Short answer: Track five numbers: conversations per week, where every client came from, your conversion rate by lead source, what you get back for every dollar you spend, and what you earn per hour. Keep them in one spreadsheet or your CRM and update them every week. Top producers on Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris track these because each one tells you what to do next, not just how the year went.
By D.J. Paris, host of Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris. Updated November 2026.
Why should a real estate agent track their numbers at all?
Because closings tell you what happened months ago. The numbers underneath them tell you what’s about to happen, and which part of your business to fix. Greg Pekarsky, who runs the Vesta Preferred team in Chicago, said his CRM logs everything for exactly this reason:
“Our CRM monitors every single action. Calls, texts, emails. Because the most important thing is understanding what and how the statistics are of your specific lead sources… Knowing your numbers is everything, guys.”
Greg Pekarsky, 290M in 2024: How An Agent Had His Best Year In A Down Market (January 2025, at 16:08)
You don’t need his volume to do this. You need five numbers and fifteen minutes a week.
What are the 5 metrics top producers track?
| Metric | What it tells you | Update it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Conversations per week | Whether you’re doing the activity your income depends on | Daily tally, weekly total |
| 2. Lead source of every client | Where your business actually comes from | When a client is added |
| 3. Conversion rate by lead source | Which sources and which steps are leaking | Weekly |
| 4. Return on every dollar spent | What to keep paying for and what to cut | Monthly, judged over 6 to 12 months |
| 5. Hourly pay | Which kind of business is worth your time | At each closing |
Metric 1: How many real conversations did you have this week?
This is the one number you fully control. Brittany Ranew, a Realtor and relocation specialist with Premier Sotheby’s International Realty in St. Petersburg and Tampa Bay, puts her weekly target on a whiteboard in her office:
“These are the amount of conversations that I wanna have per week. So I’m like, just, you know, checking those off on the board and for each week. So I, you know, what gets measured gets managed.”
Brittany Ranew, Is Your Mindset Holding You Back In Real Estate? (February 2023, at 45:53)
Define what counts before you start, or the number means nothing. For Ranew, it’s “just a meaningful conversation”: a call to a past client, a voicemail when they don’t pick up, or the people she talks to at a networking event. Pick your definition, write it down, and don’t change it mid-year.
Josh Anderson, who leads the Anderson Group in Nashville, likes this number because it makes the rest predictable: “If I make 20 contacts a day, I’m going to do a certain amount of deals every year, every month, every quarter” (Why 36 Is The Magic Number Of Touches, July 2023, at 18:25).
Metric 2: Where did every client come from?
Ali Garced, a former Air Force major who closed 55 transactions in her first two years, puts lead source at the very top of her client checklist:
“The first thing you need to be tracking is who is giving you business. Where is your business coming from because that is what you want to replicate double down on.”
Ali Garced, Step By Step Buyer Checklist For Real Estate Agents (August 2023, at 7:11)
Her follow-through is specific. If it’s all coming from one website, put more into that site. If a few people keep sending you clients, “show them some love give them some gifts” and say thank you. You can’t do either if you don’t know who they are.
How to track it: one column in your client list called “source,” filled in the day the person enters your database. Use a short fixed list (sphere, past client, referral from [name], open house, online lead, farm mailer, social, other) so you can count them later.
Metric 3: What’s your conversion rate by lead source?
Once you know the source, track how many leads from each one turn into appointments, signed clients and closings. Pekarsky’s team knows what each step should look like. In his weekly coaching, if an agent falls short, they go to the call recordings:
“If you get 10 leads, seven of those 10 should be an appointment set. Now, if Katie had three appointments set out of the 10, let’s listen to your phone calls.”
Greg Pekarsky, 290M in 2024 (January 2025, at 21:35)
That’s the point of this metric: it shows you which step to fix. Pekarsky said his team closes “minimally 10%” of its leads (at 11:36), and he expects different numbers from different sources. Track each source separately. Mixing them into one average hides the source that’s dragging you down.
That goes for sources you run yourself. On open houses: “If you’re going to do the open house, make a metric behind it” (at 41:45). Count unrepresented visitors and how many you end up working with.
For the full math on how many conversations it takes to get one closing, see How Many Conversations Does It Take to Close a Deal?
Metric 4: What do you get back for every dollar you spend?
For every paid source (leads, mailers, ads, sponsorships), divide the commission it produced by what it cost. Pekarsky has a hard floor: “I don’t like to do anything that doesn’t give me $3 back for every $1 that I spend” (at 27:12). He also gives a new source “a minimum of three, hopefully six months to start to see those ratios,” because that’s about how long buyers take to buy.
Jessica Burton, a top producer in Houston whose three main sources are open houses, advertising and social media, gives paid sources even longer:
“I track for about, I try to, for about a year, and if I don’t have any tangible return, I’ll usually pivot to something else.”
Jessica Burton, The 3 Lead Gen Sources Every Real Estate Agent Needs (October 2023, at 16:06)
Use the money that actually reaches you, not gross commission. Ben Lalez, who leads the Ben Lalez Team at Compass in Chicago, built a dashboard that refreshes all day for this reason. His questions: “what is my burn rate through my expenses? What is my actual dollar received per transaction after all of this?” (Zillow vs. Compass & Creating Personalized AI Solutions, May 2026, at 32:44).
For what to spend in the first place, see How Much Should a Real Estate Agent Spend on Marketing?
Metric 5: What do you earn per hour?
This is the metric most agents skip. Garced kept an Excel sheet that logged the hours she spent on every client: driving, negotiating, sitting at inspections. In her words:
“I created a spreadsheet where every single client that I ever had, I categorized how many hours am I driving around? How many hours am I negotiating… So tally every single hour that you spend per client.”
Ali Garced, How Ali The Agent Closed 55 Sales In Her First Two Years (July 2023, at 22:01)
Then divide the commission by the hours. She had assumed listings were her best business. They were her lowest, at “$162 per hour” (at 22:40), partly because of time spent at open houses. Buyers came in at $453 an hour and referrals at $360 (at 24:08). Yours will be different, and you won’t know them until you log your time.
Tracking hours also protects your life outside work. Austin Cheviron, a team leader and coach who was the top agent in Indiana, said his best year was 2016, when he closed 88 transactions working 38 and a half hours a week:
“And I know that because I track my hours every day. Why did I track my hours? Because I knew I didn’t want my business to offset my family and my personal life.”
Austin Cheviron, From Broke To The Top Agent In The State In 4 Years (October 2024, at 18:06)
How do you set up a simple tracking system?
Use what you already have. A CRM logs calls, texts and emails on its own. A spreadsheet works too; Garced’s was plain Excel. Here’s a setup you can build in an hour.
Tab 1: Weekly activity. One row per week. Columns: conversations, appointments set, appointments held, clients signed, hours worked.
Tab 2: Clients. One row per client. Columns: name, lead source, date added, appointment date, signed date, contract date, closed date, net commission after split and fees, hours spent.
Tab 3: Spending. One row per paid source. Columns: source, monthly cost, total spent to date, net commission from closings it produced, return per dollar.
Then add one recurring calendar block each week. Fifteen minutes to fill in the weekly row and update any client who moved a step. If you already do a Monday review of your business plan, as described in How to Write a Real Estate Agent Business Plan That Actually Gets Used, add it to that block.
How long before your numbers mean anything?
Conversations per week mean something right away. Conversion rates need about 90 days of data. Return on spend takes longest: Pekarsky waits three to six months on a new source, Burton up to a year. Make big calls, like cutting a source, in your year-end review, not after one bad month.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important metric for a real estate agent?
Conversations per week. It’s the only number you fully control, and the others follow from it. Brittany Ranew writes her weekly target on a whiteboard and checks it off.
Should I track my numbers in a spreadsheet or a CRM?
Either works. A CRM logs activity for you, and a spreadsheet is free and simple. Ali Garced tracked her hourly pay in plain Excel. What matters is updating it every week.
How do I know if a lead source is worth paying for?
Divide the net commission it produced by what it cost. Greg Pekarsky won’t keep anything that returns less than $3 for every $1 spent, and he gives new sources three to six months before judging them.
How often should I review my real estate metrics?
Update them weekly and review the trends monthly. Save decisions about cutting or adding lead sources for a quarterly or year-end review, when you have enough data.
Why track hours if I’m paid by commission?
Because it shows which business pays you best for your time. Ali Garced found listings paid her the least per hour and buyers the most, which was the opposite of what she expected.
Listen to the full episodes
- 290M in 2024: How An Agent Had His Best Year In A Down Market, with Greg Pekarsky
- Is Your Mindset Holding You Back In Real Estate?, with Brittany Ranew
- Why 36 Is The Magic Number Of Touches, with Josh Anderson
- Step By Step Buyer Checklist For Real Estate Agents, with Ali Garced
- How Ali The Agent Closed 55 Sales In Her First Two Years, with Ali Garced
- The 3 Lead Gen Sources Every Real Estate Agent Needs, with Jessica Burton
- From Broke To The Top Agent In The State In 4 Years, with Austin Cheviron
- Zillow vs. Compass & Creating Personalized AI Solutions, with Ben Lalez
Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris is a podcast for real estate agents, with more than 790 episodes of interviews with top-producing agents, coaches and industry leaders. Here’s how to listen.