There’s always something to howl about.

Real estate resolutions: Cough less, earn more . . .

When I get sick, I get really sick. I’ve had full-blown pneumonia twice in recent years. I have always been able to blast through illness, but, sometime after my arms got too short to read without glasses, that privilege was revoked. In consequence, when I get a respiratory infection now, I try to take it very seriously. Not as seriously as Cathy and our doctor might like, but I do my best.

In consequence, I’ve been laid up through the span of time we might have spent on big-picture business planning. Our course is well set, so we didn’t have a lot to worry about. But today Bonnie Erickson goes us one better with an excellent list of real estate resolutions for the coming year. Here’s a sampling:

  • Narrow my marketing focus to a manageable farm or neighborhood where I can meet the people and become known personally.
  • Focus my existing marketing to the narrowed sphere.
  • Contact each person in my sphere of influence at least once a quarter.
  • Contribute more to my networking group possibly through technology.
  • Finalize a cold calling system and stick to it.
  • Continue to contact expired and unrepresented listings.
  • Restructure my blog to incorporate more consumer friendly resources.
  • Re-examine my websites for consumer friendliness and SEO.
  • Continue to "bird dog" for investment properties which will be purchased for rehab and sale, rehab and holding, or sale without rehab to other investors.
  • Learn from losses in the business.

One of the things we were going to do last year and didn’t get to was implementing Daylite, CRM software for Macintosh networks. The big hurdle is taking all of our existing contact management “solutions” and merging them into one database, cleaning that for duplicates and errors, and then systematically adding to it. The task is even more daunting by now, but many of Bonnie’s resolutions show why it is worthwhile.

Easy for me to say. It’s a chore for Cathy and her pack of teenage hound-puppies. But touch-management, even if it runs on a database as faulty as memory, is worth money…

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