Focused on Opportunity? 10 Business Coaching Questions to Help Real Estate Professionals by Lisa Pierosara, Career Coach

Career coaches are in the business of hearing people’s stories and helping them create vision so they can better seek or recognize new opportunities for their careers.  Good coaches and good real estate agents alike influence their clients’ ability to recognize a great opportunity, a great fit.  

You guide people toward one of their largest purchases in life.  But as a business builder, your livelihood depends on the efficiency of your system, your ability to stay motivated and your ability to spot opportunity.  A couple of other assumptions:

• Retaining clients and vying for listings becomes more challenging as social media realities increase.
• Creating an efficient team and business system competes with your time responding to clients.

So, your choice of focus counts.  Real estate agents need to be in a mindset where they can spot new opportunities that present themselves.  Your choice of focus, in and around your business, affects whether you are an effective opportunity spotter:   an entrepreneur with the ability to be creative, open-minded and confident in taking chances.  Recent research* suggests that these promotion-focused entrepreneurs are better able to detect opportunities and be more innovative in their solutions.
Are you promotion-focused (growth mode) or prevention- focused (maintenance mode) as you manage your business?  Here are ten powerful questions to contemplate, for those ready to self-coach through a more introspective and productive year ahead.

•  In one or two words, what is your current state in your business?
•  What are you really in this business for?  What do you love about it?
•  What is most motivating to you about the future of this career?
•  What are you excellent at, in this business?  How can you leverage more of that toward bigger impact?
•  How do you communicate this attribute in a way that differentiates you from the competition?  
•  What are you tolerating, the absence of which would move you forward?
•  On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you in your ability to grow your business, your efficiency, your team, your contacts?
• What’s an opportunity you see, but haven’t been able to capture it yet?
•  Imagine you are your future self in January 2015. What would you be advising yourself to invest time in this year? (ex. Delegating, goal setting, promotional activity)
•  What element of your business will you focus on this coming week?  How many hours will you put into this?

Stats have shown that self-awareness is one of the top two elements to executive level success in business.  Chances are, the more self-aware you become, the more certain and promotion-focused you’ll be, with an increased ability to see the opportunities that fit with your next career or business stage.   A much more efficient way to run a business!

Lisa Pierosara is a GTA professional life and career coach since 2006, accredited through Coaches Training Institute.  She works with private clients and MBA students through her flexible coaching program, toward stronger self-awareness, personal branding, career vision, and/or performance potential.  Previously from a successful career in brand and marketing communications, Lisa is an expert in teaching clients to recognize ‘fit’ and communicate their brand in a relevant way. 
For life-long benefits of coaching as you seek your next move, connect with Lisa at 416-998-3700 or on Twitter @ImpactCoachGTA

*Andranik Tumasjan and Reiner Braun from Germany’s TUM School of Management; H. Halvorson HBR Blog Network