A-to-Z Guide to Real Estate Goal Setting for Realtors with Examples

In this article, I’m going to lead you in the process of identifying, documenting, and achieving goals in real estate.

How do we identify goals? How do we make sure they are documented? And, more broadly, how do we actually achieve the goals that we’ve set?

Before we kick this off, I want to give you a little bit of a brief background of who I am and why I’m sharing this with you today.

My name is James Houghtaling. I have been a coach, a trainer, a speaker for 25 years, and I have literally had the privilege of working with thousands of individual agents, team leaders, broker owners, and managers.

So in this guide that we exclusively created for Real Estate Bees, we’re going to learn what a goal is and some dos and don’ts when it comes to setting goals.

We will also touch on the several types of goals, and why it is important to aim at different types of goals.

We’re going to look at five key areas that are an absolute must when it comes to this whole concept of identifying real estate agent goals and objectives.

Also, we are going to talk about ways to track your goals, including the metrics that are important in the process of tracking them.

We are going to finish up by looking at the foundation of your business. Because the goals are simply one part. They are one element in the process of building the foundation of your business.

If you’re ready, let’s go ahead and dive into it!

This conversation of talking through goals, how to go about business planning, and how to build a roadmap is an absolutely critical conversation that I have had with lots and lots of people just like you.

What Is a Goal in Real Estate?

So, first of all, let’s go back to the first thing I suggested, which is understanding what a goal is. What is it and what do we mean when we talk about goal setting for real estate agents?

A goal is simply a target. It is a desired outcome that you have in your business.

Now, you might probably have personal goals as well. These goals that you set for yourself are actually even more important than the goals that you set for your business.

Your business is really a composite of your life. It’s a stepping stone. It’s a means to create the design and the kind of life that you want to have. That’s what a goal is.

We’ve heard about the importance of achieving success, and we all want to feel like we’re moving in the direction of becoming a successful realtor.

One of the best definitions that I’ve heard in my entire life came from a gentleman that you’ve probably heard of before. His name is Earl Nightingale.

Earl Nightingale once said that success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal. So, the point is that this is not something that we achieve overnight.

This is something that we are moving toward. Once we reach a certain level, it’s important that we figure out what the next goal is.

What is the next level? What does that next level look like when it comes to your specific business, the size of your organization, and ultimately, your life?

One of the things that I felt was important to share, and it’s kind of built into this whole outline, is that if you aim at nothing, you’re guaranteed to hit it.

This isn’t just stumbling through life. This isn’t just winging it in your business.

This is systematically designing a process that is intended to bring you to an outcome that you desire. That’s what we’re looking at when talking about how to set real estate goals for realtors.

Dos and Don’ts of Setting Goals for Real Estate Agents

So, let’s talk about some dos and don’ts when it comes to setting goals.

I think it’s important to note that for a lot of people, not just agents, the problem isn’t that they don’t achieve their real estate sales and marketing goals.

The problem is they never set any goals in the first place.

I think a lot of that is because they don’t understand what it means to set meaningful goals.

So, here are some things that you want to do.

4 Dos of Setting Goals

#1 Think it through. The first thing that you want to do is ask yourself, “what are your goals for your real estate agent career?”

Don’t just rush into a goal. Don’t just write down the first simple idea that comes to your mind and say, “hey, that’s my goal.”

You need to think it through. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to your future to really think about “what is my goal as a real estate agent and what is a meaningful outcome for me?”

So, think it through. Put some time and effort, and invest into the process of developing the goals for yourself.

#2 Clearly define your goals. Clarity is king. You need to have clarity and to be certain and specific about your goals.

The worst thing you can have is a generic, non-specific goal.

I’ll give you an example. A lot of times I would talk to agents and ask them, “hey, what are some of your goals?” They would say, “well, I just want to do more business.”

And I would ask them again, “Okay, well, more business, what does that look like? How will you ever know if you’ve done more business?”

Or, some of them would say, “I just want to get better at my real estate agent skills and qualities,” or “I want to learn to take more listings.”

To which I would reply, “well, how many is more? And what is the process going to look like for you to actually do that?”

So, when you set and define your goals, be as specific and clear as possible about what exactly it is that you’re trying to create in terms of an outcome.

#3 Think big. Don’t limit yourself. When you are setting goals for yourself, don’t limit what you feel like you can accomplish. But, at the same time, you’ve got to balance that with what’s realistic.

Set goals that are exciting and meaningful, and don’t be afraid to go a little bit beyond what you might believe that you think you’re capable of achieving.

#4 Commit. You have to think about what it’s really going to take to achieve the goal.

I see this a lot, especially in younger and passionate agents, who get into the business and they set these exciting goals.

But the problem is they haven’t really stopped to look at the kind of research that it’s going to take to actually reach them.

Once they get going and realize what it’s actually going to require to reach their goal, sometimes they start to back away.

Sometimes they start to realize, “you know what, maybe I don’t really want that as badly as I think I did or thought I did.”

So, understand what it’s going to take. Be willing to commit to doing what it takes to reach your goals. Remember that definition: success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal.

Here’s a quick question for you: What is the most worthwhile goal that you’re aiming for right now? Do you have any? Do you have any specific, worthwhile goals, and are you progressing?

This is going to lead into this idea of tracking and paying attention to the metrics that are going to be used to measure whether we are achieving goals or not.

4 Don’ts of Setting Goals

Now, let’s look at the mistakes real estate agents make when defining their goals.

#1 Don’t set your goal based on what you think someone else expects from you. Don’t set them based on what you feel people’s expectations are, or other people’s definitions of what a goal should be for you.

This is your goal. This is about you. You own this. This is about your future.

So, don’t set your goals up just to impress somebody to make it seem like, “wow, man, what that guy or that girl is planning to achieve.”

These are specific to you. Don’t be afraid to think big. Don’t be afraid to set your goals in a way that is going to limit you from what you’re actually capable of.

A lot of times agents will say to me, “man, do you think this is realistic?”

And I’ll say, “well, I guess that depends on you, right? Is this something you really want? Is it something you’re really willing to commit to? Because if it is, it can be realistic, alright?”

#2 Don’t be afraid to adjust your goals. Don’t be afraid to go back and adjust as necessary or as needed.

Sometimes you get down a path and what you realize is that your goal and your plan gets messed up.

There’s a concept that I refer to as correct and continue. One of the things you’re going to realize in the process of moving forward down that success path is that you’ve got to readjust.

You’ve got to be okay with realigning based on a shift in the market or based on something else that’s going on in your life.

Don’t just set your goal on January 1st and say, “that’s it, I’m never modifying that. Nothing is going to change.” That’s not the way to approach goal setting.

#3 Don’t be afraid to share your goal. Don’t keep it to yourself. Put it out there. Let everybody know what you’re aiming for and what you’re trying to achieve.

That creates accountability. Accountability is one of the most important concepts in helping ensure that you actually reach your goal. So, put it out there, share it. Be honest with people.

#4 Don’t give up too soon. Don’t be so shortsighted. Don’t be so impatient that you don’t allow the process of what you’re doing to actually bring you to your goal.

Don’t stop. Don’t give up. Keep moving forward. Keep driving toward the goal that you have.

As I had mentioned, there are several different types of goals. Real estate career goal examples include:

• Short-term goals
• Long-term goals
• Organizational-level goals

But first, let’s talk about setting realistic goals.

Realistic Goals for New Real Estate Agents

When we talk about realistic goals, we have to measure and balance that between:

• What is possible
• What is so big that it’s really not likely and it’s just going to discourage us

Let’s be honest, that’s a fine line that we need to learn to walk.

But here are some general guidelines. So, let’s say, we’re talking about production goals, meaning the number of units that you want to close.

For example, as part of your first-year real estate goals, you have done somewhere between zero deals and maybe 10 deals in the last 12 months.

It is totally fine and realistic to have as a goal to double your production in the next 12 months.

So, if you did eight deals in the last 12, you will be aiming to do 16 in the next 12. If you’re more in that range of say, 10 to 20 transactions, then somewhere between maybe a 50% to 75% increase.

It’s very realistic. No reason that you can’t add 50% to 75% in the next 12 months if you’re in that window.

If you’re in the 20- to 35-deal-a-year range, maybe you’ve been doing a couple of deals a month pretty consistently.

At that point, you’re probably somewhere between 35% to 50% in terms of an increase. There’s no reason that you can’t take a third of that and add it on in the next 12 months. That is still very realistic.

Now, if you’re already doing 35 or more transactions, a good rule of thumb, year in and year out, is to strive for at least a 25% increase.

So, let’s say you did 40 deals in the last 12 months. Twenty-five percent is 10, that means you are waiting for 50 deals. That’s a minimum in the next 12 months.

Now, again, these are just guidelines. Some agents are a lot more driven and focused. They have a lot more resources to put into building their production, so they might be able to increase that.

Those are just some general things that would keep you within a range that we might consider realistic.

Short-Term Goals for Real Estate Agents

Short-term goals, in my opinion, would be something that you’ve set literally for the next 24 hours, or it might be over the next 30 days.

It’s important to be clear, at the beginning of every day, what your main outcomes are for the next 24 hours. Over these next 24 hours, what are the key things that you want to achieve?

Those are very short-term goals, but they should be very specific. They are totally derived from the bigger picture, or the longer-term goal that you’re aiming toward.

I would recommend that you do a process that I call “smart day” or a think-time to begin your day.

Let it be your morning routine or ritual where you decide what your outcomes are, what your main objectives are for the next 24 hours.

It’s also important to have a one-month business plan, if you cannot do weekly real estate goals. At the beginning of every month, you want to establish new goals for this 30-day period.

It can be production goals, meaning how many deals you want to put together.

It might be appointment goals, or it might be a specific system of your business that you want to really focus on and improve in the next 30 days.

Long-Term Goals for Real Estate Agents

Long-term goals for your real estate business are typically anywhere from quarterly to annual goals.

So, we might take for an entire 90-day period and say, “hey, this is what I need to achieve in my business. This is the goal for my organization over the next 90 days.”

Again, be clear, be specific, think them through. Define exactly what you want things to look like at the end of that 90-day period, or over this next 12 months.

So, again, a 12-month vision for your business, for your income, for the size of your organization. Those are all examples of longer-term or annual goals for real estate agents.

It’s simply based on the time frame. That separates short-term from long-term goals.

Real Estate Company Goals

Maybe some of you are broker owners or team leaders working on building an organization. There are certain types of real estate team goals that are going to apply even more specifically to you.

This is more of a company-level or organizational-level goal. There are a lot of different metrics and targets that you would use to set up a company-wide or an organizational goal.

One example might be market share. You might set a goal for what percentage of market share you want to have over the next 12 months or the next 24 months, based on the number of units that your company sells compared to the total.

You might have a recruiting and retention goal that you set for yourself, which is simply how big you want your organization to get.

What is your goal in terms of how many new people you want to bring on, new team members, new licensees to your agency, and then retaining them?

It doesn’t do any good to recruit people if you are losing them out the back door just as fast, so you’ve got to have a retention goal.

There are also certain things that would be built into that to make sure that they want to stay.

These may include choosing an effective real estate brokerage software, creating a dynamic culture and having a great real estate coaching program available, awesome systems that they can tap into and utilize to expand their business and leverage their time.

These are all examples of things that you can build into your recruiting and retention goal because you want to maintain those people in your organization.

And, of course, there are production goals, on a company level. What is the volume level you want to hit? What’s the number of transactions you want to hit, etc?

As I said earlier, it doesn’t do any good to set a goal if you aren’t paying attention along the way to whether you’re actually achieving it or not.

I think that’s something that a lot of agents and organizations simply don’t want to take the time to do.

A lot of people set goals, but they have no idea of where they stand in relation to those goals.

Now, the people that I work with get to use a numbers analyzer. Here is a link for you to download the actual numbers analyzer that I use and a setup video to go ahead and set that up for you.

Here’s one of the things you need to understand about tracking your numbers, tracking your metrics, or measuring your goals.

The numbers of your business are like a mirror. Let’s be honest, there are a lot of times when, especially when you get up early in the morning, you don’t want to look in the mirror.

You don’t want to see the reality of what you look like at that particular moment.

I find there are a lot of agents and business owners who don’t want to look at their numbers. They don’t want to see the truth or the reality of where they’re at.

True business owners know their numbers. Business owners understand their numbers, and they know what their numbers are telling them.

Because, here’s the thing: your metrics, your numbers will always tell a story, but they will never lie.

Your job is to know what to track, and understand what those metrics are actually telling you about the health of your business and the direction that you’re moving in, in terms of going towards your goal or not going towards your goal.

You need to learn how to interpret what these metrics are telling you about your business.

Now, I’m going to give you nine metrics that I’m sure you’ve probably heard of before. But the question is, how closely are you actually tracking these in your business?

These real estate goal tracker metrics are basically for an individual agent and possibly a team leader. Let’s discuss them one by one.

9 Metrics to Track Your Goals

#1 Days you’re showing up for work

How many days are you actually showing up to do work?

I have a lot of my agents over the years that I’ll look at their numbers in that numbers analyzer and I’ll see that they are spot on with their ratios.

If they go on 10 listing appointments, they are taking seven to eight of them every single time. If they are taking a certain number of listings, they are selling 98 to 100 percent of those listings.

You know when they’re showing up to prospect, they are hitting those numbers. But here’s the problem: they are inconsistent. They are not showing up often enough to apply that high level of skill and performance.

So, guess what their production looks like? The bad EKG, it’s up and down, right?

So, on your real estate goal chart, you need to track how many days you are actually showing up in the course of a 90-day period or the course of a year.

#2 Hours you invest in building your business

How many hours are you actually investing into business-building activity?

Let’s just talk for a moment about lead generation or prospecting.

You need to know how many hours in a day you are averaging in looking for new business, looking for new buyers and sellers and investors for your business.

Is it an hour a day? Is it three hours a day? That’s up to you to track, but you need to know those numbers.

#3 Number of actual conversations that you’re having

This one is a critical variable in your real estate goal setting worksheet. If you are in the real estate business, you need to understand one thing: you are in a communication business.

That’s really what we do. Our business is a communication business. It’s a sales-based business, but it’s about communication.

It’s about engaging people, creating relationships, and having conversations to identify those people who have a need for what you do, which is to bring buyers, sellers, and investors together.

You’ve got to measure that. You need to know how many new people a day you are actually speaking to. It’s a huge metric to track towards your goals.

#4 Number of new leads you’re actually adding on any given period

The next one you need to track is the number of new leads you’re actually adding on, say, a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Now, this can get into semantics and definitions. What is a lead? If I get somebody that hits my portal from my website, or they come through to my realtor CRM from Zillow or some other real estate lead sources, is that a lead?

Well, it may or may not be a lead until you’ve actually spoken to them, engaged them. Qualify them to find out. Do they meet certain standards that you’ve set for your business?

Once you know what you’re looking for or have defined your ideal customer, and you have a system to qualify people that you have conversations with, you can then add three good leads a week, or 10 great leads a week to your pipeline.

But you need to measure that. You need to track that on your real estate goal board.

#5 Number of appointments set

The next one to track is qualified appointments set with both buyer, sellers, or potential investors (if you are a real estate agents marketing to investors).

How many appointments are you setting as a result of all these conversations you’re having?

How many people are you getting to actually agree to meet with you, hear you out, and decide if they are going to do business with you?

#6 Number of appointments attended

How many appointments are you attending?

I’m sure this has happened for a lot of you: you set an appointment, but then people don’t show up or people cancel on you.

So, what percentage of the time that you set an appointment do you actually get to go and meet with that person? So, that’s an important metric — appointments attended.

#7 Number of contracts signed

Here’s the other one that I’m going to have you star — contracts signed.

There is no better measuring stick other than possibly the conversation number. No better measuring stick than contracts signed.

This is the moment the rubber meets the road. This is the moment when you take one step closer to your goal, as you’ve acquired someone who has signed an agreement to do business with you.

That’s exciting. You can start stacking those up. You can start to see how getting more and more of those is going to bring you to your goal even faster.

#8 Number of transactions closed

How many transactions are you closing?

#9 Amount of money coming in

How much money are you earning?

The most important metric might arguably be the income goal or the revenue goal.

How much revenue are you generating on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis? We measure that in GCI, but an even deeper way to look at that from a cash flow management perspective is your profit.

So when creating your real estate goals template, keep in mind those nine metrics:

1. Number of days you actually work
2. Number of hours you work when you show up
3. Number of conversations that you have
4. Number of new leads that you add to your pipeline
5. Number of appointments you set
6. Number of appointments you attend
7. The contracts signed
8. How many deals you are closing
9. How much money you are making

So, having said all of that, where do the goals play into the big picture of the roadmap?

The roadmap is basically the foundation of your business, which is made up of three key elements. Let’s go through them one by one.

#1 Goals

One of these elements is what we’ve been spending the majority of our time talking about — the goal or your vision.

As I said to you earlier, not only do you have to have a vision and a goal, you need to be clear. You need to be so clear about what it is you’re trying to accomplish.

What is the ultimate outcome? What’s the measuring stick for yourself and for your business? Taking the time to be clear about that is one of the most important parts of the planning process.

When you talk about making a business plan or making a roadmap, you could say what you want to accomplish, but unless you know why, you’re probably not going to accomplish it.

Unless you have a meaningful goal and a reason to achieve that meaningful goal, there is a really good chance for most of us that we’re not going to do what it takes to follow through.

So, “the what” is the goal, but “the why” — the why of the what, as I call it, that’s critical.

You need to spend the time figuring that out. What is driving you? What is motivating you? What is getting you excited to take these steps forward?

So, goals or vision, that’s ingredient number one of the three elements of the foundation.

#2 Plan

The second ingredient is the plan itself or the roadmap. This is the “how” of the “what”.

So, you say what you want to accomplish, but how are you going to do that? That’s what the plan is for. That’s what the roadmap is for.

The business plan or the roadmap outlines the specific systems that need to be built or that need to be improved to drive in opportunities.

This goes deep into system building. It goes deep into actionable items.

Your business plan or roadmap needs to be a series of steps that you and your team members are committed to taking over the next week, the next month, the next quarter, the next year, or the next five years.

You can have a five-year plan, and it’s got to be very specific in terms of action steps.

#3 Schedule

That is your time management, or better put, it’s your attention management.

Where does your attention go throughout the course of a day, throughout the course of the week or a month? Where are you spending your time? Where are you putting your focus?

This is the “when” of the “what”.

You’ve said what you want to accomplish. You’ve built the plan and created these action steps. Now, when are you actually going to do them?

When, specifically in your calendar, are you going to make the calls that you need to make, or spend the time writing the handwritten notes, or organizing the client events, or building your social media platform, or whatever it is that your plan says that you’re supposed to do?

You need to time block those things. Your schedule, your calendar, is to your business plan the same way an addendum is to a contract.

It’s a part of it. It becomes associated with that addendum that you write. It becomes a part of the agreement, a part of the contract. Your schedule on your calendar needs to be an integral part of the business plan.

Those are your three elements or three ingredients to your foundation: the vision of the goal, the plan of the roadmap, and the schedule for your time management and your attention management.

And remember, goals without plans are just dreams. That’s all they are.

Do you want to be a dreamer, or do you want to be a doer and an accomplisher?

Then you need to create a plan, and you need to hold yourself to certain blocks of time throughout the day or the week when you take action on the items that are in your business plan.

As I said before, a lot of people don’t have an issue achieving their goals. They just have a problem creating their goals.

So, I hope as a result of this training, that you’ll have a much clearer idea of what goals are and how to go about setting them.

We need to make sure our goals are realistic, but we’ve got to have short-term goals, long-term goals, and potentially, larger-scale organization or company-level goals.

We need to track them. Are we on track or not on track? Are we moving in the direction of our goals and dreams, or are we moving away from them?

It has been said that you may have a desperate desire to see the sunrise, but you spend the entire day sprinting west. Now think about that. If your goal is to see the sunrise, you better be going east.

But for a lot of agents, they’re busy and in motion all the time. They are constantly doing things and they feel like they have had busy days, but they are going in the wrong direction.

So, having a goal by itself is fine as long as you have a plan and a strategy and a roadmap to get you there.

And at the end of the day, you’ve got to have the time blocks in place to make sure that the goals have the seed bed to blossom in. That’s really what we’re talking about — your time that you’ve invested into doing those things.

I hope you’ve taken a lot of things away from this. I would love to hear some feedback. Thank you to Real Estate Bees for giving me the opportunity to share this with you. And for all of you, get out there and make today count.

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About the Author

James Houghtaling is a real estate coach with over 25-year experience. In his first year as a real estate agent James sold 45 homes in a market where he knew no one. James spent several years growing his team and then, in 1997, he began a coaching company. James has been an active coach/consultant to agents, team leaders, and broker owners for over 25 years, including 4 years as a 1 on 1 coach and speaker for The Mike Ferry Organization.

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