Although most might not believe it, real estate agents run small businesses. As small business owners, real estate agents must do things like prevent cash flow disruptions, or create a cash reserve. Some real estate agents might wonder, though, how do they begin to run a small business?
You, like any real estate agent small business owner, must create a business plan. Check out 5 things you need for your business plan.
4 Things for Any Real Estate Agent Business Plan
- Executive Summary
The executive summary lays out the facts. Although you know the concept of your real estate agent business, you should still spell it out in your business plan. You help buyers find homes and home owners sell homes in the real estate industry.
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That’s the concept of your small business. Within your executive summary make sure to include your mission statement. We published a blog about deciding what kind of real estate agent you want to be. You can start working on that by writing your mission statement.
- Competitive Advantage – What separates you?
Objectively look at your local real estate industry. Subjectively think about what separates you from other real estate agents. Perhaps, like so many other real estate agents you come from a different world. In your past life, you might have run a restaurant, or serve as a company’s top IT person.
You might have been a wealth manager at a major bank. Any skills you learned through your education, your work experience, and your outside work life could all be competitive advantages. Write down what you believe your competitive advantages are.
- How will you market yourself?
You are your business. How will you market yourself? You should work on both building your sphere of influence, your social media footprint, and your website. You use all to market yourself.
Don’t just think about marketing, plan your marketing. Put thoughts to words on paper in your business plan. If you want to use Instagram, as an example, how many posts per week? Video or photo posts?
- Add some local industry analysis
All business plans include certain features like competitive advantages, executive summaries, and marketing plans. Business plans become specific when it comes to industry analysis. Your industry analysis should concern itself with your local real estate industry.
Unless your local real estate industry is commercial property in Orange County, California, you don’t care so much about real estate industry facts about Orange County, California.
You should try to find the names of competitors within your real estate region. Also, make sure to drive around and find out the cost of homes in different neighborhoods.
As you might guess, industry analysis doesn’t end with your business plan. You must continue to analyze your local real estate industry. Put yourself on a timetable. Take at least one day out of the month to regroup and discover what’s going on in the field, the neighborhoods where you help buyers and sellers.
Some thoughts about budget: you can include it in your business plan. However, your business plan should be flexible. It’s only a guide. You might want to consider writing a financial considerations portion of your business plan that exists outside of your business plan. Like your industry analysis section, your financial considerations section probably should change month to month.
