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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Transform your real estate business into a sales powerhouse In The High-Performing Real Estate Team, experienced real estate coach Brian Icenhower shares the systems and secrets of top real estate agents and brokerages. The book offers actionable systems and processes that can be immediately implemented to take you, your fellow agents, and your team or brokerage to the next level. Focusing on the 20% of activities that drive expansion, this book shows you how to create renewed enthusiasm, productivity, engagement, and exponential growth at your real estate team. With this book, you will: * Discover how to create a viral goal that spreads throughout your team and drives change * Learn to focus on core activities that result in the majority of your growth and productivity * Cultivate personal responsibility with public accountability and accelerate growth with a custom team dashboard that measures metrics for success Written for real estate agents, teams, brokerages and franchise owners, The High-Performing Real Estate Team is an indispensable resource that will guide you toward growth while providing you with the resources and downloadable materials to reach your goals faster.
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Seitenzahl: 444
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface: How to Use This Book to Grow Your Teams' Sales
A Manual for Metamorphosis
The Team Book Club
Onward!
Introduction
The Status Quo
The Solution
Next Steps
PART 1: What's Your Viral Goal? Commission Earned, Volume Closed, or Units Sold?
CHAPTER 1: Viral Goals Propel Team Members to the Next Level
Understanding the Viral Goal
What Is a Viral Goal?
What Viruses Have Taught Us About Devising Viral Goals
More on Viruses and Teams
Up Next: Make It About Everyone
CHAPTER 2: Make It SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound
Get SMART
What Happens When the Goal Is Too Big?
The New Agent with Unrealistic Goals
The Sum of All Parts Does Not Always Equal the Whole
The Common Sense Test
Up Next: Motivate Everyone
CHAPTER 3: Make the Viral Goal Motivate Every Team Member, Regardless of Their Role or Season of Life
Determine Their Motivations
It's All About Mind-Set
The Power of a Personal Conversation
Back to the Future
Self-Discovery Process
Visualizing Goals
An Educated Guess
Up Next: You've Got Your Viral Goal – Now What?
CHAPTER 4: The Org Chart: How to Structure a Real Estate Team for Maximal Growth
Growth Opportunities and Team Growth
The Importance of an Org Chart
United We Stand
Goal Fusion
Up Next: Compensation
CHAPTER 5: How to Pay Real Estate Team Members: Typical Compensation Structures for Each Role
First a Quick Recap
Sales Roles
Administrative Roles
Next Steps
The Team Book Club: Part One Discussion Guide
How Long Will Each Book Club Last?
The Role of the Facilitator
Take Note
Distribute a Summary
Hold Each Other Accountable
Questions to Spark and Stoke Conversation
PART 2: The Sales Team Activities That Will Grow Your Pipeline
CHAPTER 6: Focus on the Right Metrics: ABIs versus RBIs
Deliberate, Purposeful, Systematic Activities
Are You Focused on the Right Things?
From One Component to Another
Trust the Process
Activity-Based Indicators versus Results-Based Indicators
Identifying Activities That “Move the Needle” on Growth
Pareto's Principle
Activity-Based Indicators Are Not People
Up Next: Following a Proven Model
CHAPTER 7: Build Your Inventory Pipeline with a Proven Model
Model the Model
Pass the Model on to Your Team
Back to Basics
Make the Connection
The Transaction Timeline
Up Next: Implementing ABIs and RBIs on Your Transactional Timeline
CHAPTER 8: Your Pipeline – One Step at a Time
Not All ABIs Are Readily Apparent
From Prognosis to Diagnosis
Up Next: How to Measure Success
CHAPTER 9: Plotting Progress – Where Metrics Meet Milestones
Finding Motivation in the Ratio of Failure to Success
Finding Motivation in the Day-to-Day Activities
Metrics Meet Milestones
Up Next: Who Does What?
CHAPTER 10: Which Activities Should Agents Delegate to Administrative Staff to Improve Sales?
But First, Let's Recap!
Duties of the Team Leader
Duties of Sales/Buyer’s Agents
Duties of Administrative Staff Members
Delegation Diagnostic
Next Steps
The Team Book Club: Part Two Discussion Guide
Hold Each Other Accountable
Questions to Spark and Stoke Conversation
PART 3: Cultivate Personal Responsibility Through Team Accountability
CHAPTER 11: All the Tools You Need to Keep Yourself and Your Team Accountable
Accountability Is an Underrated Key Value of Being on a Team
A Better Way
Accountability and Responsibility
Accountability Is External, Responsibility Is Internal
From One Component to Another: Focus Accountability on Activities
Up Next: The Questions to Ask
CHAPTER 12: The Four Key Accountability Questions: Consistently Checking In with Everyone
Make It About Everyone (With One Exception)
No Excuses: Take Responsibility for Your Own Success
Up Next: Are You in the Right Head Space?
CHAPTER 13: Make Sure You're in the Right Head Space: Cultivating an Internal Locus of Control
Internal versus External Locus of Control
Accountability Cultivates Mutually Beneficial Responsibility
Next Steps
The Team Book Club: Part Three Discussion Guide
Hold Each Other Accountable
Questions to Spark and Stoke Conversation
PART 4: Powerful Team Tools to Drive Growth
CHAPTER 14: How a Team Dashboard Will Help You Drive Growth, Provide Focus, and Onboard New Agents
Do You See What I See?
Elements of an Engaging Dashboard
Your Team Dashboard Will Diagnose Problems and Drive Growth
Designing Your Team Dashboard
ICC Team Dashboard
Keep It Simple
ICC Team Dashboard Graphic
Up Next: Motivation for All
CHAPTER 15: Team Motivation: Using the DISC Behavioral Model to Help Team Members Understand and Adapt to Their Differing Styles and Motivations
The DISC Behavior Model
The Four DISC Behavior Profiles
Next Steps
The Team Book Club: Part Four Discussion Guide
Hold Each Other Accountable
Questions to Spark and Stoke Conversation
PART 5: Huddle Up and Make a Plan
CHAPTER 16: Growth Huddles: A Powerful Tool for Meetings Done Right
First Things First
The Cost of Conventional Meetings
The Surprising Secret of Team Effectiveness
Five Key Dynamics on Successful Teams
How to Hold a Growth Huddle
Four Key Accountability Questions
Growth Sets the Agenda
Speak in Commitments, Not in Numbers
Make It About Everyone
Make Your Growth Huddles Dynamic by Making Your ABIs Exciting
The Implementation Process Continues
Up Next: Creating Your One-Page Annual Team Business Plan
CHAPTER 17: Create Your Annual Goals and One-Page Team Business Plan … and Focus Your Growth Huddles on Them
The One-Page Plan
Determine Your One Big Annual Goal
Establish Three Key Focus Areas to Reach the Main Goal
Plan Five Objectives for Each Key Focus Area
The Power of Crossing Off Objectives
Next Steps
The Team Book Club: Part Five Discussion Guide
Hold Each Other Accountable
Questions to Spark and Stoke Conversation
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Preface
FIGURE P.1 The Team Book Club Logo
FIGURE P.2 The Team Book Club Outline
FIGURE P.3 Together
Introduction
FIGURE I.1 Common Questions
FIGURE I.2 If Your Real Estate Team Isn't Growing
FIGURE I.3 Five Components
Chapter 1
FIGURE 1.1 Component 1: Devise a Viral Goal
FIGURE 1.2 Enthusiastic Spreads
FIGURE 1.3 Library of Job Descriptions
FIGURE 1.4 Everyone
Chapter 2
FIGURE 2.1 SMART Goals Infographic
FIGURE 2.2 Stretch versus Overstretch
FIGURE 2.3 Team Growth Goal Flow Chart
FIGURE 2.4 Set Realistic Goals
Chapter 3
FIGURE 3.1 Leader and Coach
FIGURE 3.2 Can't Say No
FIGURE 3.3 Motivators
FIGURE 3.4 LinkedIn Workforce Learning Report
FIGURE 3.5 Soft Skills versus Hard Skills
Chapter 4
FIGURE 4.1 Organizational Structure Charts
FIGURE 4.2 A Myriad of Motivations
FIGURE 4.3 Individual Motivators to Goal
FIGURE 4.4 Team Goal Chart
Chapter 5
FIGURE 5.1 Questions on Compensation
FIGURE 5.2 Single-Level Org Chart
FIGURE 5.3 Multilevel Org Chart
FIGURE 5.4 Team Compensation Models
FIGURE 5.5 Learn to Be Less Split-Sensitive
FIGURE 5.6 Buyer Side versus Listing Side
The Team Book Club: Part One Discussion Guide
FIGURE BC.1 Key Accountability Questions
Chapter 6
FIGURE 6.1 Deliberate, Purposeful, Systematic
FIGURE 6.2 ICC Production Ratio Planner
FIGURE 6.3 Component 2
FIGURE 6.4 ABI RBI Sliding Scale
FIGURE 6.5 Pareto's Principle
Chapter 7
FIGURE 7.1 ABI Chart
FIGURE 7.2 Transaction Cycle
FIGURE 7.3 Inventory Pipelines
Chapter 8
FIGURE 8.1 Transaction Cycle
FIGURE 8.2 Appointments Confirmed
FIGURE 8.3 Daily Contact Form
FIGURE 8.4 We Cannot Go Back in Time
Chapter 9
FIGURE 9.1 Always Something Actionable
FIGURE 9.2 Recruiting Example
FIGURE 9.3 Contacts Broken Down
Chapter 10
FIGURE 10.1 Team Leader Duties
FIGURE 10.2 Sales/Buyer’s Agent Duties
FIGURE 10.3 Administrative Staff Duties
FIGURE 10.4 Prelisting Checklist
FIGURE 10.5 Assistant's First Call Checklist
FIGURE 10.6 Listing-to-Contract Checklist
FIGURE 10.7 Seller Closing Checklist
FIGURE 10.8 Seller Closing Checklist Part 2
FIGURE 10.9 Listing and Closing Checklists
The Team Book Club: Part Two Discussion Guide
FIGURE BC.1 Key Accountability Questions
Chapter 11
FIGURE 11.1 Component 3
FIGURE 11.2 Three Key Values
FIGURE 11.3 Prospecting Accountability Chart
FIGURE 11.4 Responsibility versus Accountability
FIGURE 11.5 Accountability Is Retrospective
FIGURE 11.6 Daily Contact Form
FIGURE 11.7 Study Chart
FIGURE 11.8 Pareto Reminder
Chapter 12
FIGURE 12.1 The Four Key Accountability Questions
FIGURE 12.2 Praise the Process
FIGURE 12.3 Goal and Milestones
FIGURE 12.4 Excuses That Don't Work
FIGURE 12.5 Excuses That Often Work
FIGURE 12.6 Accountability Mind-Set
Chapter 13
FIGURE 13.1 Locus of Control
FIGURE 13.2 Authoring Solutions
FIGURE 13.3 Year-to-Date Check-Up Form
FIGURE 13.4 Ownership
FIGURE 13.5 Matching Standard on Dashboard
The Team Book Club: Part Three Discussion Guide
FIGURE BC.1 Key Accountability Questions
Chapter 14
FIGURE 14.1 The Five Components
FIGURE 14.2 Component 4: Drive Growth with a Dashboard
FIGURE 14.3 Sample Dashboards
FIGURE 14.4 Excellence and Efficacy
FIGURE 14.5 Evaluate, Diagnose, Mitigate
FIGURE 14.6 Four Key Questions
FIGURE 14.7 Sample Team Dashboard
FIGURE 14.8 Agent Onboarding Training Calendar
FIGURE 14.9 Buyer Agent Onboarding Program
FIGURE 14.10 ICC Team Dashboard
FIGURE 14.11 Activity-Based Indicators
FIGURE 14.12 Conversion Indicators
FIGURE 14.13 Training Indicators
FIGURE 14.14 Results-Based Indicators
FIGURE 14.15 ICC Team Dashboard Graphic
Chapter 15
FIGURE 15.1 The DISC Model
FIGURE 15.2 DISC Behavioral Profiles
FIGURE 15.3 DISC Tools and Charts
The Team Book Club: Part Four Discussion Guide
FIGURE BC.1 Key Accountability Questions
Chapter 16
FIGURE 16.1 Component 5
FIGURE 16.2 Wolf Management Consultants Graph
FIGURE 16.3 Five Key Dynamics
FIGURE 16.4 Sample Weekly Calendar
FIGURE 16.5 Four Key Accountability Questions
FIGURE 16.6 Huddles Quote
FIGURE 16.7 Client Event Packet
FIGURE 16.8 Client Event Ideas
FIGURE 16.9 Client Event Contact Plan
Chapter 17
FIGURE 17.1 Focus on the Key Actions
FIGURE 17.2 Business Plan Resources
FIGURE 17.3 Action Steps
FIGURE 17.4 Sample Team Business Plan
The Team Book Club: Part Five Discussion Guide
FIGURE BC.1 Key Accountability Questions
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface: How to Use This Book to Grow Your Teams' Sales
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Index
End User License Agreement
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Praise for The High-Performing Real Estate Team
“Read this book and learn from the best in the industry. Brian Icenhower unlocks the five components of team growth and provides you with the tools to do the same on your own real estate team.”
—Rick Fuller, Team Leader of the Rick Fuller Team, San Francisco, California: $123 million in annual sales volume with 256 units sold per year
“Brian Icenhower and Icenhower Coaching gave Edie Waters Network the path for explosive growth over the last seven years. As I started my career, meeting with Brian, I was at $30 million in real estate volume. Last year in 2020 we topped $150 million in volume. For those willing to do the work, and follow the guide and path in this book, the future is in your hands.”
—Edie Waters, Team Leader of the Edie Waters Network, Kansas City, Missouri: $152 million in annual sales volume with 605 units sold per year
“Before we started implementing the team dashboard, everyone on my team was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Now, thanks to this book, the team dashboard is a part of our everyday life and keeps us on track with the specific activities we need to do to achieve our goals. This book has changed our whole business. Before, we didn't know how we should be spending our time and what we should be focusing on. It has revolutionized our real estate team. This is the bible for real estate teams.”
—Cynthia Ostos, Broker & Team Leader of the Cynthia Ostos Real Estate Team, Toronto, Canada: $28 million in annual sales volume with 42 units sold per year
“I went from a solo agent to owning and operating the highest producing team in our area in just five years by utilizing the tools, structures, and systems outlined in this amazing book by Brian Icenhower! It's the operations manual that everyone in real estate should be reading.”
—Eric Craig, Team Leader of the Eric Craig Real Estate Team, Smithville, Missouri: $100 million in annual sales volume with 400 units sold per year
“Within a year of implementing the systems and techniques explained in this book, we instantly tripled the size and sales production of our team. Our team's culture and sales volume have steadily improved every year thereafter, as well. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking to take their real estate business to the next level.”
—Noah Bailey, Team Leader of the Noah Bailey Group, Jacksonville, Florida: $68 million in annual sales volume with 178 units sold per year
“The concepts and processes revealed in this book make complete sense and the dashboard makes it possible to see if we are doing the things we deemed necessary as a team to hit our viral goal. Understanding what activities have the best return and focusing on those activities has had a big impact on the team and the team members' success.”
—Chad and Tami Aronson, Team Leaders of Team Tami, Los Angeles, California: $60 million in annual sales volume with 43 units sold per year
BRIAN ICENHOWER
the High-performing real estate team
FIVE KEYS TO DRAMATICALLY INCREASING SALES & COMMISSIONS
Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Names: Icenhower, Brian, author.
Title: The high-performing real estate team : Five keys to dramatically increasing sales & commissions / Brian Icenhower.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2022] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021031037 (print) | LCCN 2021031038 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119801856 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119801863 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781119801870 (ePub)
Subjects: LCSH: Real estate business. | Real estate agents. | Success in business.
Classification: LCC HD1375 .I43 2022 (print) | LCC HD1375 (ebook) | DDC 333.33—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031037
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021031038
Cover Design: Rachel VarnerCover Images: Roof: ©lyovajan/ShutterstockTeam: ©Pushkarevskyy/Shutterstock
For Robyn, Carson, and Landon
Preface: How to Use This Book to Grow Your Teams' Sales
Traditional approaches to organizational change-implementation are dictatorial, undemocratic, exclusionary, and alienating. A single individual or small group of people makes unilateral decisions designed around their own wants and needs and without consideration for how this affects their team members.
While the principles we speak about have been proven again and again across countless real estate teams, they are only as effective as their application.
Naturally, we want you to be excited and energized by this book, but if you rush through the process and apply sweeping changes without warning or sincere collaboration, you risk alienating and overwhelming the people you most need to persuade and reach with our message. Instead, we invite you to view this book and its component principles as a manual for a slow, steady, seamless – and successful – team metamorphosis that abandons outdated methods of implementation and embraces an entirely different mode of transformation.
A Manual for Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis stresses the necessity of action and participation coupled with patient persistence. A metamorphosis is a process. Growing a real estate team is not a change that happens suddenly and dramatically overnight. Rather, it is a transformation that takes time and occurs in evolving, incremental, yet seamless stages.
In our many years of coaching and consulting real estate teams and brokerages to greater success, we have discovered that it's far more effective to implement radical changes gradually and collaboratively. As well as providing you with insights and practical guidance that you can begin to apply right away, our goal is to provide you and your team members with an experiential and immersive guide to the key components of organizational growth.
The best way to connect to the five components of team growth is to process and internalize the principles and information for yourself. To do this, we suggest a simple and modest – but highly effective – approach to change-implementation: Team leaders and team members participate in a book club in which they read, discuss, and process this book as a community.
The Team Book Club
FIGURE P.1 The Team Book Club Logo
We have seen this implementation model work with wonderful results. Introducing the Team Book Club!
To conduct your book club, the team leader should read through the book first. Once the leader has finished reading this book and digested its principles, everyone on the real estate team should also receive a copy. At that point, your team will embark on a five-week journey through the book together. Each week, for five consecutive weeks, team members will read one section of the book and meet to discuss it. At the end of the five weeks, your real estate team will have a clear understanding of each of the five components of team growth, and will be ready to take what you have learned and apply it directly to your team.
Once the book club part of the process is over, you will spend the next week “huddling up” to create an Annual Business Plan. In all, the implementation process will actually take place over a six-week period, piloted and facilitated by the crucial Team Book Club gatherings. In the final week, your team will synthesize each of the five components of growth, and execute on the principles you have read, discussed, and internalized over the preceding five weeks.
If you are the leader of a larger real estate team or brokerage, we recommend that you first hold a book club with your organization's leadership team. The exact same reading schedule and book club process will occur, but among your organization's leaders/managers. After the leadership team has read this book and conducted their own book club, they will then branch out to conduct simultaneous book clubs within different departments or divisions.
Navigating the book as a group and assimilating each component in turn allows you to transform your team in incremental yet seamless stages. Week by week, your team will consolidate and synthesize critical growth goals while bonding together and maturing as a team at the same time.
What's more, we have found that being exposed to ideas from an authoritative, experienced, and neutral third party results in higher levels of receptivity and acceptance. Our book, and its accompanying book club, eliminates the traditional hierarchical relationship where the real estate team leaders simply tell their team members what to do without any warning or demonstrable rationale or reasoning. Instead, team leaders and team members are on the same side, reading, discussing, and collaborating on the ideas and principles set forth in this book together and, for the most part, at the same time. Together, you will follow the same journey toward realizing, “this is what we need to do if we're going to succeed and grow.”
FIGURE P.2 The Team Book Club Outline
The five components of team growth presented in this book are well-established and proven concepts that are completely in line with the dominant discourse on real estate business management and transformational team leadership.
FIGURE P.3 Together
This book, and the ideas set forth within it, differs primarily in its engaging, experiential, and effective implementation process. By the end of the Team Book Club process we are certain that you'll agree, and be more than ready to huddle up and put the five components of team growth into action on your real estate team.
Too Many People? Short on Time and Space? How to Host a Digital Book Club
Now, we know what some team leaders have been thinking. How on earth can I possibly implement a book club on my real estate team? While gathering and conversing face to face in the same physical space is a great way for team members who share an office to bond as a group, an online/digital book club is a smart solution for:
Larger teams or brokerages with multiple locations;
Teams with agents that work remotely;
Teams that are short on physical space, or where it's highly impractical or impossible for everyone to meet together at the same time;
Meeting with your team during a pandemic.
Count Us In! But How Do We Do It?
If a digital book club is right for you, all of the standard book club rules will still apply. You will need to:
Establish clear expectations about the purpose and goal of the book club.
Set a regular schedule or time to (virtually) meet and talk about each chapter.
Distribute a prepared chapter summary and/or discussion questions before every meeting (more about that in the next chapter).
Hold team members accountable to attending and actively participating in each book club session.
Choose a Facilitator/Moderator for Discussions
If you've ever been to a book club in real life, you know that too many book lovers can get out of control quickly. But if you think in-person discussions can get out of hand or derailed, just wait until you try to hold a productive discussion online.
It's important that your online book club is organized and managed by a chosen facilitator who is responsible for moderating discussion, posting “meeting” dates and times, posting the weekly chapter summary, getting the discussion going with prepared questions, and who has the rights and ability to remove wholly irrelevant or unnecessarily argumentative comments, in the unlikely event that the issue arises.
Onward!
After explaining how to use this book to grow your teams' sales, we now provide you with an introduction to give you a glimpse into the transformation that is to come.
Introduction
Welcome to The High-Performing Real Estate Team – a practical and experiential guide to the fundamental components of team growth for real estate teams. This book has been designed to help your team realize greater success and profitability and to serve more people, while bonding and growing as a team at the same time. We're really glad you're here.
We're assuming you picked up this book because, like so many others, your real estate team is stuck in the status quo, has reached a point of stasis, or is at a significant turning point.
Perhaps you are the member of a real estate team. You see the sales targets, but you don't understand what you should be doing to reach those targets. You feel stuck, and not very motivated to work hard because you don't see how being on the team is really helping your business improve. In fact, you may even be considering jumping ship and going solo. You are frustrated and you are looking for answers.
You may be the leader of your real estate team. You know that sales targets need to be established and written down and you've done just that, but you're still not growing. You're tracking results and outcomes, but you're still not growing. You're driving your team members to work harder, faster, and longer, but still you're not growing. Try as you might, you just can't seem to move the needle and hit your target revenue.
Maybe your agents are simply not producing. Or, maybe you are experiencing a high amount of personnel turnover. Perhaps you are stuck at your current production level. You might not know how to grow your team to take yourself, as well as your team, to the next level. Or, it could be that you just feel it's time to up your leadership game.
FIGURE I.1 Common Questions
Congratulations – whether you are the team leader or the team member, you're in the right place. Whatever your criteria of growth, this book has been designed to help you achieve your real estate team's definition and vision of growth.
This book helps you understand and implement the fundamental, non-negotiable components necessary for real estate team growth and success. We are here to help you every step of the way.
The Status Quo
Before we look at where you are headed and how you hope to grow, let's take a look at where you are now and examine the status quo.
Maybe you were drawn to this book because, like so many others, your team is stuck in an unsatisfactory status quo. This isn't to say that your team is failing. In fact, to other people you may seem to be ticking along quite nicely, and there are days when you may even feel this way yourself. Yet, deep down, you're not content with the current state of affairs and you know that your real estate team is nowhere near where it could and should be.
Let's take a look at the existing state or condition of the majority of real estate teams today. An abundance of academic research and anecdotal accounts confirms what we have seen in our decades of coaching and consulting with team and brokerage leaders across North America: apathy, fear, a resistance to change, and a futile focus on day-to-day operations is the unfortunate status quo for a great many people.
Apathy
In the coming pages, you will hear us talking about creating a goal that energizes your team members and spreads like wildfire around your real estate team. We call it having a “viral goal,” and it is the first and most important component for initiating growth and creating buy-in with those around you.
Nowadays, when people hear the word “viral” they probably think of an adorable, hilarious, or poignant video that's been shared many millions of times by email and social media. As you'll soon see, this is the positive, beneficial, and exponentially sharable vision that we have in mind when we urge you to create a viral goal for your team.
However, the word viral also brings to mind the flu or some other undesirable illness. Recently, this analogy hits even harder with the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the analogy of a virus seems to serve us well when we consider the mechanics of a virus. Without boring you with all the microscopic details about how a virus works, at Icenhower Coaching and Consulting (ICC) when we think about the apathy that occurs within real estate teams, we see many similarities between biological viruses and the lack of interest, enthusiasm, and concern that affects so many groups, institutions, and workplaces across the country and beyond.
For example, oftentimes a virus works its way through someone's system before they notice any symptoms or obvious signs of illness. One minute you feel fine, perhaps a little more tired than usual, and the next minute you're barely able to function. Likewise, apathy can slowly and silently work its way through a real estate team and remain largely undetected until the most pronounced and damaging symptoms are impossible to ignore, and the culture and environment has become dangerously dysfunctional.
Apathy is contagious. It enters a team unnoticed and spreads from person to person. It seems to come out of nowhere and yet, when you look back, you can see that the signs have been there all along. Like the person who just feels “a little more tired than usual,” a real estate team that's been infected with apathy is filled with team members who are listless and lacking in energy each and every day. They're certainly not happy but neither are they disgruntled or particularly resentful or discontented. Rather, they're just there – going through the motions, watching the clock, or engrossed in social media, completing only the tasks absolutely required of them in any given day, disconnected from their peers and leaders, channeling their energy into petty dramas with coworkers or group members, and counting down the seconds till the weekend.
No real estate team is immune to apathy. While the leaders and team members of a given real estate team might be dissatisfied and discontented with the existing state of affairs, when apathy seeps in it dulls people's desire and motivation, and heightens a human fear of and resistance to the change that may end up curing apathy, which then presents further challenges for achieving team growth and success.
Fear and Resistance to Change
Research from McKinsey & Company shows that 70% of all organizational transformations fail, largely due to employee resistance and a lack of support from those in positions of leadership. Whether the statistic is quite as high as that is subject to some debate, but in our experience a resistance to change goes hand in hand with apathy and is a key reason why so many real estate teams get stuck in a stagnant and precarious status quo.
Change is difficult for everyone. While there are some people who are less risk-averse and open to change than others, there are few people who don't feel somewhat anxious at the prospect of a major upheaval in their lives and routines, particularly if that upheaval means a heavier workload or increased responsibilities.
Salaried or hourly employees are not motivated by growth because growth means change and change means more work for them with, typically, no commensurate change in pay (at least until the team achieves its growth goals). Their existing routine represents stability, order, and calmness. Apathy coupled with resistance to change provides little incentive to push people out of their comfort zone.
And while you might think that commission-based employees, like most real estate team members, would be more than inclined to embrace the changes required to achieve success and growth, the fact is that they, too, are resistant to change. To be more precise, they are resistant to the activities that drive growth. While team members want more listings and more sales, it can be enormously difficult for them to perform the activities they need to, day in day out.
Knocking on a stranger's door, calling people who aren't expecting you, or contacting people who do not want to be contacted is extremely uncomfortable, no matter how talented and persuasive you are. Even with good training and a good script, it's not a “fun” activity. On top of that, the level and frequency of rejection that comes with a sales-oriented job is very difficult to deal with, especially for ambitious people who don't want to risk failure, or for team leaders who don't want to take risks.
We fear change because we can't anticipate or guarantee the outcome.
A Futile Focus on the Day-to-Day
Generally speaking, it should be abundantly clear to anyone that, when your people are disconnected, demotivated, or despairing, it shows in their productivity, performance, and participation.
Because of this, real estate team leaders become entangled and lost in a futile focus on the day-to-day. As we explain further later, 80% of what we do on a daily and yearly basis represents a very small minority of the results we achieve. The 80% is the daily issues and other duties that take up most people's time and gives rise to the biggest excuse for not performing impactful, growth-building activities. People tend to practice “crisis management” all day long by always handling every problem or task as it arises. This is practicing “business by default” by handling each task as it comes along, as opposed to blocking out time to practice “business by design,” and focusing on activities that will tangibly and exponentially take you toward your goal.
Whether it's managing existing business and daily tasks and to-do lists, putting out various smaller and bigger fires, or intervening in interpersonal drama among your people, expending all your energy on the 80% day-to-day operations, demands, concerns, and activities leaves you with no space to breathe let alone thrive, evolve, and grow.
FIGURE I.2 If Your Real Estate Team Isn't Growing
If you focus all your time and energy on the 80%, you won't get very far toward reaching your most important and most impactful goals. At best you may experience periodic yo-yo growth and occasional signs of success, but more likely you will simply break even, drifting along on dangerously tight margins and presiding over a team that is stagnant and devoid of vitality and purpose. Simply put: if your real estate team isn't growing, then it's dying. It may be a slow and incremental death by a thousand tiny paper cuts, but we assure you that if you don't shift your focus away from the day-to-day and prioritize growth-building activities then organizational death is certain.
The Solution
If some or all of what you just read sounds like your team, then please do not fear. In the pages to follow, we show you the solution to the spread of apathy, fear, resistance to change, and a futile focus on the day-to-day.
Researchers have discovered that you can fight biological viruses with other viruses. We prove that this approach is effective when challenging the spread of apathy throughout your team. Beginning with a “viral goal” in which the goals and ambitions of individuals on your team are intrinsically linked to the team's overall growth goals, the five components of organizational growth will:
Defeat team apathy.
Shift your focus away from trivial 80% tasks and demands, toward 20% activities that result in expansion and growth.
Motivate your team members with renewed enthusiasm, productivity, engagement, and a desire to grow and change.
The Five Components of Growth for Your Team
Through the five parts of this book, we explore each component of team growth in turn and in much more detail. For now, we tell you simply what the five components of team growth are: (1) devise a viral goal; (2) focus on activities first; (3) cultivate personal responsibility Through public accountability; (4) drive growth with a dashboard; and (5) huddle up.
FIGURE I.3 Five Components
We firmly believe that these five components of team growth offer a proven and practical solution for any real estate team leader or team member, in so far as you are willing to apply and commit to each and every element of the process.
However, the manner in which you apply this process matters as much as your desire and dedication to implementing meaningful change. Remember that most people are resistant to change not because they don't want it but because they're afraid of failure and unnerved by the unknown. When applying the five components of team growth to your real estate team, it's essential that you move beyond traditional and outmoded forms of change-implementation. In the Preface, we talked in greater detail about our implementation method of choice: the Team Book Club.
Next Steps
We trust that you are excited and eager to begin the process of team transformation.
For now, the team leader's next step is simply to read through the rest of this book and begin to internalize each of the five components of team growth for a real estate team. As the leader (or one of the leaders) of your real estate team, it's crucial that you are highly familiar with and deeply invested in these five components before you introduce your people to the changes and challenges ahead of them.
And as for team members reading this – it's time to dive in and embrace the idea of change. Yes, there are challenges ahead, but this book is set up to help you succeed. With the help of your team leader's guidance, you and your team members will work through this together.
At the end of each chapter, we provide you with more strategies and techniques for structuring the Team Book Club and rolling out steady and seamless changes within your real estate team.
With that in mind, let's move on to the first stage in effectuating change and growth at your real estate team.
PART 1What's Your Viral Goal? Commission Earned, Volume Closed, or Units Sold?
CHAPTER 1Viral Goals Propel Team Members to the Next Level
Understanding the Viral Goal
For your real estate team to grow, team leaders and team members must shift the focus away from the day-to-day and the 80% tasks that don't make much of an impact, and turn the attention to activities that will drive expansion, results, and greater success. But, to do that, you will need to create clarity around what success and growth mean to you. Whether you are the team leader or a real estate agent on the team, you must ask yourself: “What is it that I want for my real estate business? What is the end goal? What should my daily, weekly, and monthly efforts really help me achieve? In short: growth for your real estate team will require some serious contemplation and setting concrete goals.
Setting goals seems like a simple concept. You think about what you want to achieve and when you hope to achieve it by and determine some of the steps you'll need to take to get you there. Few people would argue against setting goals, or disagree with breaking goals into smaller, more manageable steps to increase your chances of successfully realizing your dreams. You will hear no argument from us on that point, and we'll explain just how to do that a little later in the chapter.
So why, then, do so many real estate teams fail to grow or achieve their goals, despite having a clear endpoint and a long list of things that will need to be done to get them there?
We'll give you a clue. In the first few paragraphs earlier, how many times does the word “you” or “your” appear?
You think.
You hope.
Your dreams.
Your daily, weekly, and monthly efforts.
The steps you'll need to take to get you there.
What does success mean to you?
What is it that you want?
Too often, either willfully or simply thoughtlessly, real estate leaders and team members fail to include their team as a whole in their vision for growth and in the goal-setting process. It's easy to mistake your personal dreams for the dreams of everyone on the team and assume that success and growth means the same thing to everybody. You may establish your goals in isolation and figure out what everyone else needs to do to make it happen.
When team leaders fail to recognize their team members' personal goals, without warning or adequate explanation, they present their people with a laundry list of changes to implement and targets to meet. These team leaders even speak excitedly about “our goal” and “our vision” to a group of people for whom this goal means very little and who often don't stand to benefit from it in any meaningful way.
Is it any wonder that real estate team members often feel disconnected from their leaders and apathetic to growth? When we talk about your real estate team's goals, and the end toward which your daily, weekly, and monthly efforts will be directed, team leaders need to rewrite the sentence, replacing “I” and “Me” with “We” and “Our.”
In a similar fashion, real estate agents on a team may find themselves so laser-focused on their own personal goals that they fail to consider how they may benefit from plugging into the group's goal or vision. Team members must ask themselves, “Why did I join a team if the only goal I am focusing on is my own?” While it is important to feel motivated to hit your own personal goals, that personal goal must fit into the bigger goal of the team – and that is where you will find the greatest impact and opportunity for growth.
What are our collective hopes and dreams as a real estate team? We must consider each member of the team, from the sales side to the administrative side. This book is not just for team leaders. What does growth look like for the up-and-coming buyer's agent, Anne, or the administrative assistant, Toby, who volunteers his time once a week at the food bank down the street? What motivates and excites each individual person on the team? This conversation is as much about fixing the “I” and “Me” problem that leaders have as it is about making sure that each member of the team has a reason to feel motivated. In getting started, we must determine the personal motivations for every person on the team.
Understand that people are less likely to say “no” to their own goals. If leaders are going to have their real estate agents doing uncomfortable activities, like picking up the phone five times a day to add contacts to their sphere of influence (SOI), that can be very uncomfortable. But if that activity is directly tied to the agent's own financial goals, and they can clearly see how their financial goals are linked to the team's overall success, then the agent will want to complete that task or activity. The task may be uncomfortable, but if the agent can clearly see a direct path to personal reward as a result of completing the task, they will be more motivated to do it than if it was just something on a to-do list.
So, now we must define this viral goal. What are the steps that we'll need to take to get us to this place? What do we want as a team? What is the end toward which our daily, weekly, and monthly efforts will be directed?
The first component of team growth demands that you make it about everyone as you devise a viral goal in which the respective goals and ambitions of individuals on the team are intrinsically linked to the real estate team's overall growth goals.
When this occurs, all team members will feel personally connected to – and highly invested in realizing – the goal. Just like a video or meme that captures the attention and imagination of millions across the internet overnight, a viral goal creates a social buzz around and within your team. Enthusiasm spreads from person to person, engaging and motivating every single member of the team.
FIGURE 1.1 Component 1: Devise a Viral Goal
FIGURE 1.2 Enthusiastic Spreads
Note that we used the word “demand” when explaining the first component of team growth. Devising a viral goal for your real estate team is not a suggestion nor is it a component that you can put off for another day. All of the subsequent components for growth build on this first important principle, so it's essential that team leaders and team members alike make significant efforts to include the whole team in the goal-setting process and never forget the intrinsic part that each team member will play in achieving the team's collective goals.
If the viral goal you devise does not capture the imagination and motivation of every real estate team member, then the entire team will fail to grow. It's as simple as that. While you might experience short-term results and periodic successes, exponential and sustainable growth cannot occur in the absence of a viral goal.
Before we outline the specific steps for devising a viral goal, allow us to explain the reason we came up with that term and what, exactly, we mean when a real estate team's goal goes viral.
Resource Library of Job Descriptions
In the online resource appendix of this book, you will find job descriptions for everything from Sales Manager to Showing Assistant. Why are we giving these to you? Because good job descriptions are the key to hiring the right people for your brokerage or team. Good job descriptions also help employees redefine what their job duties, expectations, and training should include. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. The Icenhower Coaching and Consulting (ICC) job descriptions provided in this book include the key activities and duties, job specific skills, performance benchmarks, training opportunities, compensation, and more for each real estate team member's job.
All resources can be downloaded from this book's online appendix at therealestatetrainer.com/teambook.
What Is a Viral Goal?
At ICC, we coach many of the top-producing teams across North America. A common complaint we hear from real estate team leaders and brokerage owners is that their people lack enthusiasm and urgency, that they are engrossed in gossip and social media when they should be engaged in productive activities and getting things done. Conversely, we often hear from many team members, too, who say they feel disconnected from the team. Or, they feel that they lack any concrete training or push to get them to the next level. These team members don't feel invested, and many who feel this way end up leaving the team on their own to go solo, or they find a new team that excites them. Lack of engagement works both ways and is equally detrimental to a real estate team.
Regardless of company policy, the average employee spends about 1.5 hours on social media every single day, not to mention taking personal calls and chatting excitedly with other team members about the latest binge-worthy TV show. Numbers vary, but every year organizations experience billions, if not trillions, of dollars in lost man-hours and productivity. It's understandable that real estate teams are adversely affected by this misspent time and the many wasted opportunities that result.
However, if you conflate an overuse of social media with a lack of enthusiasm and urgency, we fear that you are missing a crucial point. Your fellow team members are not inherently lacking in excitement and energy. Exuberance, curiosity, and an eagerness to respond to something swiftly and with a sense of importance are not finite resources that are simply present or absent within us. Set aside the question of whether a video of a cat playing a keyboard is a dumb waste of valuable time. The fact that an individual will watch a video of a cat playing a keyboard and then immediately share it with a dozen other people, who go on to share it with a dozen more, tells us that something else is at play here. The problem is not a lack of enthusiasm and urgency, but where that energy is being directed.
When something captures our imagination, we not only respond to it with personal enthusiasm, we also respond to it with an enthusiasm that compels us to share it with others at lightning speed!
FIGURE 1.3 Library of Job Descriptions
But what if the tasks or responsibilities were “share-worthy” or a compelling topic of conversation for team members? What can be done to make the real estate team – and an employee's place and purpose within it – capture each team member's imagination, absorb their attention, excite them, influence them, rouse them into action, or inspire them to share their passion with the people around them?
Certain that devising a viral goal is the most critical component for achieving true team growth, we hunted out some of our old schoolbooks and taught ourselves a little bit more about the attributes that make a virus so productive and successful.
What Viruses Have Taught Us About Devising Viral Goals
We get it. You didn't sign up for a course in Biology 101, but we promise that these simple little microbes have a lot to teach us about the importance of devising and spreading a viral goal within a real estate team.
