Click Here to subscribe to the feed version of this blog.Are your agents drowning in clutter? If I walked into your office, (or your agents’ offices), could I see processes and systems they use? Could I see the checklists, posted, so that I knew they followed a regular, proven procedure for each group of activities? Could I see pre-made, ready to use, presentations for buyers and sellers? Could I see binders labeled with each subject (like ‘listing process’), and filled with ‘how-tos’ for assistants (or themselves inside? Or, would I see stacks of disorganized papers?
Having been in sales and management a long time, I understand how difficult it is to organize that blizzard of information. And, admittedly, you’ll have to keep changing your organization as you progress. Yet, until you meet the organizational challenge, you can’t really move forward. It’s up to us, too, as managers, to help our agents step ahead of clutter and into effective time management.
There are two reasons to organize. The first is that it provides much better customer service. If I’m the consumer today, I want to know that your agents trustworthy—that you’re good for your word. If I can see that the systems, I know that you will have a much better chance of keeping your word to me. I’m using the word “see”, because we believe what we see, not what we hear.
The second reason is that it provides your agents and you much better time management. The agent’s biggest challenge is to find a way to make the same amount of money and quit working 24/7. Creating systems will take a long way toward that goal.
Below are some checklists of the processes and systems agents need in place to take their careers to the next level. Take this system inventory now with your agents now.
Here are the minimum systems agents need:
For sellers:
- Lead generating system (should be run with contact management software)
- Automated process for following the lead from first contact through listing
- Visual marketing presentation and a system for having them pre-done and always ready to go
- Pre-first visit presentation and a system to have them packaged, ready to use
- System for following the listing from first listed to after closing (can be automated with use of a contact management program)
- After close/client retention system (can be automated)
- Your personal marketing system—a marketing plan that can be automated and delegated to someone
For buyers:
- Lead generating system—driven by contact management
- System to follow the buyer from first contact to sale (can be automated)
- Visual buyer presentation—packaged and ready to use
- Pre-first visit presentation—packaged and ready to use
- Checklists: process during buying/before closing/after closing—client retention
- Your personal marketing system
How to begin. Real estate professionals are doers. We talk our way through processes. We dread organizing things, and frankly, we’re not good at it. So, how do we begin?
Start with one system or process at a time. Gather your agents for a workshop. Make a list and prioritize it for the systems they believe they need first. Put a date to start, and a date for completion (I know, there’s that organization again!). You’ll find that the first is the hardest, and then, it starts to actually get easy! It’s a skill like anything else. Bottom line: Systematization allows you to actually run a business, not just run after buyers and sellers.
Note: If you want to make it easy on yourself and your agents, get The Complete Buyer’s Agent Toolkit and Your Client-Based Marketing System, the complete buyer and seller systems, with dozens of checklists, processes, and presentations already created for you.
Now, you’re on your way to ‘unclutter’ the clutter!
Webinar: How to Motivate
Mark your calendars: On March 17, at 2 P. M. EST, I’m doing another webinar for the NAR Learning Library. This is a ‘must attend’ for managers, because I’m going to be delving into the fascinating and misunderstood) arena of motivation: Light Em on Fire: Newest Motivational Strategies. Click here for more information.
Are You Really Motivating?
By · CommentsAre your motivating methods working? If you’re using the methods most managers use, they aren’t working like they used to. Why? Because today’s agents just aren’t motivated by the things ‘workers’ used to respond to. Today, it’s very important that we motivate effectively, because we have to get out agents back out into the market.
Motivational Methods Must Change
In his new book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink lays out a persuasive case, backed by extensive scientific studies, about why the traditional ‘carrot and stick’ motivational methods just don’t work for us today. It’s especially true with real estate professionals. Why? Because we in effect work for ourselves. We have to be self-starters, initiators, and tenacious in our pursuit of our goals. That means we have to be motivated by things other than promises of material things.
Why Money Doesn’t Work as a Motivator
First, as Pink points out, money and/or material things are good short-term motivators. (Read Herzberg’s studies on short and long-term motivation). In fact, just take a look at the number of real estate agents who are motivated to visit an open house when there’s food! But, as Herzberg and others have pointed out, money is a lousy long-term motivator. You know that if you’ve tried motivating your kids with money—or threats (the carrot and stick).
I know. The agents all say they need to make more sales. But, what have you noticed they are willing to do to make those sales? Lead generate more regularly? Make more sales calls? We all know that lead generating is the answer to that money problem. Yet, the vast majority of agents avoid lead generating as if it gave us some chronic disease! So, money is just not an effective long-term motivator.
Best Motivators to Motivate Others
Pink shows, via extensive studies, that there are three driving motivators which we should put to work today to fire ourselves up, keep those fires lit, and achieve what we want to achieve. They are:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Purpose
Questions to Ask Your Agents to Get Them Excited Again
About Autonomy
Are you in charge of your own business, or are you waiting for someone else to tell you what to do?
Do you expect your manager to make you go to work, or are you self-directed and self-starting?
Are you disciplined in your business, so you can enjoy that autonomy?
Seth Godin, author of Tribes, says about autonomy: The art of the art {of autonomy} is picking your limits. That’s the autonomy I must cherish. The freedom to pick my boundaries.
My question to you: Do you have agents that you believe will never operate in autonomy? Don’t you need to invite them to another profession?
About Mastery
Are you working just to get by, or are you consistently working to get better? What do you want to excel at? How does that translate into your business?
About Purpose
What excites you so much you can’t sleep at night?
Is there a way to translate that to your real estate business?
The desire to do something because you find it deeply satisfying and personally challenging inspires the highest levels of creativity, whether it’s in the arts, sciences, or business. Teresa Amabile, Professor, Harvard University
Webinar: How to Motivate
More about effective motivation today: I’m doing a webinar on motivation for the National Association of Realtors’ Learning Library on March 17, at 2 p.m. EST. Click here for more information.
Our Coaching Helps You Motivate
Carla cross’s extensive background and study into effective motivation is an extra benefit to you in her Leadership Mastery coaching program. Click here for a complimentary consultation.
Whose Business Plan is It?
By · CommentsYes, I know. We’re supposed to have our business plans all done and ready to go prior to the New Year. But, if we don’t get it done by Dec. 1, chances are it’s still waiting to be polished by March 1! How do we make those plans not only get done, but, how do we make them realistic? How do we make them action road maps?
Four Steps to Integrate Your Plan
Take these four steps to get that business plan finished and implemented with real action steps by March 1.
- Meet with each of your agents and assure each has a plan.
- Capture the goals of each of your agents: listings, listings sold, and sales. Now, add a dash of realism. Ask yourself, “Based on what the agent accomplished last year, are his/her goals realistic for this year?” Then, make any adjustments you think need to be made.
- Add your agents’ adjusted goals in each of the three areas. Those sums are your office business plan objectives. Why? Because your agents are the ones who actually create the listings, listings sold, and sales.
- Decide, in each of the action areas below, the actions you will take to assure you reach the office goals, which are a summary of your agents’ goals.
The Six Action Areas
Create action plans in these six areas. Using these divisions, you’ll assure that you cover all the bases.
- Recruiting and selection
- New agent productivity through training and coaching
- Higher production/retention for your experienced agents
- Marketing: Internal/external
- Personal/professional development
- Operations: financial planning/staff
For a flow chart of the leadership business plan in this blog, including these six action areas, excerpted from Business Planning for the Owner, Manager, and Team Builder, click here.
More from Carla Cross on Business Planning—free Webinar
Listen/look at the free webinar I just did for the Learning Library of the National Association of Realtors. Click here to view it.
In the last blog, we explored how to toughen up your agents. We know it takes an agent with more tenacity and more skill to make it in real estate sales than it did in the past. Now, the question is, how do you find these tough people in the first place? There are specific strategies we recruiters must gain to choose the right people for this newer, more unforgiving market.
One of the ways to pick winners is to ask questions in the interview that indicate your candidate has the tenacity and persistence it takes to thrive in this market. (See The Complete Recruiter and Your Blueprint for Selecting Winners for skills on how to construct best questions).
Best Questions to Identify Toughness
Here are a few questions to include your interview process:
- Tell me about a time in your life when you accomplished a great deal against all odds.
- Was there a time in your life when you had to accomplish something completely on your own? What happened?
- Have you ever performed in front of dozens, or even hundreds or thousands of people? How did you prepare to do that? What happened?
Asking this type of ‘past based’ questions, probing, listening, and evaluating will give you a great sense of the performance potential of your candidates in tough markets.
What are your favorite questions? What challenges are you having picking agents for this ‘new normal’ market? Let me hear from you!
How to Toughen’ Em Up for the ‘New Normal’
By · CommentsHow do you toughen your agents for the ‘new normal’—that much more challenging market? You’ve probably noted, as I have, that many agents have either gotten out of the business or have dropped to the sidelines, to ‘wait it out’. Why? Because they don’t have the will or the skill to tackle this market. But, there are some agents who are thriving in this market. What’s the difference? Self-confidence and self-esteem. To wildly paraphrase psychologist Maxwell Maltz, we can’t motivate ourselves to raise to a challenge without a concurrent raising of self-esteem.
What did he mean? We just aren’t willing to take risks unless we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves. I think we’d all agree that this is the kind of market that requires us to have a high level of self-confidence. How do managers find it and nurture it?
Symptoms of Self-Esteem Issues
Managers: Are there some agents you have now that just can’t seem to ask the closing questions? Just aren’t willing to lead generate? Run away when faced with objections? If so, read the tips below on helping your agents raise their self-esteem so they can thrive in this market.
Toughening Tips from Top Performers
Great performers MUST have high self-esteem. Just for a moment, pretend that you’ve been chosen to present your recruiting or listing presentation on a 100-foot stage before 30,000 real estate peers. How do you feel? Excited? Scared? Which way are you running? Toward or away from the stage? Because I’ve been on the stage as a musician from the time I was four years old, I’ve had the opportunity to feel those ‘stage’ feelings and have had to learn how to manage my ‘performance’ emotions. Here are three keys to gutsy performance in these challenging real estate markets:
- Practice, practice, practice. You wouldn’t get up in front of those 30,000 people without having practiced your presentation until you were a master. So, don’t go to a single presentation without a high level of practice, either.
Managers: Assume your agents can’t perform competently without practice. Build in practice to every training and coaching session.
- Role play with a coach! I am teaching an Up and Running in 30 Days small group right now. I found that several of the agents just didn’t have compelling reasons for a seller to meet with them. Why? Because they hadn’t practiced their dialogue with a coach. You know your dialogue isn’t very good when you don’t get the listing, but, isn’t it unfortunate that you didn’t have better dialogue to optimize that contact?
Managers: Make role play a part of your training and coaching. You’ll be stunned—and sometimes thrilled—with the creativity of your agents!
- Build your self-esteem with a Professional Portfolio. What is a Portfolio? It is a presentation about YOU–your strengths, your strategies, your differentiators, and, most important, what people have said about you. It’s used to help agents, sellers and buyers get to know the ‘best you’—fast. After all, if they don’t trust you and respect your knowledge, you can’t form a relationship with them.
Tip to managers: Create a version of your Portfolio for your office entry. For a complimentary list of the contents of your Office Portfolio, and suggested topic separators, click here.
The importance of the Portfolio to your self esteem: Because you’re going to put your testimonials in the Portfolio, it will infuse you with self-confidence to make you motivated to tackle those tough buyers, sellers, and transactions.
Armed with these ideas, and the subsequent action, you’ll be providing the toughness necessary for your agents to thrive in the ‘new normal’.
To get your list to create a Book of Greatness, click here.
Are you standing in front of your students to create better performance, or more knowledge? If you are want to train, it’s very important to clarify for yourself exactly what your role is. Why? Because it will determine the outcomes you get.
I learned this the hard way. After graduating in piano performance, I applied to and had been awarded a scholarship to UCLA as a graduate assistant in the music department. But, after I was at UCLA a few weeks, I became disillusioned, for I found out that the UCLA music department was all about ‘knowledge’, not performance. Professors earned tenure by publishing papers about sixteenth century Elizabethan madrigals–but they didn’t have to be able to play the madrigals…My interest and experience in music had been performance.
Are You After Better Performance or More Knowledge?
I’ve never forgotten that lesson about the difference in the knowledge about something–and the performance of it. Which is more important in what you’re teaching? What do you want your students to be able to do as a result of your presentation/training? Sure, just like musical performance, you must have some technique to perform. But, also like musical performance, lots of knowledge doesn’t make you a good performer.
If You Want Better Performers…..
Here are five areas to look at to assure you’re creating performers, not just know-it alls.
1. What percent of your program is instructor focused? That is, the instructor performs. If it’s more than 50%, you have a knowledge-heavy program. Model your program like the piano teacher teaches piano. He talks very little, demonstrates some, and listens to the student play and gives positive reinforcement and re-direction. The teacher knows he taught because the student can play.
2. Do you choose your instructors based on their knowledge and their ability to deliver the message attractively? Start choosing your instructors, instead, on their ability to facilitate performance. They should be able to demonstrate a role play, set up a role play, and draw conclusions. Like great piano teachers create increasingly difficult programs for their students, your instructors should be able to craft ever-increasing difficult rule plays. Think of them like creators of ‘virtual reality’.
3. Who is held accountable for the program–the instructors or the students? In most programs, we ‘relieve’ the instructor if he doesn’t get good reviews from the students. The instructor’s the only one accountable. Turn it around. 75% of the accountability should be on the students to demonstrate they have learned the skill. Why? Because, without student accountability, managers get your ‘graduates’ who can’t perform.
4. Is your focus on curriculum? Are you attempting to create value for the program to management or owners by providing more information than the other school? Most training programs could cut 50% of their curriculum and graduate better performers. Instead of focusing on curriculum, create your program as ‘virtual reality’. Have a system that provides a series of “performance building blocks”. Don’t tell them all about playing a concerto. Just tell them enough to let them ‘get their fingers on the keys’.
5. Are the objectives of your program knowledge-based? How do the students graduate from your program? Do they pass a written exam? Managers want a graduate who can perform the activities of a real estate salesperson to reasonably high performance standards. A good training program should identify, teach, observe, and coach performance in several critical performance areas until the student can perform well enough to graduate.
The Right Performance ‘Test’
As a piano performance major, each term, I had to play a ‘mini-recital’ in the music auditorium for an audience of four–all piano professors. I couldn’t just talk about music theory, or answer a multiple choice exam. I had to play. And, to pass the ‘course’, I had to play to certain set performance standards. The more your training program resembles the ‘virtual reality’ of your specific performance, the more valuable your program to the people who hired your students –and you.
10 High Pay-off Training Tips
By · CommentsHow many of these 10 high pay-off tips do you have in your training now? Too many times we provide training because it helps us attract people to our company. That’s getting only a partial benefit! If you apply the 10 tips for training below, you will see your training pay off in increased productivity, lessened expenses, and much higher customer satisfaction and retention levels.
1. Clarify what you want the student to do—during class, and after class.
2. How well do you expect the student to do that activity? Establish competency levels.
3. Make training a process, not an event. It takes 6-8 times of hearing something to begin to retain it!
4. Space your training for “spaced repetition”. Skills can’t be learned in one marathon session. If your objective is to develop skills, you must create layered, spaced, repetitious workshops.
5. There must be rest and reflection between practices. Scientists have proven that skills are not retained unless there is at least 4 hours between skill-developing sessions.
6. If it’s skills training, three quarters of the time in class should be practice—not teacher lecture.
7. Culturize as you train. The training should be from your point of view, your method of action, and your opportunity to create a strong culture within your training modules.
8. Get feedback from the skills training in your meetings. It reinforces the skills and encourages others to take part. Take your skills to a higher level with additional masterminding.
9. Use a facilitation approach, not a lecture approach. Instead of delivering the information via lecture during class, have the students read articles, interview beforehand, listen to audios, etc.
10. Expect accountability. The student should be highly accountable for practicing the skills and for competency learning.
How many of these 10 high pay-off training tips are you already using?
YOU CAN! ‘Move’ Your Ceiling of Achievement Upward
By · CommentsIt’s the new year. Are you ready to move that ceiling of achievement you’ve been batting your head against? 2010 is the year you can do it! Without new skills, we just keeping working harder, not smarter. The really bad thing about continuing to beat your head against that ceiling, is that it hurts more and more. You spend more energy just trying to accomplish the same thing.
Too Much Energy, Too Little Results
Worse yet, we bounce off that ceiling and hit a new low every thing we get up the energy to try to break through it. Not only that, the last few years have been discouraging for many in real estate. Don’t give up on yourself! You do have the talent, the skill, and the determination to succeed at a much higher level again.
All Performers Hit ‘Ceilings of Achievement’
As a long-time performing pianist and flutist (I spent the first thirty years of my life playing and teaching music), I had to learn how to constantly change up my playing for the better. In these next few blogs, I’m going to share what I learned as a musician that will change your 2010 performance dramatically—for the better.
You Aren’t as Good as You Can Be—I Promise
I just did a talk for our area’s Women’s Council, on how to have a much better 2010—how to smash through that ceiling of achievement. (Title: Everything I learned about Achievement I learned from Tickling’ the Ivories—also the title of my latest keynote).
As a four-year old, I climbed up on the piano bench and figured out, by ear, how to play “Sue City Sue”—with bass notes, chords, rhythm, melody—the whole shebang. I was acclaimed as a little kid. However, as I got a little older, I found that playing by ear just wasn’t getting me to be a better player. Here’s what I did to get to concert artistry level, and earn a bachelor’s in piano performance—and how you can translate these performance principles to your real estate business.
Get from ‘By Ear’ via your Talent to Conscious Systemization
As a musician, I know that no one can play very well when they try learning only by hearing (playing ‘by ear’). To progress pass a ‘whiz-bang, aren’t you wonderful’ amateur level, musicians must learn to read music, get a great teacher, and learn to practice perfectly. Generally, their teacher/coach will teach them how to practice, and provide the best editions of music. They will teach them will a specific system. The better the system, the coach, the music, and the practice, the higher the performance—the sky is the limit.
The First Time You Do Something Isn’t As Good as it Gets!
What does that mean to a real estate professional? Most of us started selling or managing ‘by ear’. Some of us were talented, and that carried us pretty well for quite a while. But, then, we hit our ‘ceiling of achievement’, and found we were working 24/7 and expending way too much energy—and money. The way out:
- Grasp systems (the best systems you can find)
- Follow processes and checklists
- Get a great coach
- Practice as perfectly as you can
Practitioners—Watch Those Actions, Not Just the Words
Unfortunately, we real estate professionals don’t realize that we are judged on our performance, not our knowledge. So, when you get all antsy because you think you need more classes, stop and think about your performance level, not your knowledge level. Spend more time evaluating your performance, and pay someone to coach to you get better (all performers, whether musicians or golfers, do this, by the way). Critique your systems, and keep refining them because they will subconsciously affect your performance levels.
If I had a piano, I’d demonstrate these points (I do use the piano in the keynote!).
What Do You Want to Work on This Year—from ‘By Ear’ to Systematic?
Do you have some business plan goals for yourself this year to raise your ceiling of achievement? What do you believe is most valuable for you to work on?
Have You ‘Inventoried’ Your Systems for 2010?
By · CommentsAre you all systematized and ready for next year? In this world of lightning change, we managers are struggling to stay even–much less get ahead. In our business, changes are occurring so quickly that, just as we start to organize a process, new considerations appear. These new considerations are not only occurring more quickly than ever, the technology to organize them is evolving at warp speed. Since you’re making your business plan for 2010 (you are, aren’t you….), it’s a perfect time to see whether you are ‘up to speed’ in your systemization.
A Different Definition of a Business Plan
I love Michael Gerber’s definition of a business plan: “The sum of your systems is your business plan.” (Gerber is the author of the awesome business books, The E-Myth and The E-Myth Revisited.)
Two Systems Challenges for managers
1. Create systems to manage processes through change
2. Choose methods (including technology) to manage these systems
Let’s talk about the systems first. Good agents today have systems for each process they manage. For example, an agent has a listing process system, which includes the materials, packages, and checklists to manage the process. With those systems, agents can not only the manage the process, they can delegate the right activities to their assistants.
Agent Systems vs. Management Systems
Think about the systems, processes, and checklists you, as manager, recommend that your agent create to accomplish the critical tasks, or activities, in his business. Now, compare that with the tasks you, as manager, have to accomplish in your position as “people” manager. Work from the tasks to systems to manage these tasks. To prioritize the systems you want to develop, first:
1. List the tasks you do as manager. Now, list the parallel the tasks agents do
An example: A critical task an agent does is to lead generate. Good agents have systematized that process into a marketing plan, complete with specific tactics, dates, and budget. Managers must prospect, too. They lead generate for agents.
Does your prospecting (recruiting) plan for agents resemble that of your best agent’s marketing plan? Is it as systematized? Does it have the materials, time frames, budgets, and delegations that good agents have in their plans?
2. Now, prioritize your tasks as they relate to accomplishing your main objectives. What are the most important tasks you do as manager to assure your office makes a profit?
An example: If recruiting is very important to reaching your objective, how complete is your recruiting system? How organized is it? Who is involved with you in your recruiting plan? How well are you delegating the systems?
Prioritize your Job Description to Prioritize your Systemization
Then, you must either create or purchase systems to manage these processes. One reason managers haven’t systematized their work is that managers have few resources for systems organization. To actually systematize their work, they must create these systems from scratch. Given the myriad of activities managers must accomplish, that’s a daunting assignment. Instead, many managers stay in “crisis” management, which admittedly takes up a lot of the day, but doesn’t allow the manager to move ahead as a leader. (Weirdly, that’s what I like to do—create recruiting, selecting, coaching, and training systems so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel).
Next post: I’ll give you a list of the systems I think you should work toward so you end up working smarter, not harder.
Motivating the ‘Tough Case’ Agent
By · CommentsDo you have any seasoned agents in your office who have lost their fire? There’s probably no challenge for a manager today greater than that of rejuvenating your experienced, valued agents. Even though your market is better than it was, these seasoned agents just don’t seem to be able to re-light those fires of desire. You’ve tried being supportive and empathetic. You’ve even given them leads. Nothing has seemed to work. What are you going to do to retain these agents, motivate these agents, and get them back into the fray?
Before We Start: What Doesn’t Work
As a coach, I’ve been working with management teams to save and re-generate the careers of experienced agents. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen managers make is to try to help these seasoned agents through support and empathy. That’s just not enough. And, it’s actually demeaning. Yes, some empathy is needed. But, my observation is that it too often drifts into sympathy. Instead of motivating these seasoned agents to get back at it, these well-meaning but misguided managers are sympathizing the agents into a deeper
You Can Fill the Motivational Void Left by the ‘On Fire’ Market
As a manager, you have the ability to not only provide an atmosphere, along with a platform, to motivate that agent back into the business, you can go much further than that, to “inspiration”.
Just think what would happen if you could get that seasoned, slumping, ‘stuck’ agent back into the business with fervor. The whole attitude of your office would improve. Your coaching would work. Your training would be well attended. Your bottom line would look much healthier.
Two Steps to Create an Awesome Motivational Office
I’ve created a two-step approach to re-ignite your seasoned agents. In the next few blogs, I’ll show you exactly how to not only motivate those agents, but go way beyond motivation to inspiration.
Before I give you my approach, let me ask you to think about what motivates you. What re-lights your fires of desire? How have you noticed your seasoned agents ‘checking out’? Do some observation and research before you read my next blog post.