Yep, it’s THAT time of the year again. Time to put aside a half or full day for some serious consideration of how you intend to grow your mortgage practice in 2010.

Being that I’ve been working with mortgage professionals and their business planning efforts for five years now, I can say, without blushing, I have some expert advice to share on this matter.

Sometimes you’ve got to creep-up on the business of business planning

What I mean is, if you tell yourself,

“Self, we’re going to spend all day today devising our business plan for 2010 and we’re gonna do it by ourselves, locked up in our office, with a blank Word doc or giant whiteboard as our business planning canvas.”

Likely what will happen is your “Self” will get cold feet, create reasons and emergencies and must-dos to keep you from what your subconscious sees as an enormous and brain-draining task.

To combat this, try a business planning warm-up exercise. Just stick one toe into the icy cold water to start. Here’s an exercise that I share with my own coaching clients who feel anxious about beginning the process: I CAN Plan Business ACTION Planning Primer

Buddy-up with other like-minded Mortgage Professionals

Going it alone truly does decrease the likelihood that one will finish his/her plan. Remember the old saying, “No one succeeds alone!”

Buddy up with 2 or 3 other goal-oriented, enthusiastic mortgage professionals in your area. Set a date and place, preferably NOT in your office or theirs and keep the agenda simple.

Here are 5 business foundations to consider as you begin to brainstorm your goals as a group:

1. Time Management
2. Marketing & Lead Generation
3. Database Management
4. Building Business Referral Partnerships
5. Tracking/Metrics

Be specific with your goals and simplistic with your process

Creating dynamic, detailed, action-driven goals is the MOST important aspect of your business plan. All of our excitement, hope and renewed energy comes from the act of creation and creativity. Don’t just stop with a goal like:

Develop methods to cultivate my new business referral relationships 

Take it to the next level with actionable items like:

1. Invite 5 of my new business referral partners to meet at my office on a quarterly basis as a Mastermind group.Rotate who will set the agenda and lead the group.
2. Locate and schedule to attend at least 3 business growth seminars, workshops, or presentations per year. Call all of my referral partners to let them know about the event, and for those who agree to go to the event, host a dinner party immediately after to discuss take-aways and each person’s implementation strategy.
3. Invite my new referral partners to join www.LinkedIn.com, and offer to write a recommendation for the ones who accept the invitation.

There are dozens of seminars, software applications and workbooks with CDs & DVDS on the topic of business planning, all of which can cost you hundreds to thousands of dollars. Much of the content and instruction is complicated and quite frankly, overkill, for what is needed in order to develop an effective plan.

If you’re interested in a very cost effective, simple and extremely effective mortgage business planning web-tool that will provide you with all the help you’ll need in order to finally complete and execute your plan, check out www.icanplan.biz.

For a Sneak Peek of the I CAN Plan business planning process, click on the logo below