Happy New Year to everyone out there in the world of real estate and new home sales. Typically, at the beginning of the year we all sit down and make our goals for the upcoming year. This is something that I have done for a few decades and believe is a healthy habit.
With the many sales teams that I coach monthly, we always start the New Year with an in-depth business goal setting session. I have learned to break this down into a few meaningful parts.
- Look back: What are we grateful for in the past year, that we would like to continue and encourage to flourish?
- Look Forward: Then we focus on financial goals sales and sales conversion ratios and take a realistic look at what we need to accomplish weekly, and monthly to attain our goals.
- Actionable items: Lastly, how do we get there in terms of activities, from managing our own business, to prospecting and follow up? We cover all of this in depth.
For example, if your sales goal is 36 sales for the year, which is three homes per month, we all know that appointments with your “be-backs” or return guests leads to sales. Research shows that approximately three be-back appointments lead to one sale, so with this in mind to reach your goal of 36 sales you will need to create 108 be-back appointments, or 9 per month which whittles down just over two per week.
In this example if you are off track with return guests then you can work hard on improving this part of your sales process, until it becomes a habit. This is just one example of how we can self-manage our sales and prospecting process to ensure our success.
This is where habits come in. If what we are discussing is new or occurs intermittently, then what would suggest that things will be any different in 2025? My challenge to you as either a salesperson or a sales leader and coach, is to embrace what you want to change and turn it into a bona fide habit.
Please think about elements of your life that are almost on auto pilot. For example, if you work away from your home, tell me three things that you noticed on your drive in to work today. You probably can’t remember more than one thing, because you have made that same drive so many times, you are on auto pilot, otherwise known as “highway hypnosis;” and your brain is coasting. Imagine the first week in a new job, and you would remember all the new sights and sounds on your drive in with ease.
When I am home (as opposed to on the road coaching), I am always the first up, usually around 6:30 AM. I make coffee and prepare breakfast and daily vitamins for my lovely family. Now with our puppy Bailey, I take her out for her morning business, before we have an accident inside the house.
I love this personal quiet time to reflect and think about creating a wonderful day and perform these healthy rituals without even thinking about them. I used to go to the gym occasionally, but learned during Covid to go for a long walk every morning instead and listen to helpful podcasts or audio books. .
James Clear calls this “Habit Stacking” in his must-read book “Atomic Habits.”
It has been a few years of doing this, and I am addicted to this healthy routine for both body and mind. When it comes to my wardrobe, I have taken a leaf out of Einstein’s personal play book. He had the same exact suits lined up, so he could free up his mind and focus on more important subjects such as relativity and time.
I am not comparing myself to dear old Albert, but I only have blue shirts, they are lined up according to type and shades, so they are easy to find. I know this seems like very compulsive behavior, but it means that I spend mere seconds thinking about my clothes every day. I hope these insights into my daily activities daily habits haven’t scared you too much. However, the experts have proven that when you ritualize your daily activities this frees up your mind for the larger activities that require deeper concentration.
How to Create a Successful Sales Habit
The epiphany I had recently as a sales trainer, is that as much as we may preach the fundamentals of a salesperson’s routine, what are we doing as managers and coaches to ensure that these essential activities become an actual habit, and part of their routine.
People argue about the of time it takes to create a habit; differing experts say from thirty days to three months. I would suggest this may be the case with a brand new activity, but it takes longer if you are changing old habits. Worst of all, unless you fervently protect the routine, these new habits can be broken easily, and we can relapse into the old habits we are trying to change.
Let’s explore some of the habits that I would suggest are essential for new-home salespeople to create consistent and long-term success.
- Follow Up. A planned combination of phone calls, texts and emails, all with a purpose to bring the client back with a meaningful planned encounter.
- Sales Training and Sales Preparedness. Role playing sales processes. Plus understanding the differences between home plans, features, and benefits, and the differences between home sites or views. Being prepared for objections with the right questions and answers.
- Prospecting for qualified clients. This includes Realtor outreach, increasing referrals, and generating qualified clients through appropriate social media channels if applicable to your company’s directives. Maintenance of your models, and community.
- Client Experience. Hand-holding current clients to ensure that they have an enjoyable experience building a home with you and your company.
- Competition Viewing the competition and understanding the differences.
My point is, are all of these activities just things that you think about occasionally, often with a twinge of guilt that you can’t focus on them with the dedication you know they deserve; or have they become a habit? I was fortunate to have worked in a large community with over 2,000 homes to sell for a decade. This allowed me the opportunity to create ritualized sales activities, that led to my consistent success.
For example, three days a week for 90 minutes, I focused solely on follow up. I marked my calendar as this was sacred time for me to bring back all those folks that hadn’t bought and didn’t have appointments yet. Twice a month, I would walk all the homes that I had sold, so I could come back and contact my buyers with updates.
Occasionally, I would find mistakes, which I could chat with construction about, and remedy way before it became an issue for the clients. The first Wednesday of the month I would visit the dozen Realtor offices, which I had made into my “Realtor Farm Base”. And once a month I would either host a Realtor breakfast at my model or a Realtor's office.
Once a month on the second Wednesday, I would go and visit our competitors and look at exactly what they were doing in terms of models, move in ready homes and incentives. All of these activities, I had turned into habits to both ensure that they were accomplished, but also to free my mind up for other much needed more complex activities that needed my focus and attention.
As managers the same methodical planning concepts are still valid. In my monthly management huddles one of the consistent topics is always meetings, from type, length, topics, and cadence. One of my managers dedicated herself to setting up three months of sales meetings at a time. The where and when is easy, but the what and the why take more planning.
This manager will literally create a meeting plan for each week, which includes topics, training, trade partner attendance, salesperson competition shops and some fun and games. By doing this she just freed up time every week that was being needlessly spent on this, now to be used for other far more positive and meaningful activities.
So in order to thrive in 2025, go ahead and focus on the areas of your business and sales process that you would like to improve and dedicate yourself to cultivate the activities to turn them into the sales habits for your prolonged and sustained success.