Focus on Generating New Business Every Day!

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Transcript:

I think we covered this in the last section, but you have to develop new ways to generate business literally every single day. It will correlate directly with your ability to build a sustainable business. You need to be producing yourself, and you need to have that culture of new business generation every day. This comes from a combination of lead generation, management and conversion. All of these parts are critical and they must run like clockwork.

Lead generation and lead conversion must be a part of your culture. You have to talk about it all the time, and it must be a fun part of your culture. We run contests all the time, especially with referrals. We have a Go-for-no! contest where we see who can get the most referrals in a month. The winner was awarded $100 shopping spree at a local mall. If you have a team already, this is an easy way to get them to generate leads, you just have to make it seem fun and laid-back.

This year, 86% of my business is generated with my team, instead of with my agents. Part of it is that my agents are so busy that they don't have time to go out and gather leads, but your team may be different.

Outsourcing lead conversion can be tricky. If you choose to do this, you still shouldn't replace your ISA. If you're a solo agent you should always be focusing on your own lead conversion. You must really emphasize this to all of your buyer's agents as well, they're going to have to act as your own ISA. Once you have four or five productive buyer's agents, then you can probably go ahead and hire an ISA.

Now, one thing that you have to focus on as your business begins to get bigger is: "Is this the best use of my time right now?"

Bear with me as I go through this math exercise. For me, my goal was to net $500,000 by working 2,000 hours per year. Essentially I would be worth $250 per hour. When you're worth $250 an hour, you need to shed everything off my plate except for a few extremely valuable, dollar-producing activities. Marketing and listing appointments would fall under this, as well as some advertising.

You need to know what your time is worth, so whatever your number is, divide it by 2,000 hours, or 1,000 hours if you want to be honest because sometimes you just won't work that much. Once you figure that out, your whole world will change. You won't want to do your own yard work, and you won't want to do your own laundry. I'm not saying you should stop doing those things, but you should realize that you're better off doing things that are valuable.

I value my time at $1,000 an hour, so I'll farm out my time if I need a room painted or if we need our yard cleaned up. It drives my wife crazy, but it's just what happens when you figure out how much you're actually worth.