Smart Agents Start Business Planning For 2018 NOW! | The Zebra Blog

Smart Agents Start Business Planning For 2018 NOW!

A successful business plan consists of three very important parts. We will be talking about each of these over the next three weeks. To create a business plan that helps you increase your income and improve your quality of life you have to first analyze your past business to get a really good assessment of how you have been operating your business. The three parts of a successful business plan include ANALYZING, VISUALIZING AND STRATEGIZING. For today let’s focus on analyzing.

PART 1: ANALYZING

Every successful business plan begins with analyzing the numbers. This includes all your numbers, you income numbers, your pending numbers, your listings, your closings and yes even your expenses. Start by looking at the numbers below. Your numbers will give you the best clues about your business. Remember, you can’t improve what you can’t measure. You need to track your numbers for the past three years to really be able to see the full picture of your business:

  • Your income (track your GCI (gross commission income)
  • Actives, Pendings, and Solds (to see your personal work pace you need to track each of these in the appropriate months) This will help you to see if there is a pattern to when you do and do not feel like working.
  • Buyer and seller sales (you want to be able to see what percentage of your business comes from each) This will help you decide whether or not you need to be working with more sellers to have more control over your time.
  • And of course, your expenses (And know what your NET income is so you can make better decisions about what you need to change moving forward.

We have made it easy to track the first three items with our free Agent GCI Tracker – complete with self-creating graphs. These make it easy to see the gaps and trends in your business and plan for correction.

For example:

If you see that your business always tapers off in November and December but surges forward in January, consider continuing to do what you usually do to get that January business, but put away the stress that comes with a business lull and just enjoy the holidays.

If you see that you do a ton of business between February and April, don’t schedule big projects or expect yourself to do any more than maintain your business during those months. Oh, and schedule some time off in May.

If you want to have a more-robust September and October, make sure you are connecting throughout the spring and early summer and that you have enough in your pipeline for the early fall you want!

Want some help putting those numbers together? We have a tool you can use to do just that! Download our Agent GCI and Activity tracker now.


If you know that 2018 is the year that you will really catapult your business to the next level, then you may be a great candidate for our Mastery program. We have a few more spots left before the end of the year so you can start off strong. Are you ready? Click here to learn more.

Call us to schedule time to talk with me about whether you are a good Mastery candidate. The call is free! Email: [email protected] or call (360) 527-8904.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tell Us What You Think!

Awesome, timely advice for real estate agents. Delivered weekly.
  • Fresh trends
  • Best practices
  • Research and statistics

Enter your email and stay on top of things,




Subscribe!