When you become an adult, very few people explain how you are doing. It’s not like you get a grade at things like paying your bills, getting to work timely, and functioning well with co-workers. Maybe, though in real life we do get graded on these things. For instance, simply stated, you don’t readily pay your bills–you have a rough credit score. You don’t get to work timely several times, you might loose your job. You don’t function well with your co-workers, maybe you get passed up for that big promotion.
Real Estate is pretty simple–sure we could break it down to bits and pieces, but at the end of the day, how do you tell if you real estate agent or brokerage is doing as they should? Simple–do they produce? Do they sell property? I mean, what else is there–someone is going to shout out customer satisfaction, maybe days on market, or possibly list to sales price ratios. I have to say these are all important factors to consider, but all of those factors add up to “Did they get the job done?”
The good news is, I think we passed (if we graded on a curve, I think we even got an “A”). The Five County Board of Realtors discontinued the “Top office in Volume and Dollars Award” numerous years ago, but production is something I track like a hawk. Sure we get these category awards—basically everyone is looped in based on individual production. It is of my opinion, individual production is a poor measure of a firms success. Everyone knows the cliche, “Your as strong as your weakest link.” It’s about the group. Should you hire a company for one individual to market your home? I don’t think so, what if that person you hired is busy–people don’t like to wait, they go on. It’s about the firm as a whole. Do I study what other firms are doing, and what they produce? Absolutely. It’s one of many duties you have to preform to remain relevant in our market environment. What’s even more important is how we produced compared to our previous years production. So, how did we stack up to the competition this year? How did we stack up to ourselves in the past?
Long story short–not as good as I’d hoped. I thought we were going to break records this past year. We have room for growth and improvement. We believe with the addition of a new sales associate, and an addition to our already skilled administrative staff–we are going to do something in 2017. So far, I believe that we are on target for this goal. We are only halfway through the first quarter and our sales volume is on path with years like 2013.
The question of where we are going though I think is best displayed looking at past performance of not only our competitors but ourselves. Very few companies really saw the proficient uptick between ’15 and 16′ . In the near future we are going to discuss in upcoming blog posts, what we feel these factors are that separate us in production/customer service/and cost.
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Am I proud to be a part of our team, and what we achieved? You’re darn right I am. We produce more than any firm in our area–but it’s about more than that, it’s about striving to do better in our field. We’d like to thank our clients for this past year, and here’s to a better 2017.
