As a new realtor, it is critical to set real estate goals to help you achieve your definition of success: that idea of financial freedom and being able to spend more time with your friends and family. Goals will help you measure your success and momentum in the industry. They will tell you where you need to focus your time and resources in order to grow your business.

Goal setting for realtors will include things like lead generation, ongoing education and personal development, sales goals, specific types of referral goals, social media goals, and so much more. The more specific you can set these objectives, the easier it will be to validate your efforts and decide where you should place more of an emphasis. For example, if your referrals from existing clients are extremely low, are you missing out on an opportunity to improve and grow the valuable marketing tactic of word of mouth?

While you can spin your wheels developing these goals by yourself, it’s always a good idea to consult an experienced coach for help in developing your own real estate goals. For many of these goals, it will take additional research to consider what the normal numbers might be, or to establish a baseline for a new agent starting out.

If you have no idea how many sales to expect in your first year, or where to set your goals, a real estate coach will be an invaluable resource in helping you navigate uncharted waters.

What are SMART Goals?

Real estate goal setting can make excellent use of the SMART acronym. This stands for:

SPECIFIC – Clearly identify your goals and be more detailed to make them easy to understand.

MEASURABLE – Goals should always have some measure of success to help you identify how close you are to completion. This helps you focus your efforts.

ACHIEVABLE – Your objectives should be set to obtainable levels, and while they should be challenging, it can become disheartening if they are not achievable.

RELEVANT – Your tasks should be meaningful to your objective. If they don’t matter to your end goal, then it’s not something you should measure.

TIME BOUND – Your goals should all have some key measurement of time attached to them. If your goal is to sell X amount of houses, that can be more challenging or incredibly easy over different periods of time.

SMART real estate goals will help guide you to your own personal definition of success in the real estate industry. As a real estate agent, your business is your own. Meaning that the more effort and substance you place into it, the more you will get back out of it.

While SMART goals might seem very rigid and dictated, you must always add in a mindset of adaptive change. A goal of selling 10 houses in a month might seem impossible three weeks into the month when you’ve only sold 2 – but if you reevaluate and make it achievable, you might aim for an additional 2 in the last week and meet or exceed it. When a goal becomes impossible to achieve, there is a mental barrier that pops up; let me try again later, this is never going to happen, or it doesn’t matter. If you continue to evaluate your goals, measure their success, and make them achievable. Then you will find yourself on the path to real estate goal-setting success!

Make Goals Specific

Real estate goal setting must be specific. For example, if you’re analyzing goals for marketing efforts, you should look at where your leads are coming from rather than just setting a specific number of incoming leads. You should specify that so many should come from referrals, a defined amount should come from internet sources, and so on. This will help you measure your efforts in different marketing techniques.

Additionally, it will help you understand if you are placing an ample focus on different types of marketing methods. If you never pick up a phone and call For Sale By Owner potential clients, then you will never know how viable it is as a marketing resource.

Real estate goals should have specified priorities as well. For example, word-of-mouth referrals only matter if you sell to clients to begin with. As a result, your higher priority when starting out should be placed on leads from other sources first. Not to say that they won’t become a large portion of your lead sources, but your real estate goals must be adaptive and changing to be ready for the different periods of business you will face.

Make Goals Time-Sensitive

If you’ve ever made a goal without a time restraint, you understand how easy it is to fail — largely because there is no pressure to complete your objective in a specified timeframe. As a result, it becomes a lower priority objective that is put aside for something that’s due tomorrow or next week. And soon it becomes forgotten or written off as unnecessary.

Goals should have several different check-in points to measure your progress. If a goal has one definitive due date, it doesn’t give you much opportunity to take corrective action. By placing several checkpoints throughout the goal process, you can access what’s working, what isn’t working, and if you need to modify your goal to make it more achievable or even change your tactics.

Make Goals Measurable

Real estate goals must be measurable in order to truly carry weight. A broad goal like ‘making money’ isn’t bad to have, but knowing how you’re going to make that happen is essential. Will you sell more homes or help clients buy more homes? Measurable goals help you understand your strengths and weaknesses and adapt accordingly.

Real estate goal setting constantly includes evaluation of your efforts in measurable quantities. If you’re great at listing homes, but struggle with selling them, perhaps your goals should be modified to reflect this. As a real estate agent that is new to the industry, it’s typical to not know where your opportunities will be — which is why we always recommend a free consultation with a knowledgeable real estate coach.

Make Goals Meaningful

Any strategy should be relevant to the thing you’re trying to achieve, and real estate is no different. While saying you want to take so many vacations in a year might seem relative to the lifestyle you want to live, it’s not directly impactful to the real estate goals you’re trying to set.

In the case of goal setting for realtors, you’ll want to make sure that the strategies you set focus on are things that are important to your success. Marketing, sales, referral, educational, and other types of goals will help guide your way. These are increasingly important for newer agents, as you’ll want to master the art of spending your time where you make the biggest impact. Remember: Being busy doesn’t guarantee that you will make money.

If you make too many goals and they start to become less than meaningful, then you will detract from the importance of true goals that do matter. Each person’s definition of meaningful will vary — for some, the emphasis might be placed on sales, while others might have a more meaningful relationship with lead generation. Knowing what goals are meaningful to you in building your business is a question you will have to ask yourself when setting your real estate goals.

Make Goals Buildable

Goals should be highly adaptive to the environment they are in, and real estate is constantly evolving. Real estate goals should be buildable based on success, or lack of it, and should emphasize how to make your time the most productive in earnings.

For example, if you’re incredibly successful when working with developers, spend more time there. If you’ve spent time targeting first-time homebuyers online, and haven’t had any success, evaluate if there might be other methods of reaching your client, like speaking at first-time homebuyer seminars.

If you find yourself blowing goals away, don’t thrive in the light of a goal far-exceeded. Instead find ways to continue to challenge yourself by growing your efficiency, expanding in other areas, and becoming increasingly consistent. If one neighborhood has three of your listings, it might be worth walking and knocking on doors for the rest of it as you’ve established yourself as an expert there.

Real estate goal setting envelops many different aspects of business, from sales to marketing, socializing to SEO, and website management. Some of the goals you set might also fall on others to achieve, such as an SEO company, or leads that derive from your broker or other sources. Having open communication and setting realistic goals will help you keep others on task and accountable while you work on building your business.

If you find yourself in a rut or unsure of how to build goals that can evolve over time, consider a free consultation with a Tom Ferry real estate coach. With years of experience, our coaches know what to expect and can help you set measurable real estate goals that create a stairway to success!