Holding the Team Accountable to the Business Plan

It’s the fourth quarter of the year. Time to start planning the team’s goals for the next year.

Besides creating and reviewing your MVVBP for your team, you’ll also want to create your business plan for the following year. Most teams do this at a fourth quarter planning meeting. You can take this meeting off-site and spend several hours in a private or semi-private area at a restaurant or borrow a large conference room from your title company or loan officer if you don’t have a large enough space in your own building.

I’m not going to talk too much about how to create this plan because my friend Brian Icenhower over at The Real Estate Trainer has done a great job of outlining the steps needed in his post A Real Estate Business Plan on One Page. You can download this 1-3-5 Form to create this plan for your team.

Deciding Who Is Responsible

When you meet with the team to develop your business plan, you’ll want to decide who is responsible for each Strategy. Actually write their name in parentheses at the end of each Strategy so everyone knows who is ultimately responsible. This doesn’t mean that person is solely responsible for accomplishing that Strategy. It just means that person is responsible for making sure that Strategy gets implemented or completed.

For example, one of our Strategies under our lead generation Priority this year was to door knock a target neighborhood every other week. I was assigned to make sure this Strategy was implemented, and I was held accountable for making sure it got done. To be clear, I was not personally doing the door knocking. The agents on the team did that. But it was my responsibility to make sure that a flyer was printed for the neighborhood and that time was blocked on the agents’ calendar. I would choose the neighborhood or ask the agents which neighborhood they wanted to target and I made sure they had the materials and time to do the actual door knocking.

Holding the Team Accountable

As the executive assistant, it’s my job to make sure everyone does what they are supposed to. So if a Strategy is assigned to a different person, I still need to make sure they are getting it done.

At our weekly team meetings, we review our 1-3-5 to make sure everything is getting accomplished. Along the way, we might decide to change something, take something out, or put something new in. This business plan doesn’t have to be set in stone. But without a plan in place, the team is likely to be directionless. Even if you are a team of two, this business plan is critical. It’s one thing to set a goal and proclaim your team is going to sell X number of houses for the year. It’s quite another to have a written plan in place that everyone can see and that everyone is held accountable to in order to actually achieve that goal.

If someone is struggling with a Strategy, it’s my job to help them uncover why they are struggling and get them to take the next step. Sometimes people get caught up in being overwhelmed with a Strategy. If it’s my transaction coordinator’s job to build and implement a housewarming party system, she may get overwhelmed if she doesn’t even know where to start. That’s where I can give direction or ask questions like, “What would the perfect housewarming party look like?” and then build from there.

I see teams struggle with this piece of the business. And I am by no means saying our team is perfect about sticking to a plan either. But when you find the team struggling to meet goals or becoming lethargic or directionless, going back to this plan can certainly help.

What’s your team’s plan for the year? If you’ve got a business plan written and want an extra set of eyes on it, I’m happy to look it over and give you my thoughts. Just email me: egilbert AT kw DOT com.