As CEO of your own business (most of you work with a broker, but you are in charge of the success or failure of YOUR business), you are responsible for business development:

Planning.  Budgeting.  Building Your Brand.  Marketing.  Prospecting.  Systems.  Follow-up.

Many people leave that to chance.  They say they are too busy.  But if they do not market and prospect, there will be no business - especially in this market.

                                      Hope is NOT a marketing strategy!

Start with a plan.  You need to know your numbers.  Every top agent treats real estate as a business-their business!  Decide what you want to earn.  Break it down into number of transactions needed.  Next, break it down into how many prospects you need to generate the income you desire.  Build a large database. Add to it every day.  Prepare a budget.  You need to know how much you are spending and what is working.  Today, eliminate ANY unnecessary expenditures.  In the last blog we discussed learning technology.  There are so many FREE and cost effective ways to market your-self online. Build your brand on social networks today.  That is where the Gen X & Gen Y buyers are. 64% of first time buyers are under 35.  Use your website to market yourself and your listings.  Syndicate your listings.  Drive traffic to your personal website with smart value propositions and use web capture to obtain emails.  A CRM -customer relations management system - is essential to stay in touch.  Agents aren't very good at consistently staying in touch- they just aren't.  (I apologize to the 12 people out there who are good at it!)  Find an automated system and use it.  Import your database and send out an e-newsletter or a market update every month.  Call people; we need to personalize our communication.  Check to see what is working- don't keep spending money on things that do not yield results!  Google docs have free spreadsheets. Google also has free analytic tools to help you see what is working.

Build your business a day at a time.  You're in this for the long term.  Right now it is a challenge.  The market always turns.  Lay the groundwork today for an extraordinary business.

And, most of all FOLLOW-UP!  Every day.  Schedule it.  If you schedule it- you will do it!

Gary Keller, who was in town for a seminar shared a quote from Peter Marshall that is so apropos: "Diamonds are made under pressure."

What are YOU doing to build your business today?