Running a profitable business is never an easy feat – and it’s possible to lose sight of the bigger picture when you’re engaged in day-to-day operations.
So to help you take your business pulse, two leading experts have devised a go-to guide on monitoring, reviewing and enhancing the health performance of your agency, including the simple changes you can implement today to create long term future growth.
Barry Cawthorn, industrial property specialist at Bawdens Industrial, and sales and communication expert Pancho Mehrotra, the Managing Director of Frontier Performance, talked about different tools, ideas and concepts for measuring agency health and what this means for business performance in a recent REINSW Webinar.
“We’re going to be looking at tools you can use to examine how you can measure a business, how you can get the best out of a business, and the areas to actually improve a business – addressing people and profit, those two key areas need to be working together to take a business to the next level,” says Mehrotra.
Growing a business
In terms of methods and myths around growing a business, Cawthorn believes agencies should avoid getting “caught up with the idea that providing good customer service and competing on price is going to make you money – everybody thinks like that, (but) it’s about what you do to yourself, and therefore the people that you’re leading in the group, that’s going to make the difference.”
Mehrotra agrees, adding: “People, systems and processes. Many of the businesses out there have the systems in place, they often have the processes in place. Where the variable comes in is in the delivery, which is people dependant. If we don’t have the right people, we know that we don’t get the output for the investment.”
Understanding agency health
What is agency health and how do you assess it?
“Agency health is about principals, key sales managers and owners sitting down and saying, ‘what is it that I don’t do well? Who do I need to become to get from the business what it is that I desire?’,” says Cawthorn.
“Today agency health is about having a much more holistic view and I would encourage principals to identify those people who you feel comfortable working with and say, ‘these are the people who can help me achieve where I need to go’, and be prepared to pay a little money to do that.”
Mehrotra believes a lack of clarity and flexibility in business decision-making is a major roadblock to watch out for. “The challenge around that is it stops creativity and innovation,” he says. “You can’t do that (achieve innovation) with siloed thinking, unless you bring in people with creativity.”
What creates real value in a real estate business? According to the expert panel, it largely comes down to recurring income.
“I expect my business to have an ROI of 25-35 per cent annually. It’s not just about profit, it’s about having the business hold real value,” says Cawthorn.
To learn more about making positive and profitable changes in your business, watch the Webinar: Agency health performance – take your business pulse
Want more?