Business Planning Week 4
The last installment of business planning includes some direction and a few observations. Each of us has to understand what it is we are trying to accomplish in our business as well as the path we take, the hours we invest, and the people we choose to surround ourselves with.
The choice is always as simple as proactive vs reactive; transactional vs relational. You get to make these choices and to try and live in the middle is doomed to failure. My favored choice is for my clients to live in the world of proactive-relational business because I feel it holds the most security and longevity. It’s not that you can’t make a living being a reactive transactionalist, but why would you?
The choices as to what you would like to accomplish have to hold meaning for you personally, but also possess significant standards based on the quality and quantity of your time, as well as the client experience. Making sure your time is invested in the quality of the client experience is one of the best investments you can make. The results of making these investments must return to you a quality of life equal to or greater than those of other professionals. Mortgage originators can live on 3 or 5 transactions a month from an income basis; they just won’t survive on a professional basis.
Your business plan must pay attention to the tools available in our industry as well as following the acceptance of recent changes in behavior to social gathering, contact, and technology. There are still originators not using video. More than eight years ago I share this important tool and many have come to the front this year as if they “discovered” something. Video and social media are powerful tools, but just like email, if you use it wrong or too frequently, people tune you out!
The last part is to be sure you understand the math you are looking at. Yes, your business should be significantly better than planned for last year, but what do the numbers really show? What is your balance of business? If total applications are about 60/40 refinance to purchase nationally, what is your market and what is your balance? Of the portion that is purchase, does that meet up with the overall improvement in home sales in your area, and does that purchase number reflect enough purchase business to meet your targeted numbers when refinances start to slow down?
All of these questions are important to look at as part of your projections and targets for 2021. As we have seen this year, we can plan and the market may have other ideas! However, if we fail to plan, we have nothing to make adjustments off of and we are just floating adrift like a rudderless boat in the ocean!
The business planning webinar is next Tuesday October 27th at 1pm eastern time. As always, this webinar will be recorded and posted on the website shortly thereafter for you to use at any time or as frequently as you like.
Questions or comments: [email protected]
