Jose Castillo is a Realtor with JFA Realtors working in Miami.
Every week, we ask a real estate professional for their Short List, a collection of tips and recommendations on an essential topic in real estate. This week, we talked with Jose Castillo, a Realtor with JFA Realtors, who shared his tips for making a successful business plan.
6. Break it into several points – A quick recap would be: total days worked; total hours you’re going to prospect; total number of contacts you have; how many listing appointments you schedule; how many active/expired listings you have; and how many listings have closed.
5. Budget yourself – Determine how much you’re going to spend on the individual aspects of your business, such as marketing, which should be further broken down between digital and print expenses.
4. Set goals – At the beginning of the year, break it into quarters, establish goals to meet by the end of each and then make sure to evaluate your progress at the end of each.
3. Set a Schedule – To accomplish your goals, set yourself a daily schedule so you can track your performance throughout the quarter. Having the numbers on hand, which let you know exactly how you’re doing year-to-date, helps you self-motivate and to accomplish the jobs you have to do. Most agents are contracted employees, which means success is all a matter of doing it yourself, so a lot of agents end up dealing with complacency problems. Complacency is the Realtors No. 1 enemy.
2. Update your contacts list – You should have three contacts lists: colleagues, personal contacts from prospecting and referrals. And those databases, which you’ll be using on a daily basis, need to be constantly updated and managed.
1. Don’t depend on technology – I’ve been in real estate for 12 years. I’ve worked with lead generation tools, and they just don’t work. I spent thousands on websites like Trulia, Zillow, realtor.com, you name it, and it does not work. I get my business from referrals from colleagues and past clients, and my print work. I’ve established myself as a presence in the communities in which I work, and now I get calls. That’s what works.
Jose Castillo is a Realtor with JFA Realtors, who has more than a decade of experience in the industry.