3 steps to tracking personal and professional goals

I went out on a limb in my last article and wrote about my personal journey with weight loss and real estate, describing how I’ve applied best practices in real estate to my everyday life — and I never anticipated it would received the responses it has. I’ve gotten emails from people all across the country describing their journeys and how they’ve lost weight or built an empire with the same techniques. It truly warmed my heart.

Many people have asked if I would share the weekly tracking spreadsheet we use at john greene Realtor. Well, here you go! Below are the three steps to creating your own tracking system, whether it’s for a personal goal or for building your business. This is a template, so customize it however you wish to make it work for you.

Remember, by setting the goal, breaking it into chunks, and then tracking the results, you’ll be on the road to personal and professional success in no time!

1. Set your goal

Setting a goal is perhaps the easiest part of this process. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to expand your portfolio? Lose 50 pounds? Save money for a vacation? Whatever it is, make sure you identify a very specific goal. Determine a specific number, and put a time limit on it. The more specific you are about your goal, the greater likelihood you’ll achieve it.

2. Determine how to get there

Achieving your goal requires a commitment to executing daily, weekly or monthly tasks that, collectively, add up to success. If you’re dieting, you need to list what you eat every day. If it’s a financial goal, you need to list where you can save money, spend less or invest more. For building a business, there are many activities required to build, execute and maintain your business.

The following are detailed descriptions of the activities tracked in the spreadsheet we use at john greene Realtor:

People Portfolio

The term “People Portfolio” is from the book REAL by Dave Crumby, Lani Rosales and Martin Streicher. (see pages 53-62). Other authors have called it a “sphere,” “database,” “tribe,” etc., but whatever you call it, you need to put time and effort into maintaining it. This portion of the spreadsheet allows you to track the different ways you’ve reached people in your portfolio, whether it’s lunches, postcards, or even how many people you’ve added to your database. You can allot a point for each person you’ve touched. Talk to the people in that group weekly or monthly, because if you don’t, they will find another agent. It doesn’t matter how, but make sure you communicate with them — newsletters, calls, texts, social media, letters, etc.

Accountability Partners

Yes, we have accountability partners. Someone has to make sure we are doing this stuff! At john greene Realtor, this is a usually a mentor who meets weekly to check in and make sure the mentee/protégé is staying on track. Accountability partners also attend accountability sessions, which are designed to talk about the successes and fails of the week. Tracking these sessions in the spreadsheet helps you see if you’ve been holding the meetings regularly. If you don’t attend these meetings weekly — even for just 30 minutes at a time — you will miss valuable lessons. We learn from each other as a group and can duplicate what works and eliminate non-preforming ideas.

Skillz Sessions

We have three different sales sessions on the john greene Realtor tracker. On Monday, after the accountability sessions, we have “skillz sessions,” where we highlight a different monthly topic for an hour discussion. But where do we get the topics?

Confession: I am a nerd (fondly called a “book worm”), and I have a partner in crime and fellow nerd in Scott Parker, sales manager at john greene Realtor. We know our agents don’t have the time, or sometimes the attention span, to read, so Scott and I are the walking cliff notes. We read good material, structure it for a session and present the highlights to our agents. It might be a great series in negotiations, working with buyers or sellers, dealing with multiple offers, or a topic on personal development. Like the accountability sessions, these are tracked in the spreadsheet by adding a point for each session attended.

Sales Development Workshops

Making sure you have the right sales techniques to grow a business and keep your current people portfolio is critical. Attending a sales development workshop bi-weekly helps our agents focus on the skills needed to be successful. It might be interviewing a buyer or seller, asking good questions, learning the proper forms, or keeping in touch with your database. In addition to giving yourself a point for each session attended, there is also a column for “key takeaway” in the spreadsheet to log what you’ve learned. It’s a great way to give yourself a refresher while reviewing your progress.

Monthly Sales Meeting

More sales meetings? Of course! Each month, we cover a learning topic (nerd alert) that will be broken out in the subsequent skillz sessions. Topics generally discussed are marketing, new technologies that make our life easier or key takeaways from seminars we’ve attended. At john greene Realtor, we take the time to celebrate our success, have some fun and get to together as a team of winners. The best part is that all of this fun also counts as a point on your spreadsheet!

Property Snapshots

The property snapshot tool is another way to stay in touch with our people portfolio. When talking to our clients in our people portfolio, we ask them if they know what’s happening in their neighborhoods. We want them to know what is listed, under contract and closed. Why? Because we want to be their trusted advisor, the person they think of when they think of real estate, and who to call when they decide to buy or sell.

The property snapshot is provided each year to keep clients educated on their neighborhood. By doing this on a regular basis, when the client does want to buy or sell, they know what the home is worth because they have been following it for so long. Trusted advisor: that’s the goal. And each time you send the property snapshot, that’s a point!

Personal Development/Fitness Goals

Not everything on this spreadsheet is about making more money! The original article was about goals, so you have to set your goal — but that goal has to be broken down into obtainable chunks.

Two years ago, my family goal was to buy my husband a La-Z-Boy couch and chair set he’d dreamed about for years. It was $8,000. We set a certain financial goal, and he got the set! Last year, my goal was to lose 50 pounds. I finished at 50 pounds and lost 10 more in the last three months — this tracking stuff works! Set the goal, break it into chunks and the end results will take care of themselves. And by tracking your progress along the way, you’ll see those numbers add up. Whether it’s the number of new contacts for your business, pounds you’ve lost or money you’ve saved, it’s very motivating to see your goal coming within reach.

3. Create a points system

Once you’ve listed the tasks necessary to achieve your goal, add a column to track how often you’ve completed each task, and a separate column tracking the results. Using a points system is a simple way to track your progress, and it’s also very motivating! By seeing the numbers add up, you are motivated to keep working hard. For example, you might allot one point for each time you call a client, or five points each time you meet a client for coffee. By setting a weekly goal of 50 or 100 points, you can keep yourself focused and on track. When this spreadsheet becomes part of your daily routine, you can begin to increase your goals — and achieve them!

I hope the worksheet helps. Take it and make it your own, change it up, and make it fit your organization. I wish you the same success and results that I and my fellow john greene Realtor agents have experienced. Please let me know how you are doing — we’re in this together!

Tigi Tasso is a broker and training and development director at john greene Realtor, one of the largest brokerage firms in Chicago’s western suburbs. Tasso holds 15 years of industry experience, is a licensed instructor and is member of the Professional Standards Committee for the Mainstreet Organization of Realtors.

Email Tigi Tasso.