The influx of new real estate agents and REALTORS® into the industry over the last two years presents new challenges – and opportunities – to brokers, team leads, and fellow agents. To make it in the industry, these new REALTORS® need skill, drive, and tenacity backed by the proper tools, coaching, and support from their teammates to reach home sellers and buyers and close deals.
Set the stage for success across your real estate teams by rethinking accountability. Redefine what it means to be accountable to your agents, administrators, and team leads, and what it means for them to be accountable to you, their teammates, and to themselves. In a recent webinar, we tackled this tough issue with a broker and global real estate leader, Cari Briner. Dig into our takeaways below.
Consistency Drives Results
To drive change in your business, a foundation of consistency in your internal practices and collaboration across teams is a must. Consistent opportunities for feedback and to share progress creates accountability and help you build a healthy, collaborative environment across your business. From agents just starting out in their career to top broker-owners steadily growing their business, sharing challenges and ideas with peers and leadership is a cornerstone of good culture. Prioritize collaboration by holding weekly or monthly office meetings to set the tone for the whole team and share progress about the business,
- Tips for Agents: Find a like-minded, mission-driven agent and lean on them as an accountability partner. Schedule weekly meet-ups to discuss goals, celebrate wins, and stay on track. Additionally, surround yourself with positive, like-minded people on your team to further drive accountability to each other and share successes.
- Tips For Leaders: One-on-one calls with the members of your team who directly report to you each week or bi-weekly is a must. A good rule of thumb is to have a maximum of 15-20 people reporting to you. Otherwise, you’re spread too thin to have meaningful conversations with each teammate each week. As your teams grow, it’s important to empower agents who want to be leaders and who want to build teams, providing training and coaching to those who contribute. This is a huge retention tool to allow your team to help create and adapt that training and build teams.
Focus on Activities Over Numbers
Accountability is often tied to numbers: Sales numbers, the number of calls made, the number of emails sent, the number of in-person meetings held, etc. And while measuring key performance indicators are integral to success, oftentimes conversations around accountability focus too much on the numbers and less on the actions taken to achieve those numbers.
- Tips for Agents: Focus on what you can control. You can control your outreach to your clients and potential clients. Set aside time each day to complete the number of calls, follow-up emails, and meetings you need to hold each day. You can’t control the response on the other end of those calls or emails, but consistently following a script and system to reach out, research, follow up, and note what’s working and what’s working drives results.
- Tips for Leaders: Change the script around accountability to your agents from focusing on why agents may fall short on sales goals to focusing on what stopped them from making calls or setting appointments and offer tips or support to help them take action and succeed in the future.
Redefining Accountability
The word “accountability” often elicits negative feelings. For many, the term implies scolding, liability, or blame. Redefining what it means to be accountable will lead to the better overall health of your team, better feedback, and more actions.
- Redefine Accountability: Create a safe space to discuss what’s working for your agents, what’s not, what to be aware of, and what needs to change. If something didn’t happen or meetings fell through, focus on what happened and how to address it.
- Set Expectations and Be Realistic: Be vocal about what is realistically achievable in your life as an agent, as a broker, and as a person. Lean on your strengths and don’t shy away from areas where you require support. If the first conversations you have with a potential client are where you struggle, work with your team to practice and train in that area. If you need help managing your CRM and creating a system for following up, ask other agents what they’re doing that works.
Real Estate Coaching vs. Training
Training for agents, especially newer agents, provides the stepping stones to build a sphere of home buyers and sellers, develop relationships, and close deals. The next step is to coach those agents beyond basic real estate training to realize their full potential.
How to Switch from Training to Coaching:
Coaching begins by asking questions about their struggles, their strengths, their work-life balance, and understanding how they prefer to work rather than telling them what to do or how to do it. Coaching is less based on a template for training and is more personal to each individual.
- Discuss personal goals and achievements: personal growth plays a huge part in professional development.
- Continuing education: what interests do your agents have that are related to their real estate profession? Provide or help them find opportunities for continuing education that support those interests.
- Help them understand what differentiates each individual as an agent and how can they highlight those attributes.
- Provide tools to aid in personal development: recommend personal development books or bring in leaders and guest speakers to discuss personal development.
Rethinking your relationship with accountability and what it means to you as an agent, broker, or team lead will drive better conversations, more growth, and stronger teams.
For more details on leading with accountability as an agent, broker, or team lead across your business, watch our On-Demand webinar with Cari Briner here.
