Scotsman Guide - February 2009 Residential Edition

Planning a Successful Year: 6 Steps

Remember: The best-laid plans lead to nothing without solid action

By Tom Ninness, vice president and regional production manager, Cherry Creek Mortgage

This time of year is perfect for setting new goals. But this process involves a lot of planning, which will mean nothing without the effort to move ahead and take action.

Here are six steps to get you started in making this a successful year.

1. Analyze your business: Ask the following questions.

■ Where do you want to be for the com-
ing year?
■ How many of your leads generate how
many closings and in how many hours?
■ What is your hourly rate?
■ Where are the leads coming from? Are
they solid or time-wasters?

■ How effective is your office time? Are you working effectively or just killing time?

2. Calculate your desired income: Break this down by month, by week, by day and by hour. First, determine the number of transactions you need to make your desired income. For example, you could decide that to make $100,000 a year, you must complete 22 transactions. Assuming that you can close 25 percent of all transactions that

cross your desk, divide 22 by 25 percent to determine you need 88 appointments a year to create $100,000. If your lead-to-appointment conversion ratio is 20 percent, you will need 440 leads (88 divided by 20 percent) to make this work.

3. Search for leads: With all those leads necessary to create a steady flow of appointments and closings, it will take some serious planning. It’s now time to start listing potential leads.

Reach into areas you’ve never considered, and remember that each person knows an average of 250 people. If people you know don’t need your services, they could know someone who does.

Equally important is carving out the daily time to prospect. Put the office on hold, change your voice mail to indicate specific times of the day for returning calls, and hit the phone for serious calling. Expect to spend at least two hours per day digging up leads. Field your professional referral sources and the usual friends, family and neighbors for leads. Remember that sharing leads is a two-way street; giving is as important as receiving.

4. Plan wisely: The cliché goes: “People don’t plan to fail, but they sometimes

fail to plan.” Building a plan before you arrive for work makes it easier to achieve goals daily.

Don’t allow the phone or visitors to direct your time. Allowing people with the loudest voices to demand your attention, rather than taking care of the most-important priorities on your plate, will continually sabotage your daily actions. Always know your next step toward productive action.

5. Manage your appetite: What seems to be overwhelming now can be broken down into smaller, more-manageable prospects. For example, say that tomorrow, you plan to work on a three-hour project. But with interruptions and meetings, finding a three-hour chunk of time is difficult — and you might put off the task because there seems to be no time for it. Instead, schedule a small bite, a step or two that might take 20 or 30 minutes. Then put the next step on the “to do” list and the next step after that on the following day’s list. You may take several days, but you will finish the project.

In addition, remember that interruptions tend to occur early in the day versus later in the day and early in the week

instead of later in the week. Plan projects around those interruption patterns.

6. Set a deadline: Have you ever failed to achieve a New Year’s resolution? If so, it’s likely that you didn’t set a deadline. Deadlines move us to action. Without a deadline, things wind up in our “as soon as possible” pile, a Neverland where items are attended to “someday” or “when I get the time.”

Create a deadline that will move you to action. Make the elephant on your list the priority, eliminate procrastination, build your action plan and make it a successful year from here on out.

Tom Ninness is vice president and regional production manager for Cherry Creek Mortgage in Denver. He also is the president of Summit Champions Inc. and creator of The 90-Day

Journey to Your Sales Success, a 90-day action plan for the sales professional. To learn more, go to www.90dayjourney.com and www.summitchampions.com. Contact Ninness at information@summitchampions.com or (720) 221-4396.

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