By Jerry Bresser

Never look at being a real estate professional as a job; always as a business.

You wear three hats: Your investor hat, your management hat and your agent/employee hat.

Put on your investor hat for the moment. “I, the investor, am going to invest one year of my time. What can I expect as a return on investment?”  How big is your opportunity and how much of it do you want? In other words, how much do you want to earn … by the end of the year … by the end of each quarter?

Now put on your management hat. “The goal is $____. How are we going to achieve that?

How many transactions will we need to reach the income goal?

How many transactions will come from buyers … from listings sold?

What is our listings-taken-to-listings-sold ratio?

How many listings do we need to take to reach the listings-sold target?

What is our conversion rate of listing appointments-to-listings taken?

So how many listing appointments will we need each week to reach the listings taken goals?

What is our calls-to-appointments ratio?

How many calls and contacts do we need to reach the listing appointment goals?

Now, put on your agent/employee hat. Okay, I have to make ___ calls every day. I have to get face to face with ___ potential sellers every day/week. How do I do that? How do I structure my time and effort to make all that come together?

Activity v. results: There is no reward for activity, only for results. How many poorly performing agents have you seen who spend their days organizing their desks and their data bases, or perfecting their personal websites instead of calling listing prospects by phone or in person?

You can change things if you have developed some of those habits of being active but not getting results. For one week, ask yourself this question every 15 minutes: What have I done in the last 15 minutes that will lead to a new listing within the next 24 hours? Be brutally honest. How many of those 15-minute segments were a total waste and not leading to a listing or sale?

There’s an old cowboy saying: “Fall off a horse seven times and you’re a real cowboy.”

If you fall off a horse, get right back on. If you fall off track, get right back on. If you fall away from your disciplines, get right back to them. If you fall out of habit, get back into the habit.

Stop! Right now, think of a good habit you had or should have to get more and better listings. Write it down. Draw a box around it. Then write, ‘I WILL do this.” Initial or sign.

Jerry Bresser has been training and coaching real estate agents about how to sell homes faster and for more money for over 35 years. He recently published his second book, More Money In Your Pocket. www.jerrybresser.com or for information about the book, www.moremoneyinyourpocket.biz