burnout or a decline in customer retention due to poor service per client. To be honest, this can be quite the snowball effect resulting in confusion and lack of focus, which to be honest is why many business leaders and owners don’t plan at all or get so caught up in it that it takes forever! The reality of it is that business planning is a mixed bag of all of these things. So, let’s simplify it down for the sake of this conversation. Here are five tips of buckets for you to consider when doing your planning for the next year.
These may be financial, number of new clients, number of Instagram followers, number of people on your email campaign, size of your team, number of locations, number of properties… whatever is a clear indication of growth and success for your business. The keys here are to make sure the goal or goals follow the SMART goal principle.
That means they are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Use this strategy to make sure your goals are quantifiable and can be communicated clearly to your team. You can have multiple goals. I would try and keep it at three main goals, not to overload yourself. You can even break those goals down into short-term and long-term.
The power of a goal is not in the setting of it. The power is in tracking the progress and seeing that goal come to fruition. In this section, we want to create milestones, key performance indicators (KPIs), or monthly reporting. Small steps lead to big progress so find a way to count those steps.
First decide who is involved in this goal, who are the players. Is the whole team to be held accountable for their efforts, is this mainly for the real estate team, is it a marketing effort? Whoever it might be involved, make sure you share the vision, convey the excitement, and listen for feedback. They need to buy in and you need to be confident these goals are achievable, but not be blind to their perspective, especially if they are the boots on the ground interacting with the client or customer.
To reach specific goals may mean the implementation of new tools, software, or skills. The right set of tools can make information more available, secure, consumable, or shareable. Do you need to implement a new CRM, financial tracking software, or centralized database for information or forms to create efficiencies for team members taking on more clients? How can you streamline your process to enable your team to do what they do, but better?
While this exercise is great, it’s completely useless if you do nothing with this information. If you pack it all up and put it on a shelf until this time next year it has been nothing but a waste of time. You need a strategy for holding yourself as the leader, and the rest of your team, accountable for putting all of this into action! Before you leave your final meeting on the planning of next year, take out the calendar and pre-schedule monthly or quarterly meetings JUST FOR THIS, only discuss and review progress made on these goals and the implementation of any changes you are making to systems and processes. Further, set time aside to check in regularly with the team to see how they are handling those changes. Remember, the mind doesn’t like to change once it has a process down pat so expect some resistance or discomfort.
A good book recommendation would be Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy. I recommend this one because as business owners and leaders we really need to understand the business landscape around us and strategize on how to take advantage of that environment!
And remember, if you are not changing, you are falling behind.
Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy
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