Many brokerages can get caught up tending to issues largely driven by internal necessities. From attending office meetings to fighting the everyday fires, brokerages need to be generating profitable revenue growth from the outside with as much effort as they expend toward what’s happening inside. Industry leaders need to prioritize and direct more energy to the marketplace and its clients, rather than getting overly bogged down by meetings and office affairs.
In a recent Forbes.com column, consultant Scott Edinger highlights three ways for business leaders to increase revenue by focusing externally rather than internally:
1. Focus your attention. Implementing new systems and switching business processes are not where your firm’s revenue comes from. Methods of increasing operational efficiency can drain time and money, further damaging profit margins. Clients don’t care about production costs or internal infrastructure. Make sure you’re dedicating half your focus to matters outside of your firm to channel activities meant to boost revenue growth.
2. Adjust your calendar. Analyze the meetings on your schedule and ask yourself how the outcomes of these meetings are helping get more clients or provide clients with excellent value. If you’re unable to see how a particular issue is going to drive revenue, spend less time on it or consider eliminating it completely. Make sure agents have boundaries and processes set up so they can solve internal problems quickly, and if they can’t, assist them in their ability able to do so.
3. Talk to clients who aren’t buying from you. It can be all too easy to be stuck in your brokerage’s own bubble and lose other perspectives. Try reaching out every few weeks to a potential client you are not in business with and have a conversation. Too many industry leaders are so removed from real client action that they can’t grasp what the current competitive landscape is beyond researched reports. Setting aside 20 to 30 minutes each month for understanding prospective clients who aren’t choosing your firm will prove to make a huge difference in your business’s perspective.
Brokers are as responsible for the future value of their firm as they are for its current value. Generate more value by gazing externally more often than staying in your firm’s internal bubble.
Source: “Three Ways to Increase Revenue By Focusing Externally, Not Internally” Forbes.com (March 28, 2018)
