The Numbers You Cannot Answer From Memory

Here is a short test, and it takes about a minute. Answer each of these from memory, without opening anything.

How many people did you speak to about property last month. How many appointments did those conversations produce. How many of those appointments produced an agreement. What did you spend to generate a new enquiry, and how long does an enquiry typically take to become a transaction in your business.

What the gaps tell you

Almost nobody answers all five. That is not the point of the exercise. The point is which ones you could not answer, because the numbers you do not hold are the parts of your business you are currently running on impression.

Impression is not useless. Experienced agents have good instincts and those instincts are built on real observation. But instinct cannot tell you whether this quarter is worse than last quarter or simply feels worse, and that is a distinction you need when you are deciding what to change.

The difference between a busy business and a working one

Two agents can have identical diaries. One is converting a healthy proportion of appointments and the other is not, and from the outside both look equally busy.

Without conversion figures, the second agent's most likely response to a disappointing quarter is to generate more activity, because activity is the lever they can see. If the problem sits at the appointment rather than in the pipeline, more activity buys a busier version of the same result.

Which of those two agents' problem is more likely to be yours? And what evidence do you have for the answer you just gave?

Averages hide the thing you need

An average across all your business can be reassuring and unhelpful at the same time. Split any number you hold and the picture usually changes.

Try it with one. Take whatever conversion figure you can calculate and separate it by source, by price band, or by whether the person came to you through your own network or from somewhere colder. Where is the difference biggest? And does the place you spend most of your time match the place your results actually come from?

How often do you look?

There is a difference between having numbers and using them. Many agents can produce figures on request and have not looked at them since they were entered.

What would a sensible review rhythm be for you? Some numbers only make sense over a quarter. Some, like conversations and appointments, tell you something useful within a week. Which of yours belongs in which group, and when will you actually sit with them?

Start with one

The common failure here is deciding to track everything on a Monday and tracking nothing by the Friday. If you were to add a single number to what you already hold, which one would change the most decisions?

Notice that the question is about decisions rather than completeness. A figure you would never act on is administration. A figure that would send you to a different part of your week is worth the effort of collecting, even if it is collected badly at first. Which of the five questions at the top of this page, answered properly for the next ninety days, would tell you the most about where your business is actually leaking?

One more thing is worth checking while you are in there. Whatever you decide to record, who records it, and when. A number that depends on you remembering at the end of a long day is a number you will have for a fortnight.

A question to sit with this week

If you had to justify next quarter's plan using only figures from your own business, what would you be able to point at, and what would you be guessing?

If you want a second look at the figures

Numbers are easier to read when someone else is asking the questions. If you would like to go through yours, you can book a discovery call.