10 Steps to a Midyear Reset — for Realtors

Chris Resop doesn’t wait for business to find him.

A former Major League Baseball pitcher, he retired after a 14-year career with the Florida Marlins, Atlanta Braves, Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Red Sox, among others. Now managing partner of The Agency Naples, he also runs The Resop Team with his wife, Kara. He credits the focus and work ethic he developed as a professional athlete with helping him build a successful real estate team.

Resop’s advice for other agents who need to reset at midyear? “If you aren’t lead generating or business is quiet, go find an open house,” he says. “I started my career sitting in open houses seven days a week. Go make open houses your office and let people coming in see you as the face of the community.”

Debbie De Grote, CEO and co-founder of Forward Coaching in Costa Mesa, California, gives her clients similar advice. “When I started out at age 18 in the business, my broker told me to talk to 50 people per day,” she says. “He said, ‘If you talk to that many people, you’ll get lucky once in a while,’ and he was right. Real estate is an incredibly hard yet really simple business. If you’re working on your market and your skills and talking to enough people a day, you can make a great living.”

The halfway point of the year is an ideal time to take an honest look at what’s actually working, what’s wasting time and where opportunities might come from.

We asked top producers, brokers and coaches how agents can reset right now. Here’s their advice.

1. Analyze Your Pipeline

Real estate coach Darryl Davis, founder of The POWER Program®, says agents should start their midyear check-in with listing inventory, not commissions. “Listing inventory is predictive for 90 days,” he says. “Closings and commissions are a lagging indicator.” Closed sales show what already happened. Listing inventory, pending transactions, active sellers and appointments point to what could happen next.

De Grote advises agents to review gross commissions earned, pending contracts and active listings that are likely to sell. From there, they can tell whether they’re truly on pace—or whether the goal needs to be adjusted. “Are they getting close to 50% of the way toward their goal?” De Grote says. “If not, how far behind are they, and can they make that up in the remainder of the year—or is the goal too high or too low?”

She also cautions agents not to measure every quarter the same way. In many markets, the first and second quarters don’t each represent 25% of the year’s goal. Depending on seasonality, agents could gain ground in the third and fourth quarters. “It’s individual to their market,” De Grote says.

2. Audit Your Time

Once agents know what’s in the pipeline, the next question is whether their daily activity supports the business they want. “Their calendar will tell agents more truth than their bank account will,” Davis says. “Pulling up last month’s calendar and counting how many hours were actually spent in front of people who could hire them will be very telling.” That review can expose the difference between being busy and being productive. The bottom line, Davis says, is that agents make money by talking to buyers and sellers.

De Grote asks a similar question: “They’re working, but are they working on the right things?” She suggests separating income-producing activities from income-servicing activities. Prospecting, lead follow-up, taking listings, negotiating contracts, working with buyers and getting in front of networking groups can create new revenue. Scheduling inspections or meeting an appraiser may be necessary, but those tasks don’t create the next opportunity.

3. Avoid Panic Pivots

Davis says agents who need a midyear reset should resist what he calls “panic pivots.” Panic pivots happen when agents abandon part of a business plan because one month was slow, buy new tools instead of working with what they’ve got or emulate another agent’s strategy even when it doesn’t fit their personality.

“Find a path—one that speaks to your heart and works for you,” Davis says. “If you’re passionate about it, you’re going to do it consistently. The secret sauce to real estate is not doing the right thing; it’s doing the consistent thing.”

That doesn’t mean agents should ignore the market or refuse to adjust. It means they should make changes based on evidence, not fear. If the pipeline, calendar or follow-up systems show a gap, address it. But don’t mistake one slow month for proof that the whole plan is broken.

4. Track Buyer Response

Michael Martinez, senior vice president at ONE Sotheby’s International Realty, specializes in South Florida’s luxury market, including Pinecrest, Coral Gables, Coconut Grove and surrounding areas. At midyear, he looks at how buyers are responding to his listings. “We pay attention to the pace of the market and how things are moving relative to pricing, showings and conversion rates,” he says. “How many showings are we having? How many offers are we receiving based on those, and what’s our conversion rate?”

If activity isn’t translating into offers, Martinez looks at whether the issue is price, market conditions or buyer confidence. “It gives me a real sense of where we’re priced and how buyers are responding in real time to the pricing,” he says. When inventory isn’t moving as quickly as he’d like, Martinez invests more in high-end video, geotargeting and geofencing, which can help reach buyers beyond the local market. “Somebody on the other side of the world is looking at South Florida while we’re sleeping,” he says. That does not mean chasing every new tactic. “Once we start something, we finish it,” he adds. “Lots of agents dabble in too many things across the board, and it’s a waste of money trying to see what sticks.”

5. Price for Today’s Market

Jennifer Jefcoat, an Orlando-based sales associate with Epique Realty, says her background as a former news anchor and reporter helps her translate market data into plain language for buyers and sellers. “I’m here to deliver the reality and share the data of what’s going on,” she says.

For sellers, that means pricing for the current market and not the one they remember from a few years ago. “Buyers are cautious and on the sidelines,” Jefcoat says. “Everybody’s praying for interest rates to drop, and homes are sitting on the market.” That makes preparation, pricing and expectation-setting more important before the listing ever goes live.

“I’m intentional about how I prepare my listings,” she adds. That starts with hard conversations about pricing, the home’s condition and timing. “If [a seller] thinks the market is like it was four years ago, when their neighbor’s house sold in two days, they can’t freak out when their listing doesn’t sell in the first 30 days,” Jefcoat says. “Or if they want to list at $50,000 over market value so they have room to negotiate, you have to explain why that [strategy doesn’t work today]. Making data-driven decisions is the best way to move forward.”

6. Trace Your Transactions

Jefcoat says agents should review the past three years of transactions and identify where each one came from, such as a repeat client, referral, open house, paid lead source, FSBO, expired listing or another source. “Agents don’t necessarily need a new strategy,” she says. “They need to focus on what’s already working for them and actually execute it.” The key is recognizing which sources are producing results consistently. “If paid leads are your jam, that’s cool,” she says. “For me, it’s about relationships, referrals, past clients and my sphere.”

That audit can also reveal what to cut, such as tools, systems and paid subscriptions agents aren’t using. “If something is draining my energy and not producing results, it doesn’t stay in my business,” she says.

7. Recheck the Local Market

Cheryl Goff, a Vero Beach-based broker with North County Properties and Investments, says a midyear reset should include a fresh look at the neighborhoods and communities agents serve. “You have to be constantly cognizant of what’s in the market,” she says. “Watch what comes on and what goes off.”

Pricing can shift inside a specific community or development. If 20 homes are for sale in one neighborhood, sellers are competing with those homes—and one price reduction can affect expectations for the rest. “Somebody in that community is going to lower their price if they really need to sell,” Goff says. “As more people [follow], it becomes the norm, and that’s the new pricing.”

Buyers are also taking more time because there’s more inventory to choose from, and they’re looking more closely at condition. “If a home needs updates, repairs, a new air conditioner or water heater, they’ll factor that into what they’re willing to offer,” she adds.

8. Follow Up Faster

Davis calls poor follow-up the “death knell of our industry.” Agents often spend time and money trying to generate leads but then lose opportunities because they fail to respond quickly. “If everybody could do follow-up in 24 hours or less, it would have a huge impact,” he says. He compares it to calling a pizzeria and getting a voicemail. “I’m just going to order pizza someplace else.”

Goff sees the same urgency with buyers and relocating clients. “People’s expectations are often unrealistic,” she says. “They don’t mind texting you whatever time of day or night.” When buyers want to see a property quickly and an agent is booked, having help matters. “A team member or an assistant who can step in for you is invaluable because you cannot be all things to all people,” she says. “If a buyer doesn’t get a response in a short period of time, they’ll move on.”

De Grote says agents tend to quit too soon. After two or three attempts, they’ll give up even though the conversation often takes more touches via calls, texts and emails. For agents trying to reset, she says the issue may not be finding more leads, but working the leads already coming in. “They’re stopping short,” she says.

9. Choose Your Lane

Resop says agents can burn through time and money trying to chase too many marketing ideas at once. His team uses social media, email, geotargeting, geofencing, video, website tracking and print, but he says the point is not to try to do everything. “Pick three to five [channels] that work best for your business model and be religious and constant with them,” he says. For his team, consistency also means tracking what actually engages buyers. If online viewers drop off after the fourth or fifth picture in a listing sequence, for example, he will switch the order of photos to put something more compelling up front.

Agents also need to be realistic about what they can sustain, Resop says. A marketing plan might sound impressive, but taking on too much too quickly can drain the budget before it pays off. “You can’t take on 3,000 doors tomorrow,” he says. “It’s expensive, and you’ll burn through the money.”

At midyear, the reset might be about choosing fewer channels, improving the message and sticking with the plan long enough to measure results. “Be cognizant and committed to what you’re doing,” Resop says. “Stick to it and don’t stop.”

10. Build Momentum Now

Martinez encourages agents who want to finish the year strong to “get uncomfortable.” “People tend to get stuck in patterns, and sometimes you’ve got to break out,” he says. Consistency is what creates long-term success. “Anybody can have a good year,” he says. “To hold that position year after year is the hard part.”

Davis recommends choosing one skill to improve over the next 30 days, whether it’s time management, prospecting, listing appointments, negotiating or using a CRM more effectively. Agents don’t have to master everything at once, he says. The point is to keep improving.

De Grote tells her coaching clients to aim for 10 quality conversations a day, plus texts, emails and handwritten notes. If 10 aren’t possible, five is the minimum. “Newer agents or those with smaller spheres may need more,” she says. “If you’re working on your market and your skills and talking to enough people every day, you can make a great living.”

The reset doesn’t have to be dramatic. It has to be specific. Agents who finish 2026 strong are the ones who know exactly what’s in their pipeline, put more time into income-producing activities, price listings for today’s market, follow up fast—and stick with it long enough for it to pay off. #

Leslie C. Stone is a Vero Beach-based freelance writer.