Goal Setting

This is a very rough draft. I pasted in thoughts from a couple of emails I sent.

When goal setting, most agents skip immediately to production or profit. "I want to make $300k next year." or "I want to produce $20M next year." These are good goals, but it's important to understand the concept of "Objectives & Key Results" as described in Measure What Matters. Earning $300k isn't an objective in and of itself. What will you do with the money? Burn it for warmth? It's important to identify a top-line objective and then branch key results from that objective.

Here is our company's top-line objective:

To build & maintain a successful real estate brokerage filled with happy, self-sufficient, and productive agents & employees who continuously create happy clients.

You then have key results that work towards that top line. Every decision you make should work towards the top-line objective.

In order to maintain a successful brokerage, we need to be profitable. In order to be profitable, we have to close a certain number of deals. In order to close a certain number of deals, we need a certain number of agents and a certain number of leads.
In order for agents to be happy, they need to close a certain amount of business on a reasonable split. In order for them to do that, we need a certain number of quality leads.
In order for agents to be self-sufficient, we have to provide a certain level of support.
In order for clients to be happy, we need a certain quality of agent with certain standards with a certain level of support.
From there, you can branch off those key results as their own objectives.

Profitable Brokerage

# of closed company deals / # of closed agent deals
# of closed company deals = # of agents & # of leads
A certain # of quality leads = How many and what quality? (Close rate)
Etc...

A good top-line for an agent might be:

I will be a happy and successful agent in the Austin market who consistently creates happy clients, while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.

From there, you would set key results that work towards that goal:

Happy & Successful = Whatever your definition of success is. Let's say it's $20M in sales.
$430k average sale (or whatever your # is) means 47 transactions
Happy Clients = 25 positive reviews
Healthy Work/Life Balance = # of vacations, boundaries you'll try to set for work, other personal goals

These are all business goals. It's great to also set high-level life goals. What do you want to do with your success? How many hours a week do you want to work now? How many do you want to work per week 5 years from now? Do you want to leave town a lot or do you spend most of your time in town? You can answer these questions and then you'll be able to make business decisions to get to those life goals.

When you identify all of these goals and put them on paper, then you have a touchstone that you use to help make every business and personal decision.