The Top 5 Ways Money is Leaking Out of Your Business

Most Realtor's suffer from the same money leaks in their business and do not even know it.  

This episode of Agents in Action recap of the most common money leaks or "gaps" I noticed among the agents I have been coaching or met at speaking events this year. It was interesting to me to see these same patterns repeating themselves across the board. It was so consistent, that I wanted to go through these with you so you can take a look at what you're currently doing in your business.  If you can, grab a pen and paper so you can write a few things down as we go through a few exercises during this episode. 

You have gaps that are allowing money to leak out of your business. Imagine this scenario; The Bank Manager calls and has some news to share with you…Think about who you currently bank with...you get a call from the branch manager, and he/she says...I needed to alert you to something that we noticed when we came in this morning...it must have happened overnight.  It appears you have a leak in your account.  Money is leaking out of your account, and we are making every attempt to stop it. However, nothing has worked yet.

What would you do?  You would probably get to the bank right away to withdraw your money and stop the money leak. 

It wouldn't be anything we'd just "get to" when we had a chance.  It would be urgent.

 So let's use that example and look how it relates to our business. When is the last time you took a close look at your business and did an audit for money leaks it may be experiencing?  For this purpose, we will define a money leak as lost opportunity income in one or many locations in your business, that when stopped, would significantly increase your income and overall profitability. So, I thought I would bring these up today so you can take a look at your business, where they may be money leaking, how much, and with a new awareness, begin to take steps on some or all of these areas and put an end to the thousands and thousands of dollars being lost every month.

 

These are the top 5 areas I noticed agents are losing the most money. As we go through them together, remember to have a pen and paper ready so you can determine what might be leaking from your business each month, and over the course of the year.

 

Lacking clearly defined goals/objectives - I would say of all the agents I've come in contact with, only 10-15% (being a bit generous too) of them have clearly defined, time-bound, measurable goals that they are REALLY excited about and that are in writing.  That's very important that they are in writing. We can't overlook the power that comes from being connected to our life purpose and having clarity here is absolute power!  It's time we get back to this basic success principle of having goals and dreams that fuel our engines each day to go out and make it happen.  Without them, we often find ourselves "drifting" through each day that passes and end up living quiet lives of desperation. For this one, I want to suggest you ask yourself, how many sales are you missing out on each year stemming from a lack of powerful, compelling goals that you haven't yet clearly established...don't forget in writing. Take that number and multiply it by your average commission check and that will be the "money leak" for this one area.  By the way, be brutally honest when coming up with these numbers.

 

Lead Follow Up - This money leak comes from our inability to organized, we're unsure what to say and how long to stay the course when tracking and following up with our leads. If we take an honest look at how we're following up with our leads, the majority of us wouldn't say we're losing business because we're calling them too much...it's because we don't call them enough and worse, many times we don't ever call.  This is contributing to a tremendous amount of lost opportunity income.  Over the years, both in my personal real estate practice and my observation when coaching agents, the vast majority of your appointments will come as a result of your lead follow up calls, not the initial call made with the prospect.  It's like an assembly line, suspects, prospects, leads, appointments, close sales.  So, if you don't have as many appointments as you're hoping for, it may not just be needing to kick up your lead generation, it's also directly tied to your ability to effectively follow up with you leads, remain organized and have the perseverance to stick to it. You need to be "sticky."

 

In 25 years in the real estate business, here is one of the biggest things you've learned about lead follow-up;

We never know what is going on in people's lives. I've learned not to let someone's lack of response