2007 A Stager's Post Mortem - An "Autopsy" of the Past Year

Down Time?

This is for my fellow stagers and redesigners, but others in the Real Estate Profession may consider a similar tactic for examining the past year.

If you are blogging, you probably have a pretty good account of what your business has been through this last year. You can spot the slow time, heckticly crazy times, and time where you were just humming along at a comfortable place. You probably have an account of what business realtionships totally worked, the ones that you learned from, and perhaps you have redefined "what works" for you.

So, as you put 2007 to rest, make an account of all this learning in a private document for yourself or your team. We can learn the most about life, business, humanity, etc from introspect into ourselves.

Here are a few questions you may want to consider when you examine your past year:

21 General Questions for a Stager's Post Mortem

1. Which aspects of my marketing were effective? 
2. What can I do better as far as marketing goes?
3. Which aspects of my PR Campaign were successful?
4. How Can I create better PR for my company?
5. Am I proud if my finished staging projects? What have I learned from them?
6. What was the single most frustrating part of a particular project or projects in general?
7. How would I do things differently to create a better outcome for a particlular project or projects in general?
8. What was the most fullfilling or professionally satisfying part of particular project or projects in general?
9. Which methods, systems, or processes worked well for me?
10. Which method, system, or process was difficult or frustrating to encorporate?
11. If I could change anything about a particular project, what would it be?
12. Did my Associations or Affiliations support me sufficiently? If not, how might their support improve? Which affiliations are necessary for my success?
13. How accurate were my original estimates for the size, effort, and expense of our staging projectsin general? What did I tend to over or under estimate?
14. How could I have improved my estimate of size, effort, and expense so that it was more accurate?
15. Did I employ the right people for the job? (If no, how can I make sure that I get the right people next time?
16. Describe any early warning signs of problems that occurred later in a project? How should I have reacted to these signs? How can I be sure to notice these early warning signs next time?
17. Could I have completed certain staging projects without one or more of our vendors/contractors? If so, how?
18. Is there a type of vendor or proffessional I can seek in the future?
19. Were there any difficulties in scheduling a vendor? How could these have been avoided?
20. Were there any difficulties setting up vendor paperwork or getting the vendor started? How could these have been avoided?
21. Did I clearly communticate the goals, time frames, and other elements regarding schedule to our clients and partner/vendors?
22. How can I improve my overall work process?

Help! Can you think of more? There can be specific questions about PR -- More Marketing questions, specifics, etc. I would love to have help creating this list. Please feel free to use for yourself! Thank you!

Giving credit where credit is due...Hubby is on the XBOX team - the group holds POST MORTEMS on every game they ship. Thanks Dear!