The real estate inventory can offer opportunities to a realtor. Either a house being sold or a house to be foreclosed, they can be considered as a door to the success of a realtor. Investing in real estate can offer the realtor a chance to make money. But still, the realtor needs to succeed in selling the property to realize profits. Based on this premise, we can consider that marketing is the key. In order for the realtor to have a good marketing strategy for the next days, weeks, months or years, a well laid marketing plan will help. Here are some of the reasons why:

• A marketing plan will guide the realtor to meet their individual or organizational goals.
• The plan is the documentation of the realtor’s ideas.
• The plan gives the realtor a picture of what is to be achieved given a certain timeframe.
• The plan lets the realtor see, determine and write the activities needed to meet particular objectives.
• The plan lets the realtor draw out their own manpower requirements and do some delegation of activities so he or she can be pre-occupied to more pressing activities. The realtor can focus more on income generating activities. 
• The plan allows the realtor to set a schedule and deadlines. It makes other members of the organization accountable so everything gets done as agreed upon.
• The key result areas for members of organization are laid out. Everyone knows what the organization expects from them
• The plan makes the organization more conscious of the targets and sees that everything is done according to plan and not by accident.

The marketing plan should consider the realtor’s previous performance. How many leads did he get? Of the leads, how many have been bought and/or sold? Of the houses sold, how many prospects did he get before closing the deal? Of the deals closed, how much profit was made?

Leads and houses to be sold.

Of the leads the realtor got, how many did he acquire? The realtor can maintain the rate of acquisition over total leads but he or she has to increase the number of leads to increase acquisition. With this the realtor will increase the number of houses listed for sale in his inventory.

Also, the realtor can improve his acquisition rate by making more attractive offers to the sellers or by packaging a deal that would give extra services like facilitating transfers and the transaction with the banks or lenders.

Prospecting and Selling,

Of the houses acquired, how many were sold? Of the sold houses, how many prospects expressed interest and how many were qualified?

To improve the numbers of houses sold, the realtor might need to reach out to more people and generate more prospects. Reaching out to people can be done through advertisements like being exposed in print ads, the internet or in radio and TV spots.

In case the realtor is not sure that the number of prospects would increase, he or she can increase the number of houses to be sold by improving his closing skills. This would translate to an improvement in the number of houses that will be sold given the same number of prospects.

Selling and Income?

Of the sold houses in the previous period, how much did the realtor make? Was the profit objective-- in the plan--met? Was the target realistic as compared to the previous performance? If there was an increase in profit targets, was it realistic? How much is the average net income? Will there be additional resources needed to meet the target?

So when creating a plan, the realtor must make sure to looks back to previous performances. The plan should have timelines and measurable objectives in order to know if the realtor, as an individual, or the organization he or she is managing, performs according to plan or shall we say, is under control.

As the saying goes… poor planning leads to poor performance!