Approaching the new year seems easy enough simply because what you’re looking to do is improve on whatever it is you did the year before. It’s all about moving forward and making progress, right? But it should go without saying that it’s not as simple as “we want more revenue, more profit, more growth.” That just wouldn’t work for any operation.
As a team consisting of 60+ individual agents, we have a unique challenge. When looking to set goals for the next year we take into consideration what will be productive for both our business as a whole as well as theirs. For us, that synergy is of the utmost importance. It influences everything we do, from training right down to our marketing strategies.
When we boil down the process to a set of essential parts, we get an interesting list that we believe has a massive influence in our being ranked as the #1 top-producing team in the DMV year after year. That list looks something like this:
- Start planning early!
- Gather information on our agents’ goals
- Decide on necessary hires for support
- Build efficient onboarding processes
- Implement complementary departmental strategies
- And finally, make our budget
When it comes to planning early, it’s not a week before or even a month before. It’s closer to a whole quarter.
The Keri Shull Team’s approach is to start planning near the end of the third quarter, using in-depth data forecasts to inform the decision-making process. Having the appropriate amount of time to assess our success and construct an action plan going into January allows us to take the right steps to see that each department is servicing the game plan on the very first day of the new year.
Like anyone else, once that clock strikes midnight on December 31st, we’re already in a different mindset and thinking ahead. The last thing we need at that point is to be held up before we can even get going.
Once the high-level plans are established, we seek out the goals of each agent so we can incorporate them into the broader picture. The Keri Shull Team is at its best when each of our team members is taken into consideration and there’s continuous communication. Their goals are our goals, and vice versa.
Another reason this is so vital is that it gives us an idea of who else we may need to bring on to the team to make sure we hit even our most ambitious targets. And whatever the answer is, we have to think about how we can bring the right people in with the right kind of talent and what our timing looks like to do it. Do we have to bring on two new Client Service Specialists to meet a rapidly expanding pool of leads? If so, what’s our deadline for getting them?
Once we’re aware of what resources we need, we determine the best way to onboard those members and how to support each new hire from every angle so they can hit the ground running.
For us, it’s always been about that team structure. Staying true to this mentality during the planning stages has a positive influence on our final results.
To get where we want to be by the close of the year, we need to understand how each department will support the plan. This is where each member of our leadership team identifies a sequence of deliverables for their department that will stretch across the entire year, positioning more pertinent projects earlier in the year to get the ball rolling.
These strategies often resemble 90-day sprints that challenge us with short-term, attainable goals so we’re not staring down mammoth challenges without much preparation. In 2021, we set a new company record by closing over 1,100 deals. Had we simply chanted that number as if it were some incantation, ignoring what piecemeal goals would lead us there, we would have surely come up short.
Around the same time departmental strategies are being gathered, we begin constructing our budget. This includes everything from our expected new hires to new equipment for our marketing video team.
Surely this isn’t the only way to approach setting goals, and it’s only a trimmed-down version of a much more detailed playbook, but we take pride in our process and how it’s driven us to new heights.
If you want to get a closer look at how we operate throughout the year, well, we’re always looking to expand our team! Come join the Keri Shull Team as we continue to set the standard for real estate service in the DMV area.
