AGENT TIPS ON BROKERS....

REAL ESTATE TIPS

Go Beyond Training

Classes and mentors are great, but brokers should consider structuring their companies around long-term agent support.

FEBRUARY 2015 | BY GRAHAM WOOD

Far too often in real estate, it’s every man for himself. Agents come into a brokerage, they’re given a desk, a phone, and a computer, and they’re told: “Good luck.”

“That’s how to lose an agent in less than six months,” says Chris Scott, president of The Paperless Agent and marketing manager for GoodLife Realty in Austin, Texas.

Brokers can’t expect to retain top talent unless they’ve created an environment that truly supports agents. So step one: Don’t throw them to the wolves.

Scott, along with Mary Maloney, broker-owner of Hometown Realty in San Marcos, Calif., spoke at the Real Estate Connect conference in New York about how brokers can structure their companies to focus on agent success. While training is an important element, Scott and Maloney say there’s so much more that can be done to prop up agents.

Hire People Who Really Belong at Your Company

“You know what happens when you hire agents just for the manpower?” Maloney says. “You end up firing them all.”

Bringing someone into a business environment that they aren’t truly suited for just to get more hands on deck is the first sign that a brokerage doesn’t take agent support to heart. But how do you know whether someone is going to be a good fit for your company?

“Hire to your core values,” Maloney says. She’s no stranger to letting agents go: She had to clean house once after realizing nobody she hired met the vision she has for her brokerage. When she started evaluating potential hires based on her core values, she began to spot the talent she wanted.

Maloney’s company core values are:

• Be grateful.
• Serve the customer.
• Constantly innovate.
• Elevate and grow.
• Deliver amazing experiences.
• Be relentlessly authentic.
• Have passion and purpose.
• Surprise and delight.
• Stay humble.

“By evaluating each situation against these core values, it is easy to determine if an agent’s actions are aligned with these core values either internally or externally,” Maloney says.

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Delegate Non-Sales Tasks to a Support Staff

Producing marketing materials, managing social media profiles, and generating leads takes agents’ time away from utilizing their No. 1 skill: selling. Maloney and Scott have both hired support staff to take care of these tasks at their brokerages, freeing up agents to spend more time with clients.

“We believe that agents are great sales people but may not always have the skills and discipline that it takes to be great marketers,” Maloney says. “The days of the lone-ranger agent are numbered in my mind. There is only so much capacity for a single person. Consistency of brand message and marketing gets lost when the demand of execution of transactions takes priority. This is what creates the ‘feast or famine’ business for most single agents.”

Maloney’s support staff handles marketing, lead generation, and transaction management so agents can focus on “delivering an amazing experience to the consumer,” she says, adding that she hires experts in each position to “empower them to be great at that job.”

Invest in More Managers

Every agent should get regular one-on-one time with a manager, but larger brokerages often put too many agents under one manager, Scott says. That makes it less likely for the manager to find the time for a meaningful meeting with each agent to discuss their goals and progress.

“In any other industry, you wouldn’t try to have a ratio of 30 or 40 sales professionals to a single manager,” Scott says. “But it’s often what people do in real estate, and then they wonder why the agents don’t perform or why customers give agents poor reviews.”

GoodLife Realty has a full-time manager for 15 agents, plus a part-time trainer, a contract-to-close manager, and a full-time and part-time marketing specialist. The manager meets with the agents once a month separately from sales meetings.

“This is part of the cost of providing value to our agents, so they can have the support they need to serve their customers,” Scott says. “Any brokerage that isn’t providing enough support to their agents is hurting themselves, the consumers, and our industry at large.”

Make a Personalized Business Plan for Each Agent

In the monthly meetings between GoodLife’s managers and their agents, the managers help each agent figure out their income goals for the year and steps they need to take to meet those goals. And every month, they track the agent’s progress.

“Each agent’s business plan breaks it down into the number of deals needed to hit their income goal and the number of appointments they need to schedule each week to achieve that number of deals,” Scott says. “Each appointment, contract, pending, and closing is tracked so we know how the agent is performing compared to their goals. Our managers sit down with each agent one-on-one every month to see how they are tracking toward their goals. This leads to a meaningful discussion about what support the agent needs if they are falling short, or to acknowledge their success in achieving their goals.”