Facilitating financial success
Coaching has paid off for Pyle and her team. In the three years that they have worked with Goodfellow Coaching, they say their income has roughly tripled. The changes came rapidly for them.

“In the first four months we started to see some drastic changes,” Pyle says. “Stepping into the program, we talked about building a business and made lots of changes to get to that point, as far as setting up accounting systems, setting up processes, having an administrative assistant perform certain tasks and allocating non-moneymaking activities.” By making those changes, Pyle says, her team was able to focus more on their clients and increasing their numbers.

Pyle and Valdez’s annual planning sessions involve going over the previous year’s numbers in great detail, reviewing profit and loss, price point, the number of sales completed and the marketing efforts and activities that generated the most business. Based on that review, they work with their coach to prepare a budget and a marketing plan, set goals and outline the activities they need to do each week in order to meet those goals.

Focusing on the goals they have set for their business and following a business plan established with their coach’s help has contributed directly to their success. Pyle’s team meets with their coach by phone on a weekly basis, and once or twice per year at conferences. One of those meetings is a budget planning session where the coming year is planned out.

“It’s one of the things that has changed our business,” Pyle says. “We sit down and we set up a budget. We look at what business we did the year before, where it came from, how we processed it. They [the coach] pick through your whole business and create a new business plan for the next year. Having a plan and goals set out changes how you act on a daily basis.”

The strategy of establishing a business plan is a vital part of Goodfellow’s coaching work and is his primary method for measuring his clients’ success. Once the strategy is set, he and his coaches help their clients meet the goals they have set for themselves. “We look at their goals and where they need to be on a weekly basis and whether they are there, and whether they are doing the things that it takes to be there,” Goodfellow says. “If they’re not at that level, what do we have to change to get them there? You have to make sure that your clients are recording numbers, that they’re tracking their business.”

Tiegler believes that by doing the required work set out by a coach, any agent can become more successful. He sees fear as a major obstacle for many agents, whether it is the fear of picking up the phone and making a connection, or fear of being rejected when asking for a higher commission. He gives brokers the tools they need to handle situations important to their career, such as successfully negotiating a higher commission or getting a higher sale price to original list price ratio for their clients. Tiegler also works with agents to teach them accurate database pricing and an understanding of what it takes to sell a house, regardless of the prevailing market conditions.

“I think what a coach should teach is how to deliver results for your clients,” Tiegler says. “This is a referral-based business. If you help people sell their homes faster and for more money, they’re going to grow your business.”