3. KPI TRACKING If you only had five minutes each week to get the pulse on your business, would you be able to know whether things were going well, and if not, what things needed to be addressed? If you’re not tracking Key Performance Indicators, you’re not likely going to be able to know when things need improving—or whether they are improving. You might think, “I know how things are going because I’m getting leads and deals.” That might be true, but KPI’s give you fine-grained insight into what is happening at every level of your organization. Imagine being able to see trends week over week of how many leads were required to get an appointment. This can help you spot problems with your lead intake. If your number of appointments goes down over sever- al weeks but the number of leads generated stays the same or goes up, you could have a problem with your lead intake person. This happened to us. It turned out the lead intake per- son had been yelled at by a seller and was now making an assumption that most callers were not motivated and didn’t want to set appointments. Don’t wait until you’ve gone months with a problem like this. Know your numbers. One of the reasons we developed and launched Forefront CRM for real estate investors was to have a way for KPI’s to be tracked automatically. It was worth the time and effort to be able to see how everything is going in real time. How Does Your Business Stack Up? If you’re not tracking your numbers in fine detail every week at the least, you definitely have room for improve - ment here. Visit https://forefrontcrm.com/kpis to get a list of the KPI’s you need to be tracking. 4. STRUCTURED PLANNING/MEETINGS The times when my business was not doing well were almost always periods without regular planning and meetings. We get busy. We make some plans at the beginning of the year with huge ambitions. Marketing cranks up. Leads come in. We get busy! The meetings would be rushed and done for the sake of just having them. So after a while, it was more important to go on an appointment or check on rehabs instead of having the meeting. Don’t fall into this trap. The most successful real estate investors I know all subscribe to the idea that you must dedicate time each week to work ON the business. If you don’t take time to plan and ensure you are stick- ing to the plan, or you learn the plan stunk but don’t
change it, you will spend a lot of time being busy doing the wrong things. Weekly meetings are when you review your KPI’s. It’s when you make plans to move the needle on getting your yearly goals completed. I recommend the Level 10 meeting from the book Trac - tion by Gino Wickman. This book has been instrumental in transforming my businesses. How Does Your Business Stack Up? If you’re not having weekly meetings (even if it’s just with yourself), you have room to improve here. 5. SYSTEMSAND PROCESSES Do you have all the knowledge for the workings of your business in your noggin? Not good. It might not seem important if you don’t plan on ever bringing on help, but you eventually will. Wearing all the hats in your business is fine for a while. Eventually you’ll discover that it’s impossible to have the freedom we are all looking for by running everything ourselves. It’s time to document what you do and how you do it. Trust me, you will be so glad you did when you start hiring help. In fact, we started documenting processes way before making hires and those became lifesavers. Many of the decisions we make are for situations that don’t come up every day. Nothing stinks more than having to try and research and figure out how we handled something in the past when we don’t remember. It feels like such a waste of time because it is! If we document what we do, we know how to handle everything and we can spend time improving those processes. This process improvement over time is what really moves the business into greater efficiency (more profit while doing less). How Does Your Business Stack Up? If you don’t have your processes documented and orga- nized in a way where they are easy to find (use Tettra for this), you have room for improvement here. YOU LIKELYHAVEWORK TO DO I hope the five factors opened your eyes to some areas of needed improvement within your real estate investing business. It can seem daunting and like added work, but this kind of work (working ON your business) reduces your workload in the long run and makes you more money. Remember: Knowledge not used is the same as not knowing. •
34 | think realty magazine :: december 2021
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