Expectations Matching Enviroment

I see and hear about real estate offices asking their real estate agents to lead generate. These real estate offices ask their real estate agents to block out time to lead generate 2-3 hours every morning. This is great! These are realistic expectations for leadership to give. However the environment that leadership is providing does not always match the expectations.

If you are a real estate office that would like your real estate agents to lead generate, and you are probably following the advice of real estate guru’s that teach the morning is the best time to do it because otherwise it won’t get done, then you need to look at if your real estate office environment is alignment with the expectations.

Are you scheduling sales meetings in the morning?

Are you scheduling training sessions in the morning?

Are you scheduling property tours in the morning?

If you are scheduling anything during the time that you would like your real estate agents to be lead generating and doing business development activities you are sabotaging yourself and them. You are sending the wrong message. Your expectations do not match the environment you are creating.

What you are saying to your real estate agents is, “Even though I want you to lead generate in the morning, I am going to schedule this sales meeting, that is not really that good or that important and no one really attends, so don’t worry about lead generating today.”

And what they take from that is, “Even though they want me to lead generate in the morning, they schedule all these other things during that time, so lead generation must not be that important, so if I have something that comes up in the morning I should just blow off my lead generation time and do whatever else comes up.”

Take a look around your office, it all starts with leadership. Are you getting the results that you want? Are your real estate agents meeting your expectations? Does your environment match the expectations?

Where are you at in your real estate business?

Real estate brokers: Do you know what business you are in?

My neck hurts

Stop Giving Minimum Standards To Your Real Estate Agents

Minimum Standards are killing the production in your real estate company. Minimum Standards are killing the motivation of your real estate agents. Minimum Standards have got to go.

What kind of minimum standards do you have in your real estate company?

Number of closed transactions per year? Number of transactions per quarter? Number of listings taken?

Minimum standards don’t motivate. Minimum standards don’t push your real estate agents to be their best. Minimum standards don’t even pull you towards excellence. Minimum standards send the wrong message. You could hire a great rookie agent and they see the minimum standard of four transactions per year, what might they be likely to do after they reach four transactions? They might start backing off, feeling as though they have succeed in your eyes. Get rid of minimum standards.

Instead, give maximum standards. This will depend on how your business model and how you run things, but here are some ideas:

Instead of a minimum standard of 4 transactions a year, give a maximum standard that Rookie Of The Year receives free training vacation.

Instead of a minimum standard of attending meetings, give a maximum standard of free office space for those that attend 80% of the meetings.

Instead of a minimum standard of how many listings to take, give a maximum standard of paying for the AdWords marketing for them.

I think you see where I’m going with this. What are some maximum standards you can put in place in your company? What are the minimum standards you will get rid of?

Hiring New Licensed Real Estate Agents Is Not Recruiting

I have noticed on real estate brokerage websites, people who have the role of:

Recruiting Director

Director of Career Development

Director of Training and Recruiting

These sound like and seem to be impressive titles. I wonder though, how much time people in these roles actually spend recruiting? Recruiting real estate agents. I’m sure the people who hold these title’s are extremely talented. However, hiring new real estate licensee’s is not real estate recruiting. Here is what I think the typical day of an individual holding this type of role does:

• Check email
• See if anyone filled out a career info contact request on the real estate brokerage website
• Check real estate simulator results
• Return some phone calls
• Email agents that did well on the real estate simulator
• Meet with an unlicensed person for an hour to discuss opportunities

What does recruiting mean to you and your real estate brokerage?