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The Best Lead Measures for Commercial Real Estate

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In my last blog, I briefly reviewed the best-selling book The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChensey and Sean Covey. I shared their 4 essential steps to successful execution and demonstrated how these could be applied to your personal commercial real estate practice. Additionally, I shared how we use a similar, but commercial real estate focused approach in our coaching platform to achieve extraordinary results for our members/clients.

The second “discipline” addressed in McChensey and Covey’s best-selling business book is “Act on the Lead Measures”. To give you some context, allow me to share how the authors define these 2 types of measures.

Lag Measure – an overall goal, a historical measure of performance

Lead Measure – an action planned and taken as a means of achieving a goal

The difference in these 2 measures is critical and will have a profound impact on your ability to achieve your goals.

A lag measure is “a historical measure or performance”. If you think about it, almost everyone’s primary commercial real estate goal is a lag measure. For example, setting a commission goal, such as “make $X dollars this year” is a lag measure. Yes, it is an overall goal, but it is historical, meaning you cannot impact this goal as directly as you can control the activities that support it. These activities are your lead measures.

A lead measure is “an action planned and taken as a means of achieving a goal.” Thus, for a majority of you, the question is what activities have the greatest impact on your overall goal, which is a lag measure? These must be activities you have significant influence on, according to the authors. In addition, these lead measures must have significant impact on your overall goal.

So which activities, associated with your overall income goal, do you have control, or significant influence? For example, are “exclusives secured” something you can significantly influence? I would say no. Exclusives secured is more of a lag measure than a lead measure. Certainly there are essential lead measures that require your focus – and tracking.

Let’s focus today on commercial real estate brokerage, although many of these apply to property management, mortgage brokerage and even insurance.

Best Lead Measures for CRE Brokerage

[Tweet “A lead measure is an action planned and taken as a means of achieving a goal. ~ 4 Disciplines of Execution “]

  • Calls Attempted – this is one activity you have total and complete control over
  • Calls Completed – this is really a function of the number of calls attempted, however you do have some influence here, whether by increasing the frequency and/or times of calls attempted.
  • Letters sent – again, you have total control over this, and I can share with you that it does impact your overall goal – commissions earned.
  • Networking events – you can control the number of times you physically attend events to enhance your presence in your market
  • Digital or physical marketing – enhances your presence which leverages your prospecting efforts.

As I noted in my last blog, although this seems fairly straight forward, in fact it is very comprehensive and takes a consistent, disciplined approach to implement correctly. The key take away for you, when you set your overall goal (commissions/fees earned) – remember what you really need to do – is set your supporting activities goals.

[Tweet “The key is to set goals for your supporting activities that impact your large goal(s).”]


Ready to achieve goals you never thought possible? We would like to talk with you and share how our process will create a platform for consistently higher income, and generating this in less time. To schedule a free consultation, please click here. Our proven process has resulted in our coaching clients consistently out earning their commercial real estate peers by 7X.


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