Realistic Goals for New Real Estate Agents

Embarking on a career as a real estate agent is an exciting journey, filled with limitless potential. If you’re new to the industry, one of the most important steps you can take to pave the way to success is setting clear and meaningful real estate goals for new agents. Goal setting provides a roadmap, guiding you toward your desired destination while keeping you focused and motivated.

In this post, we’ll review a variety of strategies for developing solid realistic goals for new real estate agents. Realtor goals can serve as the foundation for a highly successful and profitable career in our industry. But to achieve success, you have to embrace the mindset to take real estate goal setting seriously.

DOES HAVING A REAL ESTATE GOAL MATTER?

The short answer is YES! Top-performing real estate agents focus on goal-setting to guide their daily prospecting activities. In a broad sense, here are the benefits of setting real estate goals and objectives:

Goals Help You Address What You’d Like to Achieve in Your Life

The great thing about the process of goal-setting is that it helps you to zero in on what you want to accomplish, not only in real estate, but in your life in general. What’s you know what you want to achieve, you can establish priorities for your journey.

You can obviously start with long-term goals (i.e. I want to retire at 40!) as a starting point. Then, you work on the short-term goals that lead toward your ultimate, long-term goals.

Goal setting is about what will most impact your life, and moves your focus away from immediate gratification.

Goal Setting Gives You Focus

The great thing about setting clear goals is that it helps you stay focused and on task.

When you operate without goals, it’s easy to lose your focus, get sidetracked and get frustrated. Goals help you to stay motivated, and motivation is essential to achieving the most important, long-term goals that will define your life.

When you keep your “eye on the prize,” you are much less likely to get distracted, or frustrated.

Goal Setting Helps You Stay Productive

Real estate goals help you to stay motivated, which, in turn, helps you to be more productive. As any top performing real estate agent will tell you, production (i.e. prospecting, lead generation) is the key to a successful career. With productivity comes success, and success gives you a true sense of accomplishment which translates to even greater motivation.

Goal Setting Can Take You Out of Your Comfort Zone

Top producing real estate agents know that frequent (i.e. daily) prospecting is the cornerstone to a successful, and profitable career. For the majority of real estate agents, especially those newer to our industry, the thought of phone prospecting can be intimidating.

But when you start to look at the priorities in your life, and focus on what you need to do to achieve those priorities, you can learn to work outside of your comfort zone on the road to meeting your realtor goals.

Perhaps we can look to motivational guru Tony Robbins for some inspiration:

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”

REAL ESTATE AGENT GOALS CAN WORK

If you’re skeptical about the idea of setting goals, consider some of these statistics:

1. According to a survey by TD Bank, visualizing and imagining your goals can make you twice as confident in achieving them. Only 31 percent of those who don’t visualize feel confident about achieving their goals, as opposed to 59 percent of those who visualize.
2. A study by Forbes found that people who vividly describe their goals in written form are 1.2 or 1.4 more likely to be successful than those who don’t.
3. A study by the Journal of Applied Psychology reveals that presenting weekly progress reports of your goal increases your success rate by as much as 40 percent.
4. According to a study by ASTD, working with an accountability partner gives you a 65 percent chance of reaching a goal. We’ll discuss accountability partners in the next section.
5. In a study published in PSYCNet challenging and specific goals resulted in better performance than easy goals, no goals, or “do your best” goals.
6. Frontiers in Psychology reviewed more than 1,000 studies and found that setting high goals results in better task performance, motivation, and persistence compared to vague goals.

REAL ESTATE GOALS FOR NEW AGENTS

Following are some broad guidelines to help set realistic goals for new real estate agents:

• Defining Your Vision: As we said above, before diving into real estate goal setting, it’s crucial to envision your ultimate destination. What do you hope to achieve as a real estate agent? Is it financial freedom, professional recognition, or the ability to provide the kind of exceptional customer service that translates to referrals? Take some time to reflect on your aspirations and create a clear vision of where you want to be in the real estate industry.
• SMART Goals: Once you have a vision in mind, it’s time to turn it into actionable goals. A widely recognized framework for goal setting is the SMART method:
  • Specific: Define your goals with precision. Instead of saying, “I want to sell more properties,” specify a target like: “I want to have 25 transactions in the coming year.” It might help you to create a simple real estate goals template to help you keep track of your goals.
  • Measurable: Set goals that are quantifiable so that you can track your progress. Establish metrics or milestones to evaluate your achievements along the way.
  • Achievable: Ensure that your goals are realistic and attainable. Set ambitious targets but consider your resources, skills, and market conditions to avoid setting yourself up for failure.
  • Relevant: Align your goals with your long-term vision and aspirations. Make sure they are relevant to your real estate career and contribute to your overall development and success. It might help to keep a real estate goal setting worksheet on your desk as a constant reference point.
  • Time-bound: Set deadlines for your goals. This adds a sense of urgency and helps you prioritize your efforts effectively.
• Short-term and long-term goals: To create a comprehensive roadmap, it’s important to have both short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals provided immediate direction and keep you motivated, while long-term goals give you a sense of purpose and help you plan for the future.
• Break It Down: Large goals can feel overwhelming, especially when starting out as a new real estate agent. To prevent becoming discouraged, break your goals down into smaller, actionable steps. By breaking them into bite-sized tasks, you can tackle them systematically, making progress more manageable and achievable.
• Regularly Review and Revise: Goal setting is not a one-time task. It requires regular review and revision. As you progress in your real estate career, circumstances and priorities may change. Take the time to evaluate your goals periodically, assessing your progress and adjusting them as necessary. At minimum, it’s good to get into the practice of doing a mid-year review. Our blog post your MID-YEAR REVIEW CHECKLIST provides some excellent tips for such a review.
• Stay Accountable and Seek Support: Accountability plays a crucial role in achieving your Share your goals with a trusted mentor, colleague, or friend who can provide support in order to hold you accountable.

MEETING YOUR REAL ESTATE AGENT GOALS

Setting a real estate goal is a critical first step for a new agent. But even the best real estatae goals and objectives can fall short unless you build a solid support foundation to ensure your success. In this section, we offers some simple tips on how to maximize the impact of goal setting.

• Accountability Partners: An accountability partner is an individual (or individuals) with whom you mutually agree to coach and provide feedback on a regular basis. As we discuss in our blog post ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNERS: 5 POINTS TO REMEMBER, there are some obvious benefits to having an accountability partner.
• Role Playing: Many agents start each morning with 30-60 minutes of role-playing with another agent. Role playing gets them in the right frame of mind for hitting the phone for their morning prospecting calls. If you’d like to have a role-playing partner, Espresso Agent can connect you with someone. CLICK HERE for details.
• Hire A Coach: A common strategy shared by most top producing agents is to invest in a personal real estate coach. Instead of looking at a coach as an expense (which can easily be cut), it helps to frame the decision as a long-term investment in your business. As to whether or not you need a coach, consider if any, or a combination of the following statements apply to you:
  • You get easily frustrated from the frequent rejections that are common to real estate selling.
  • You find it difficult to stay focused.
  • You’re not very good at visualizing what success looks like.

Our blog post SHOULD YOU HIRE A REAL ESTATE COACH includes other statements, as well as tips on how to approach the idea of hiring a coach.

TOP PERFORMERS TURN TO ESPRESSO AGENT

There are many reasons why Espresso Agent be valuable in helping to set and achieve realistic goals for new real estate agents. Here are three of these reasons:

1. Espresso Agent delivers the BEST REAL ESTATE LEADS in the business to your desk top every morning. In order to define solid real estate goals for new agents, you need to start with accurate, proven data, such as those that Espresso Agent provides: expireds, FSBOs, FRBOs and pre-foreclosure leads.
2. Espresso Agent’s best-in-class CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software makes it easy to stay on task during lead follow-up.
3. We know how challenging it can be for new agent to make their mark in our highly competitive industry. That’s why Espresso Agent is heavily invested in building community so you are never alone as you march toward achieving your goals. Our twice-weekly Launch webinars, and weekly Today’s Brew show connect you with agents from around the country for support and idea-sharing.

If you’d like to learn more about Espresso Agent, CONTACT US HERE. 

Doug Spak

Doug Spak joined Espresso Agent as a Content Marketing Specialist in 2016. Doug brings nearly four decades of experience as a copywriter, blogger, and screenwriter to his role with Espresso. Since joining our team, Doug has actively updated website content, published more than 300 blogs, and created countless social media posts.