Your 2024 Real Estate Business Plan Checklist

We’ve all been there – we put the work in to build out a business plan for your real estate team for the new year, only for it to fall apart come March. All of that time spent business planning in the trash. And here we are again, nearing the end of the year and we’re starting to look ahead to 2024. Instead of going through the same motions in anticipation that your business plan will, again, meet its demise, try changing your approach. See how you can build a real estate business plan that’s flexible, can change as the market does and better yet – be used and employed.

Start by taking a look at your business to see where you can make improvements to generate more money, while also saving money. This is especially relevant if your market is down by 40% or more, which is the case in some areas. A helpful tip you can use to better understand what’s going on in your market is to leverage MLS to look at the units closed last year compared to this year. Identifying realistic growth levers for your business will help set your real estate team up for success. We cover this and more in our latest webinar with our partners, Sisu and Spring B, team leader of the #1 team in Utah and a Sierra Interactive power user. You can watch it here.

Forty percent is a pretty intimidating number, and we know it’s not realistic to try and cut 40% of expenses. So that brings us to the question – how do we bring in more revenue? Using a revenue waterfall methodology to examine your business and identify growth levers will help get you there. There are four main levers that real estate teams can pull to increase revenue:

1. Increase per-agent productivity
2. Increase price point
3. Increase agent count
4. Manage expenses

Increase Per-Agent Productivity

When looking at ways to increase revenue outside of ancillaries, you can start by focusing on increasing per-agent productivity. Start by making sure you have standard operating procedures for speed to lead, number of attempted contacts and types of attempted contacts. Accountability here is key, so it’s good to get in the habit of auditing your database weekly to ensure agents are following through on your expectations. If not, pull them off lead flow until rectified. Additionally, setting up action plans with automation to streamline processes and automate messaging, touchpoints and tasks will make it easier for agents to get more done with less. This allows them to focus on the most high-intent, transaction-ready leads while the CRM nurtures the others until they’re ready. Setting up lead ponds is another tool that agents, including new hires, can use to self-source leads and create opportunities. Over everything, the biggest takeaway is that if it’s not in the CRM, it doesn’t exist, or it didn’t happen. Building adoption of the CRM across your entire real estate team is critical to increasing per-agent productivity.

Increase Price Point

The concept of increasing your price point may seem simple, however, it’s easier said than done. It’s far from an easy button, rather a lever you really need to put some sweat equity into. It isn’t even possible in every market. With that said, where do you start? First, ensure that you have content pages set up and optimized on your website targeted to the neighborhoods, cities and areas that have your ideal price point. You should also consider running paid ad campaigns for those areas to increase your brand awareness in your target neighborhoods. The focus here is to farm your target areas and plant seeds through direct mailers, blog posts with a local focus, or a neighborhood website. This begins establishing a presence where you want your increased price point to grow.

Increase Agent Count

The first rule of increasing your agent count? Recruit. The second rule of increasing your agent count? Recruit. Cue Brad Pitt. For many real estate team leaders, this may be the answer and the biggest growth lever you have if expenses are in line, price points are firm and agent productivity is in check. When increasing your agent count, set your new agents up for success with the following:

• A bootcamp to get them ramped and productive quickly
• Train on systems, processes and expectations included in your real estate business plan
• Have new agents shadow veteran agents
• Provide them with a pond or specific lead sources to work. This will get them on the phones early to gauge if they’re going to do the work and fit the profile
• Set benchmarks for performance and clear expectations, meeting frequently to coach on these

Having a good CRM in place that’s simple and intuitive will make the onboarding process much smoother and reduce friction when introducing new agents.

Managing Expenses

The final growth lever is to make sure you understand your expenses and profit margins. The benchmark for real estate profit margin is 30%, and 40% for COGs. It is decidedly difficult to cut much of your expenses, but significantly easier to trim the fat. You can do this by simply looking at your tech stack and identifying what’s working for you and what’s not. Steer clear of shiny object syndrome (as hard as this is), and focus on the technology that your team will actually use. This includes your website, CRM, reporting and action management tools. In addition, look at your paid lead sources – which ones are working, which ones are not? Find the ROI of each to help determine this. When you have this, turn off the lead sources that aren’t working for you and double down on the ones that are. Another option is to partner with a lender to share expenses. 

Build Your Real Estate Business Plan

With these four growth levers in mind, which includes increasing per-agent productivity, increasing price point, increasing agent count, and managing expenses, you can build a more informed real estate business plan with realistic goals and clear areas of improvement. Sierra Interactive’s real estate CRM software will help you thread the needle through efficient lead management, smart lead follow-up and nurturing. See how Sierra Interactive can help put some rocket fuel into your 2024 real estate business plan – schedule a demo with us today.