Start the Year Off Right: 6 SMART Goals for Real Estate Agents

Having goals is smart, but having SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound — increases your odds of making them happen. Simply wanting your real estate business to succeed isn't enough; you have to build a path to winning. Goals are your stepping stones on that path; in making them SMART, you give yourself the motivation and direction to achieve them.

How to make SMART goals

Making a goal specific means addressing the Who, What, Why, Where and When of what you want to do. For example, saying “I want to increase sales next year” isn't specific enough. Ask yourself who will make up the majority of the sales — home buyers or sellers — and who will lead this initiative? What methods will you use to convert clients into sales? Why do you need to increase sales? Where will you find those clients? When should this goal be complete?

Measuring the success of your goals helps you assess your performance and discover where you need to tweak your efforts. If you can’t measure your goal, you can’t manage it — which means you probably won’t achieve it to your entire satisfaction. Ask yourself, “How many homes do I need to close to increase my sales this year? How many leads will it take to generate those sales?”

It’s vital that each goal is achievable. There’s no sense in creating a “stretch” goal if striving for it breaks your company and your morale. Determining if your real estate goal is achievable often involves doing the math. For example, if you want to increase sales by a certain percentage, figure out the number of homes — at an average price and for your average commission — that you need to close, how many leads you must covert to clients, how many leads you need to generate at your average conversion rate and so on.

After running the numbers, you’ll have to decide if your goal is realistic. Assess whether you have the financial and human resources — not to mention the time — to achieve your goal as stated. If you’re a single-agent operation, working part time or just getting your business off the ground, then a goal of $1 million in sales probably isn't realistic.

Finally, you have to make each goal time-bound to instill a sense of urgency. If December 31 is the deadline for meeting a goal, you might not feel the pressure to work on it in March. By assigning a timeline to complete each goal, you give yourself milestones to check your progress against and make any required course corrections.

Here are 6 SMART goals for real estate agents to start the year off right.

Business goals

1. Generate 50 qualified leads each month using online resources, including paid advertising opportunities, social media platforms and your company website.
2. Improve your online presence: Increase visits to your website and decrease bounce rates with daily refreshes of content on most-visited pages, update your Zillow profile — listing descriptions and photos, past sales and reviews — on a weekly basis, and share two social media posts per week.
3. By April 30, hire a licensed team assistant to handle non-selling tasks and answer property questions.

Personal goals

1. Complete annual continuing education clock hours and CORE class (if due) by August 31.
2. Attend one local networking event every month, and send at least one representative to the top five annual industry trade shows or conferences.

Family goal

1. By November 30, take seven adjacent days away from the office — to spend time with family — without returning work emails or phone calls.

Every goal you set for yourself, no matter how big or small, will be more achievable when you make it SMART. It’s easy to become distracted or weighed down by logistics without the direction that goals provide. Creating honest, detailed goals is the best way to determine where you want to be and what you need to do to get there.