Roll With The Changes & Make Yourself Successful

What is that they say about best laid plans?

It is a well known fact that success as a Real Estate or Mortgage Professional lies heavily in knowing your market intimately and developing a highly detailed plan that encompasses both strategy and tactical measures, with an eye for growth.


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Read More What may be as necessary though, is your ability to proactively manage that which you don’t expect, and having the professional depth to adapt your plans and your focus as the market dictates.


This versatility can be required as a consequence of outside forces that are beyond your control, or from the realization that the plans you made yourself, marketing and/or operationally, are somehow not hitting the marks you had intended.

Success relies on much more than having a plan. It is about being reactive in a professional context and, in a sense, being proactive enough to allow yourself to be professionally versatile.Change, whether selected after careful analysis, or whether thrust upon you, always represents the opportunity to streamline your business, as well as deepen your brand, if it is leveraged correctly- and a lot of that has to do with the origin and requirements of change.

One of the hardest parts of being a professional is having the courage to hold a mirror up to your business, and having an honest look to determine what change needs to be implemented to streamline your business. The truth is, if you want your boat to float, you need to plug the holes.

Change is Not Just About Getting Rid of the Negative

While it seems more obvious to want to cut the dead wood out of your business and your marketing strategy, it may be gentler to start with celebrating your successes.

Take a look at your marketing strategy, and decide not only what worked- but why it worked.

Was it something that you did specifically that is unique to your skill set? Did the market itself communicate the success of a tactic by its’ measurable response?In extracting the essence of your success and spreading it around to other operational and marketing activities, you may be able to salvage some of your marketing activities that are not as successful.

Measurable Results as a Barometer

In theory, change should be more easily managed if you initiate it yourself. However, implementing self-driven change presents itself with other challenges as well- namely what if, despite all your planning and hard work, your marketing plan does not seem to be yielding the results that you were after?You need to place professional distance between yourself, the plan, and the results- and be ruthless in your evaluations. For goals that are measurable, the numbers speak for themselves, and the success of your business hinges on your ability to adapt them- even if that means letting go of the vision you have constructed.While it may seem like a discouraging distance to go all the way back to the drawing board, it is more discouraging to discover that you have arrived at your intended marketing destination, without your baggage- so to speak.

That is why it is crucial when, after having your strategic marketing goals laid out, and setting out the tactical actions to help your marketing strategy translate to growth of your business, that you need to not only set up benchmarks to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaign- but to also have specific goals in mind when visiting these along the way.

Be specific in your language when setting goals, and when associating tasks. What are some of the things your business needs to get out of them in order to move to the next level? Is this about client retention? Are you trying to generate leads? Referrals?

Invite Feedback

When you are setting out quantifiable goals to gauge the success of your business planning, there are elements that are extremely important to your success, that are not as easily measured- client satisfaction for one- which has a direct correlation on the likelihood of referrals- and in turn on your growth and your bottom line.Although there is little more stomach churning than asking for honest feedback about weaknesses, it is a must.

When you are in the relationship business, you must consider that a big proponent of your ability to be successful in your business relies on not only on your strategy and plans, but on the way you are perceived by your clients.You take pains to project a certain image, and hope that you succeed by communicating that to clients. If you are off the mark, and clients are less than satisfied about the service they received with you, or they were just generally not pleased, you need to know that- and you need to know why.

Furthermore, you need to have the professional courage to implement those changes into the way you do your business.

Make feedback an essential part of your process, having a set time during the business cycle with clients to ask for it.

Let them know that you genuinely want to know what they think, as their impressions are valued in the way in which you do business, and that you welcome the opportunity to implement suggested changes.Worst case scenario, you will hear nasty things about yourself.

On the other hand, if clients have valid points, that you may not have considered from their point of view, then feedback allows you to move your business forward- and to be stronger for it.On the up side, if you are being effective in your client relationships, than you can celebrate your successes; gather some testimonials to support your marketing initiatives.

Also, these conversations give you ammunition in asking for referrals, which can help contribute to the measurable parts of your campaign.

Mitigate the Change you don’t see Coming

For all of your planning, and attention to detail, there remains the possibility that there are issues in your local market and beyond, which you absolutely cannot control.

Although political, natural or economic events sometimes take place in the communities in which you live or work, there are those that take place all over the globe, and their effects are far reaching.

The question is, why does something like that impact business operationally, and how can expecting the unexpected affects of uncontrollable events help build business, and how can you communicate confidence to your clients in the times of upheaval?It’s about having your finger on the pulse of the market, even when that means having to go look for it during a shift.

Luigi Frascati, Sutton Centre Realty, with years of experience as a Realtor in his Vancouver market, has been through enough news cycles to know well the relationship between world events and his own local market. His advice? Know your market, know how it fits into the bigger picture, and parlay that information to your clients, giving them a compelling value-add reason to do business with you: “In a cosmopolitan city like Vancouver, BC where I mostly practice, we are all dependent upon events, whether of an economic or political nature, upon which we have absolutely no control. By way of an example, when the war started in Iraq I believe in 2002 - 2003, here the market came to a complete halt for three months. Clearly that was not an event that had originated from the local real estate market, but since real estate here is dominated by foreign investors, the influx of foreign money back then all but stopped.”

“So the trick to being a good advisor is not only to be knowledgeable of the local market, but also to be on top of world events that may affect the local market. I can tell you, from past experience, that next summer the market here will be slow (American presidential elections are due in November 2012)."

In managing change, and in strengthening your business, you can adapt your business and marketing plans to meet need, but as Frascati suggests, your focus must remain with laser-beam accuracy on the client- and how your actions and professional offerings service the requirements of client centric business.Also, know your community.While you never know when forces of nature or economics may strike a community down, history and/or a little bit of research may tell you the likelihood of these events happening.

This, when looking at brass tacks, comes down to including part of your marketing budget for Ad Hoc marketing- when situations socially or communally arise- so that these unexpected circumstances enhance your marketing efforts, rather than derailing them.

Similarly, one must have tactical plans that are flexible enough to bend without breaking when necessary.It is doubtful that Ghandi was talking about business growth when he said, “Be the change you want to see,” but it is applicable.

Don’t let the prospect of your plans not going to plan cause panic or despair, or create a sense of loss- rather visualize where you want your business to be, and allow room in your planning to expand and contract as the market, the globe, or your client base requires you too.Your road to success is not necessarily a straight line, but you want to avoid going in circles.