Ten Tips To Building A Successful Team

When you have been in real estate for over 37 years and coaching for almost 25 years, you have the opportunity to meet a lot of successful agents and teams and learn about their business.

There are lots of reasons some teams are successful and some are not. These are just a few of the common threads I have seen over the years.

#1. Why do you want to build a team and expand? What is your ultimate goal? Will you profit more or less? Less? How could that be? You need to be clear about the economic models. I have seen agents expand for all the wrong reasons. Do you see yourself ultimately stepping back? Let’s not kid ourselves….no one gets out of real estate. Do you see yourself selling your asset…your business? You need to know the answers to these questions so you are clear about the purpose.

#2. Do you have a current organization chart? If not, create one now even if it just has you at the top and one assistant below you. What does your future organization chart look like for the end of the year? 3 years from now? 5 years from now? Build your now and future organization charts. This is the beginning of building the road map for a successful team once you know what you are building and why you are building.

#3. When you build a team, follow the model. Here is the classic mistake an agent makes – hire an assistant first and then hire a buyer agent. That is such a mistake and is not the model! The model is to hire an assistant and when your business is 65 plus transactions, you hire your second assistant and after that, you hire the buyer agent. You now have the business to support a buyer agent. Follow the model.

#4. Take your time during the hiring process – conduct good interviews and call the references three levels deep. Look at my Hiring Report for helpful information. Make sure you are always looking for talent even if you feel you bench is full – upgrade/topgrade is a good thing. Prepare a job description, daily schedule and compensation plan so at the final interview, you can review these documents line by line with the candidate and have them sign off on them. Every buyer agent and administrative person must know what your expectations are for being on your great team.

#5. Set goals together as a team. You must have everyone participate and buy into the vision for the year. It is important to be realistic, to have tracking systems, and of course accountability. You should have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly goals visually posted. Everyone on the team should know exactly where you are in relationship to your team goals.

#6. Make sure your systems can easily be duplicated and can easily be scaled up. If you are doing 22 deals or 522 deals, your systems can expand. The checklists, the letter follow up, and database management is all the same no matter what your numbers are. Systems need constant tweaking…it is real estate.

#7. Be very careful to not build a Family Business versus a Business Family. You can have a family business and have employees and agents that work for you that are not related to you. Let me explain: let’s say you have a great assistant…always helpful, so very nice to clients, but makes mistakes and is slow and you really like her/ him. You know there are mistakes, and you know you are over paying for the production that you are getting back but you just like them and they really need the job. Sound familiar? Is that what you really want? What if you had the best buyer agent in town? What if you had the best executive assistant in town? What happens to your business and more importantly what happens to your production and the quality of customer service for your business?

#8. Firing should never be a surprise. I am a firm believer in promptly addressing challenges with a buyer agent or administrative person through a corrective conversation. Here is how mine goes – I start by complimenting the person, then I say I would like to talk about three things we can work on together. Now it may be more or less than three but I am prepared to go through each one thoroughly. I then share the changes I expect and ask how we can work on this together. I then compliment again and have him/her sign off on the Corrective Conversation Form and the date we will meet again to review. Two things happen – 1) the person improves or 2) the person quits. Have a system to encourage, correct, and train. Firing is very expensive.

#9. Have fun on your team! Take the time for a once a month “happy hour” or outing with the team. Build the “business family” and go off-site and make people feel important and noticed. People don’t leave your team if they respect you and more importantly you respect them and they feel it. Do you know the anniversary date of each person on your team? Do you know their birthday? Do you acknowledge it?

#10. Invest in your team. Make sure each member has a professional growth plan consisting of training and coaching. We all understand the power of a business coach and a skills coach. Don’t leave your great team members out of this part of building a successful team. Education is empowering for all.

So I hope these 10 tips were of interest to you….of course there are more, these are just a few for you to think about and take action.