When you are behind pace in September, the instinct is to go find a new lead source, because a gap that size feels like a lead problem. He says it almost never is, and that only four numbers on your board can still turn into money before December 31.
A Denver title sales executive wrote a fourth-quarter reset for agents who are behind, and he opens with a number from The Close: a mid-year reader poll found 41 percent of agents had reached less than a quarter of their annual production goal by June, and another 29 percent were between 25 and 49 percent. That is roughly 70 percent of the field behind pace at the halfway mark.
His point is that most agents do not actually know how far behind they are. They have a feeling, and a feeling is not a plan. So he tells you to sit down with the MLS and the CRM and write four numbers:
1. Closed sides year to date and the gross commission they produced.
2. Everything currently under contract, with the closing date on each file.
3. Active listings you control, with days on market and the date of the last price change.
4. Buyers who have physically toured a home with you in the last thirty days.
Then he says why those four and not others. They are "the only things on your board that can pay you before December 31." One and two are already decided. Three is the fastest money available to you. Four is the only buyer activity that is real rather than aspirational. Everything else on the list is 2027 business.
Add the four up, compare them to your goal, and the difference is your fourth-quarter assignment. He says what most agents find when they run it is not a lead shortage at all — it is three stale listings and two buyers who quietly stopped answering.
“One. Closed sides year to date and the gross commission they produced. Two. Everything currently under contract, with the closing date on each file. Three. Active listings you control, with days on market and the date of the last price change. Four. Buyers who have physically toured a home with you in the last thirty days.”
The four numbers are the only ones with a clock short enough to matter. A lead source you buy in September pays you in February. A listing sitting at 70 days with no price change since day one can still close in November, but only if the price conversation happens this week.
What changes is the order of your September. Reprice what you already control, protect the files already under contract, then go looking. Most agents run it backwards and buy leads to cover a conversion gap, which is why the same gap is still there in December.