I've managed several hundred agents over the years. I've coached dozens and am approaching 100 there also.
Productive agents set intelligent goals. Less productive agents don't seem to understand how to discern a goal from an aspiration. I recall, one particular business planning session with a young agent who was in his second year in the business. He had a modest 1st year, but showed potential. And, with a young family, he certainly had some good reasons to be productive.
I knew that he would not make $200,000 in the coming year, write 300 blog posts, talk to 5 FSBOs per week, or any of the other stuff he wrote down. And, shame on me, because I didn't bring him down to earth in that session, he fizzled out within 90 days. We remain in touch. He's a builder and has a successful contracting business. He's done his share of real estate transactions, and sold a number of homes he's built. There's nothing wrong with his life or career to speak of, and no one would regard him as a failure.
But I failed when I didn't teach him how to properly set goals.
SMART is an acronym for Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
A SMART goal for this agent would have been closer to $50,000 in commission, 50 blog posts, at least 1 FSBO walk through per week, and a few of his other ideas scaled back to human scale. With his talent, he might have made that $50,000 by the end of the second quarter and changed the trajectory of his life. I'm not expressing a terrible guilt or regret; we were each doing our best. But with what I know now, I approach goal setting far more, well, smartly.
Another thing I've learned is that some goals can be more focused on process and habits and just outcomes. Talking to 20 expired listings per month is a habit, but not a commission outcome. But if you do talk to 20 expireds a month you'll probably have a hell of a good commission result. A good analogy would be to have a specific goal of 1800 calories and walking 10,000 steps daily. You would probably lose more weight than if you set a goal of losing 30 pounds by June.
Here's a better way to look at it.
Specific: Talking to 25 FSBO or expired per month is superior to "List a house per week."
Measurable: Writing 3 blog posts per week and making 1 video per week are measurable. "Get 200 new likes for my business page" is Ok, but the first will make the second happen.
Achievable: Yes, stretching yourself is great. But can you actually do the thing? I can make 6 videos per month. I have often done it. But get 50,000 followers? I don't even know how to reverse engineer that.
Realistic/Relevant: This is under discussed. Not mutually exclusive to achievable but is the goal germane to the big picture? In other words, if getting 200 new followers won't increase your income, why bother?
Time Bound: By when? A REALISTIC deadline is crucial.
Now when I go over goals with someone, the sky is completely devoid of any pie.
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