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Like any business, a real estate agency will go through different stages throughout its life.
There will be the initial heady days of sheer existence, the point of break-even that is survival and, with any luck, the sweet taste that comes with success.
So, what are the stages involved, and how do you move from one to the other?
The five stages of business
Harvard Business Review notes that there are five common stages to business, no matter what industry you’re in or what services and products you offer.
These include:
Existence – Where your business is in the start-up phase, the enthusiasm is high, and the ambitions are strong. At this point, you might be doing much of the work as a sole operator or with limited staff.
Survival – At this stage, your business is breaking even or perhaps enjoying a small profit. You might have a small team around you, enjoying modest success. It’s one of the busiest phases in any business where that team might be performing multiple roles.
Success – Success comes with the reward of decent profits and a level of comfort. Many agencies achieve success and happily remain here, with this phase offering the opportunity to balance lifestyle and business while reaping decent rewards.
Take-off – At this stage, your business is at a whole new level. The financial reward is high and new opportunities might present themselves in the form of expansion.
This stage of business might see the leader step away from the helm. They may also have multiple managers running multiple departments.
Maturity – Maturity sees a business enjoying a proven track record and stability. The challenge then becomes how to remain relevant and reinvent when required.
From one stage to the next
As easy as it is to talk about the different stages of business, the key question here is how do you take your business from one level to the next?
Whether you’re an agent with a small team or an agency looking to take it up a notch, ramping up a gear involves knowing where you want to go, reverse engineering the result and then implementing the systems and procedures that are needed to achieve the result.
And that happens in a series of ways.
Goals
Whether you’re looking to build a team, create a business or grow an agency to encompass multiple offices, step one always involves knowing where exactly you want to go.
When you know what you want to achieve, you can begin reverse-engineering the result to determine the actions that need to be taken.
Compounding success
One of the biggest challenges for any agent or business looking to go to the next level involves compounding the results that were achieved prior.
That’s why you need to break down what worked for your business in the past to determine what extra needs to occur to take you to the next level.
Marketing
Whether you’re an individual agent or a brand in your own right, marketing is key to success. You need to invest in it and define your point of difference to stand out from the crowd.
And in order not to stagnate, you need to ensure that you continually offer value in your marketing and reinvent when required.
Technology
The right technology should allow your business to operate more efficiently while improving the customer experience.
Like anything in business, embracing technology can be an ongoing process, but above all, it should solve an evident problem that allows you to streamline your operation and better serve your buyers and sellers in order to go to the next level.
Support
Regardless of where you are in the business journey, it’s important to have peers and mentors you can call on to bounce ideas off.
These people will help you stay true to your business goals, offer insight into what’s needed to go to the next level and guide you on how you can get where you want to go faster.
Manos Findikakis is the chief executive and co-founder of the Eview Group.
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