Verl Workman – The Business

The Business Plan: Your Fixed Point in a Turbulent Market

By Verl Workman

Everyone in real estate, particularly brokers and team leaders, face signifi cant challenges as they try to run a profi table business in 2022. Historically low inventory, buyers fl ooding houses with offers, turbulent recruiting and retention conditions—we’ve heard it all.

We talk a lot about the importance of planning for times such as this, and for good reason. Creating and following a business plan can give you needed stability and focus as things in the market “go crazy.” Your business plan is the representation of your vision, and the roadmap to achieving that vision.

The types of challenges brokers and team leaders are seeing today can make a business plan feel irrelevant. Agents can feel powerless and lost if their clients continue to be outbid and the pool of available listings dries up. They may feel like a business plan won’t even touch these issues. I’ve talked to team leaders and brokers who have all but abandoned their business plans as they’ve tried to fi nd the right response to these ongoing changes in the market.

It all begs the question: What do you do when things don’t go according to plan?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a lesson I learned back in my early scouting days: If you ever become lost, all you need to regain your bearings is a fi xed point you can see, like a mountain peak or building. Using that fi xed point, you can orient yourself and get back to safety.

Allow me to suggest that if it feels like your team or brokerage is getting lost in the challenges we’ve been facing over the last few months, your business plan might be that fi xed point you need to guide yourself to the right place.

Simply because you’re facing challenges your business plan doesn’t account for does not mean the plan has no value. Your business plan is a defi ned vision that you ought to let guide you through challenges. Like the distant mountain peak a hiker uses to reorient himself, your plan (and the vision it represents) can provide both perspective and direction as conditions change around you.

By abandoning your business plan, you’re guaranteeing that the vision and goals it contains will never be accomplished. By redoubling your efforts to focus on your plan and charting a new course to fulfi ll it, nothing in the market—low inventory, high prices, fl uctuating retention—will keep you from your goals. RE

Simply because you’re facing challenges your business plan doesn’t account for doesnot mean the plan has no value.

Verl Workman is the founder and CEO of Workman Success Systems, a real estate consulting company that specializes in performance coaching and building highly effective teams. Contact wssm@ workmansuccess.com for more information and free downloadable resources.