Why Estate Agency Targets Fail Without Changing Your Habits

Setting ambitious estate agency targets for 2027 is easy. Achieving them requires something different. Discover why changing behaviours, building consistent habits and protecting time in your diary matter more than simply setting bigger goals.

“Before you set your next target and think the job is done, ask yourself what actually needs to change to achieve it. What behaviours must you adopt, what habits need to change, and what time are you prepared to commit? Because setting a target doesn't create results. Changing what you do consistently is what gives you a chance of achieving them.”

Every year, estate agency owners sit down and decide what they want their business to achieve. More instructions, greater market share, higher fees, stronger profitability or perhaps the ambition to open another office. The targets are agreed, the numbers are entered into a spreadsheet and the team is told what success needs to look like. Everyone leaves the meeting with a clear understanding of the destination, but very little has been discussed about what actually needs to change to get there. The uncomfortable truth is that setting a bigger target while continuing with exactly the same behaviours is not a growth strategy. It is simply hoping for a different outcome and yet, when it comes to our personal lives, most of us already understand why this approach does not work.

Think About the Last Time You Tried to Change Something

Imagine deciding that you want to run 5km, lose weight, learn a new language, stop smoking or become a better cook. You know what you want to achieve, and you can probably picture how you will feel when you get there but writing that goal down does not make it happen. Running 5km requires getting outside regularly, improving your fitness and making time for training, even when doing something else would feel easier. Losing weight does not happen because you visit the gym once and eat a salad on Monday. It requires ongoing decisions about food, exercise, shopping, preparation and the habits that previously shaped your lifestyle. Learning a language follows the same principle. You cannot expect to become fluent by buying a book, downloading an app and occasionally practising when you have nothing better to do. The outcome is something you want. The behaviour is what makes it possible. So why, when we return to our businesses, do we suddenly behave as though writing a number on a planning document will somehow produce the result?

The Science Behind Why Good Intentions Are Not Enough

Psychologists have studied the difference between wanting to achieve something and consistently taking the actions required to make it happen. Peter Gollwitzer's research into implementation intentions demonstrates the importance of identifying when, where and how an action will take place. A review with Paschal Sheeran, covering 94 independent tests, found that this form of planning had a meaningful positive effect on goal achievement.

In simple terms, deciding what you want is different from deciding exactly what you will do to achieve it.

There is another useful concept developed by Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey called competing commitments. Their work explores why people can genuinely want to change while simultaneously holding other commitments or assumptions that encourage them to maintain their existing behaviour. Consider an agency owner who wants to spend more time developing the business but continues handling every operational problem personally. They may genuinely want to delegate, yet also feel uncomfortable letting go of control or allowing somebody else to make a mistake. The stated commitment is to become a more strategic business owner. The competing commitment may be to remain indispensable, avoid uncertainty or maintain control. Until you recognise what your existing behaviours are protecting, changing them can be far more difficult than simply deciding to do something differently.

Your Existing Habits Are Already Competing With Your New Ambitions

Every business operates through established habits, whether its owner consciously recognises them or not. The way meetings are conducted, how time is allocated, how leads are followed up and how decisions are made all become part of the normal working week.

If your ambition is to increase instructions in 2027, something in that working week will probably need to change. You might need more prospecting, stronger follow up, better content, improved conversion or more deliberate relationship building but those activities require time, and that time is probably already occupied by something else. Perhaps you spend the first hour of every morning responding to emails. Maybe your team waits until the diary becomes quiet before prospecting, or your marketing only receives attention when everything else has been completed. Those are not necessarily signs of laziness or poor commitment. They are established behaviours that have become comfortable, convenient and accepted.

The challenge is recognising that you cannot keep every existing habit, add a collection of new commitments and expect the working week to magically become longer.

Something has to give.

If You Want Different Results in 2027, Start With Different Questions

Most business planning begins with what we want to achieve, followed by a discussion about how much growth we expect. There is nothing wrong with that, but the conversation often stops before identifying the practical behaviours required to make those numbers realistic.

Imagine your agency wants to increase instructions by 20% next year. Rather than simply dividing that target across twelve months, start asking what a business already achieving that level of performance would be doing differently. Consider these five questions with your team:

What would we need to be doing consistently to achieve this target? Identify the prospecting, lead generation, marketing, client communication and conversion activities that would support the result.
What behaviours need to change across our team? Consider accountability, responsiveness, preparation, follow up and the standards expected in every client interaction.
What habits do I personally need to change as the business owner? Examine where your time goes, what you avoid, which decisions you delay and whether your behaviour supports the ambition you have set.
What existing activities need to stop or receive less time? Identify the meetings, distractions and reactive behaviours that compete with the work your business needs to prioritise.
When will these new activities happen? Agree specific days, times, responsibilities and measures so the commitments become part of normal business operations.

These questions change the conversation from simply wanting more to understanding what achieving more will demand. They also make the target a shared responsibility rather than a number the owner announces and expects everyone else to deliver.

Your Diary Should Reflect Your Ambition

There is a simple way to test whether your business is genuinely committed to its targets. Open your diary and look at what has actually been allocated time over the next four weeks. If increasing instructions is your priority, where are the protected prospecting sessions? If strengthening your brand matters, when are you developing content, reviewing your messaging and working on your local market presence? If improving conversion is essential, where is the time for coaching, reviewing opportunities and developing the team's skills? And if you want a business that becomes less dependent on you, when are you developing the people who will eventually take greater responsibility? Your diary is often a more accurate reflection of your priorities than your business plan.

For example, you might commit to two protected prospecting sessions each week, a weekly content planning session and a monthly review of conversion performance. These are not guarantees of growth, but they create the consistent opportunities for improvement that a target alone cannot provide. This is where changing habits becomes practical. Rather than hoping you find time for important activities, you deliberately allocate that time and stop allowing everything else to take priority.

Measure the Behaviours, Not Just the Results

Estate agency has always been comfortable measuring outcomes. We track valuations, instructions, viewings, offers, exchanges, fees and revenue because those figures help us understand business performance but most of those figures tell us what has already happened. They do not always reveal whether we are consistently doing the things that influence what will happen next. An agency owner who only reviews monthly instructions might discover too late that prospecting has been neglected for several weeks. By contrast, a business that also monitors meaningful conversations, follow up quality and planned lead generation can identify problems earlier. The answer is not to overwhelm people with additional targets. It is to identify the few behaviours that genuinely influence performance, measure them sensibly and make them part of a consistent operating rhythm.

This is also something we explore through the EAX Business Accelerator, helping agency owners connect strategic ambitions with the practical actions, accountability and disciplines required to turn them into sustainable business performance.

Before You Finalise Your 2027 Targets, Do This

As you prepare your business plan for 2027, take one of your most important targets and work backwards from the outcome. Identify what you would need to be doing differently each week, which existing habits might prevent that from happening and who needs to take responsibility for making the change.

Then open your diary and make the commitments visible. Schedule the prospecting, marketing, coaching, business development or leadership activity that will give your target a realistic opportunity to become achievable.

Do not confuse having a clear ambition with having a clear plan, and do not assume that greater motivation will compensate for unchanged behaviour. The difference between where your business is today and where you want it to be next year will largely be found in what you and your team repeatedly choose to do.

Your targets tell you where you want to go, but your habits determine how you move towards them. If you want a different business in 2027, start building a different working week today.