Creating an exceptional second half of the year

I'm thrilled to bring you a special edition of the blog that's all about taking control of your success in the second half of this year.

I want to help you to dive deep into the strategies and mindset that are needed to get (or keep) you on track for an exceptional six months ahead.

Here is an overview of the steps we cover:

Reflect on the First Half: Celebrate your wins, identify areas for improvement, and extract valuable lessons from unexpected events.

Assess Progress and Upgrade: Assess how reasonable the goals that you set 6-months ago were, and if they are easily within reach, it's time to upgrade them to stretch your potential.

Set SMART Goals for Success: Adopt SMART goals – specific, measurable, ambitious, relevant, and time-bound. Break them down into mini goals that create the momentum that drives results.

Stay Resilient and Adapt: Consider seasonality and market conditions, adjusting strategies and embracing reflective practice to stay on track.

Remember, it's not too late to turn the tides and make this year a resounding success. In fact, it’s always a good time to take control, adjust course, and forge ahead with confidence.

If this all makes logical sense to you, I invite you to go through the 10-minute exercise with me in episode 147 of CRE Success: The Podcast.

Episode transcript:

We are now halfway through 2023, so it's time for a half time huddle. It's the perfect time for a reset.

And I want you to have a think about how would you like the second half of this year to be just as the first half of the year was?

How would you like the first half of this year to stay in the first half of this year, and for the second half of this year to be completely different?

Or would you like some of it to be the same and some of it to be different?

Whatever the answer is for you, the good news is, you can design the second half of this year to be however you want it to be.

And that's what we're going to help you do in our latest episode.

Hello, and welcome to CRE Success: The Podcast, episode 147. My name is Darren Krakowiak, and I helped commercial real estate leaders to accelerate growth in their business in today's episode.

It's our halftime pep talk, the halftime huddle, reviewing and rebooting for year-end success, and then create a solid plan so that you can achieve your goals for this year by the end of this year, to make the second half of this year, exactly what you want it to be. 

And really what we're trying to do is one, review your business performance for the first half of this year.

And the first thing I want to encourage you to do, we're getting right into it today is to review the first half of this year.

So, I think it's important to review because we want to celebrate success, but also acknowledge areas for improvement.

And rather than focusing on the things that didn't go the way that we wanted, we want to just reframe that slightly and think about well, what were the lessons learned, and how can I carry them forward through to the second half of this year, and further on as we need to.

And I think one thing that is going to make this exercise more meaningful is if you have goals to track in the first place.

So, if you did set any goals at the start of this year, how are you tracking towards achieving those goals? How was your progress?

I think a really easy way to think about this is what worked well.

You might even want to pause this episode right now and write down what worked well in the first half of this year, and what didn't work so well? 

I recommend that you try and think of at least three things in each of those categories. What worked well, and what didn't work so well?

And another good question I think to ask yourself is well, what surprising things happened? And how did they impact the business? Things that you weren't expecting, they can be positives, or they can be negative.

So, if for example, a certain strategy didn't work, what can you then learn from that?

And how you generate, I think, insights and points of action means the extent to which that thing that happened is actually not a bad thing. But it's actually going to be overall a good thing.

And if you did set goals at the start of the year, how are you tracking towards those goals?

And do those goals that you set at the start of this year actually seem reasonable?

I think 2023 hasn't panned out as many of us expected. And probably most of us don't pan out purely as we expect.

But I think this year has been a little bit more challenging than people expected.

So, do the goals that were set at the start of this year seem reasonable?

If they were fantastic, maybe you can even upgrade them that you can stretch yourself a little bit further.

And if perhaps, it doesn't seem so reasonable now, then what would be reasonable for you to achieve in the second half of this year?

Let's talk now about how we can plan for the best possible final six months of 2023.

So, if you have already set those goals, fantastic. I want you to decide if they're relevant, decide if they need to be adjusted.

But if you didn't set goals, that's okay, now still a perfectly good time to do them.

And my reminder for you here, whether you set goals or if you haven't, is to make sure that the goals that you have for the second half of this year are SMART goals.

That they're specific, they're measurable, they're ambitious, (some people say achievable, I like to say ambitious) they're relevant and also that they are time bound.

So, when you're setting goals, the other thing that you can look to do is also have high level goals. So big picture, big rock goals, but also some smaller sub goals.

You might have a big goal about revenue, but then some smaller goals around what you need to do in order to get there.

Let's sort of break that down a little bit and maybe help you with that.

Perhaps at the start of this year, you set a goal for personal production, GCI revenue of $500,000, for argument's sake.

Now, if you're halfway there, if you actually did $250,000, over the first half of this year, then your goal for the second half of this year is $250,000 in GCI, in personal production, in revenue, unless you want to change it for the second half of this year.

So, to break that down a little bit further, we can say it's $125,000 per quarter.

Now, you may know that your pipeline needs an additional, let's say, four deals in it in order for you to have a reasonable prospect of reaching that number in the third quarter of this year, between now and the end of September of 2023.

And if you need to get four deals done, you may know that on average, four and five listings that I have turned into revenue, so then you know that you need to have rather five additional listings in order to achieve that result.

And you also need those deals to become unconditional, by the 30th of September. 

And if that's the case, then you need to have secured those additional five listings by let's say, the middle of August, the 15th of August.

Now you know that between now we're recording this episode in early July 2023, and the middle of August, which is less than six weeks away, you need to win one new listing a week in order to achieve that result of going all the way back up to being on track to write $250,000 in the second half of this year, or $125,000 in this current quarter.

So, in order to win a new listing each week, you might look at some of those opportunities that are already pretty advanced in your pipeline, particularly for the listings that you bought when I win next week, this week, the week after that.

And for the ones that you're going to win in four weeks or five weeks’ time, well, you need to also be having new conversations now.

So, what does that mean for your prospecting regime, and so on and so forth.

This is the way that you can break down those bigger goals into smaller goals and have to think about what it is that you actually need to do in order for you to be put in the position to have a reasonable prospect of achieving the goals that you are setting.

I guess the other thing I want to say about your full year goals, and the goals that you perhaps may not feel like you're in a good position to actually achieve because the first half of this year didn't pan out as you expected.

Well, it's not over till it's over. And just because you're not exactly 50% of the way there yet for your full year 2023 goals, it doesn't mean that you will not get there.

A client told me the other day that they're starting to see vendors become a little bit more motivated to sell.

So, some of the impacts that we've been seeing in the marketplace, which has made it more difficult for transactions to occur, lower listing volumes, lower levels of inquiry.

Well, that is now according to him starting to translate into sellers, being a little bit more motivated than they were in the past because they've got a story in their mind about where the market is heading.

And perhaps it's time for them to do something here as opposed to doing something once the market is in a deteriorated position to which it is now.

Now, if that, I guess, sentiment takes hold in the market that could drive more activity in the second half of this year.

Now, I remember that December always used to be our strongest month, because I was working in fortune 200 companies that were US based that had a calendar year for the financial year.

If you're here in Australia, you may work for a local firm, which has a financial year of July to June.

Whatever the case is for you, I think that the interview always provides a big impetus for deals to be done.

And I remember we used to close about probably 20 to 25% of our annual target in that one month alone.

So have a think about also the seasonality of your production.

Is it usual that you would be up to 50% of the way through your target at this point of the year?

Or is it actually reasonable that you might be 35% or 40% there with then the opportunity to make up more than 50% of your annual target in the second half of this year?

And also think about what's going on with market conditions. Our market conditions going to be more conducive to you actually doing more in the second half of this year then perhaps occurred in the first half.

Now you may have an opposite view and you may think you know what I think actually the second half of this year is going to be more challenging.

Well, that doesn't mean necessarily that it's going to be a worse half of performance for you in the first half of this year, it could mean that you need to do more prospecting more lead generation activities in order to counterbalance what is going on in the market.

And just a little short advertisement here, we will be conducting our How to build a prospecting pipeline Masterclass one more time for you in the second week of July.

So, if you're with us just after we've released it, or anybody, if you're not, we'll probably repeat it again, go to cresuccess.co/pipeline and register for How to build a prospecting pipeline.

We'll show you how to get your pipeline full of new opportunities, so that you're not at the mercy of whatever is going on in the market.

Anyway, that was just a little side note, my real point here is think about what it is that you need to do in order to make the second half of this year, what it is that you want it to be.

I really encourage you to think bigger, to be resilient in the face of what's going on in the market.

And bit of the reflective practice that we've just gone through in this episode thinking about what's gone well, what didn't go well, and what the lessons were, that doesn't have to be just a biannual once every six-month event.

This is something that you can do regularly to keep your goals in sight and also to make adjustments as necessary.

My final tip for you in this episode is to write down your goals, put them somewhere where you will see them.

So put them on your desk, put them on your bathroom mirror, put them on your fridge, have them as calendar reminders that pop up in your diary every single day. So, they are top of mind.

And they will be there as a reminder to what it is that you are trying to achieve.

I hope that the first half of this year has been productive for you.

If it hasn't been exactly what you would hope it to have been, well, there's always the second half of this year, and now is a perfect time to be making those adjustments.

And the final thing I want to say is that if you would like to share your plan with me, I would love to hear what your plan for the second half of this year is.

You can send me a DM on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn if we're not already connected. And if we are, then you can DM me right away.

Or you can connect with us on Instagram. Our handle is @cresuccess. Connect with us on Instagram.

Let me know that you're listening to the show. Let me know what your plan is. That will motivate me. I'd be really excited to hear what you've got planned for the second half of this year.

And if you've got a question about how perhaps you might be able to make your goal more likely to be achieved, then put that in your note as well and I would be happy to answer your question.

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.