Category: Management

How To Grow

Many have remarked that a well run Help-U-Sell office looks a lot like a mega-agent team where,  in traditional offices, top producing agents hire assistants and agent specialists to enable them to do more business.  The growth pattern is similar:  both the traditional agent and Help-U-Sell broker start out doing everything.  As they approach the maxed-out state, they add an assistant and make a corresponding leap in productivity.  As max is approached again, a buyer agent is added and productivity leaps once more . . . and so on.  The difference is that the Help-U-Sell broker goes into the marketplace with a stronger consumer offering and a differentiating identity.

Craig Proctor, a Re/Max agent from Ontario, Canada, is a model of the successful mega-agent team and has spent years speaking on the topic of team development and growth.  RISMedia features him in a nine minute video talking about how to develop your team and grow to the next level.  The parallels are so clear to what we’re doing that it is well worth your time to take a look.  Follow this link and click on the Best Practices video, ‘When to Create an Agent Team.”

Is There a Difference Between Being Busy and Working Hard?

There is a fun and thought provoking story at Inman News today about making real estate your lifestyle (instead of  making it what you do for a living). Here is a link:  Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Busy. Author Kris Berg has written extensively about her real estate career and she got my day off with a chuckle.  Here is an excerpt:

I proudly live a world of total real estate emersion. Take-out cartons outnumber two-legged tax deductions at my house by a factor of 50. On any given day, I can tell you how many active listings there are in my market but not where I left my sunglasses.

My home office looks like Staples lost their lunch next to the scanner. There are several items of food origin in my refrigerator in serious need of a shave. And this morning, I learned that my daughter is sick only because I happened to read her Twitter stream. (Note to Child Protective Services: I am referring to the daughter who lives in a Missouri college dorm.)

What do you think?  Is being too busy a symptom of poor time management?  Is working hard a choice that may or may not pay dollar dividends?  Do you work all the time because you need to or want to?  If you’re devoting eight hours to something you could do in four, is it for love of the game or because you’re avoiding something else?  I’d love to hear from you . . .

Expectations

You get what you expect.

It’s one of the Great Truths that’s so true that it has become a cliche.  Think about it:  a few years back an Australian woman made millions of dollars producing a DVD and Book that said, essentially, the same thing.  Remember ‘The Secret?’  Of course, that phenomenon went into manifesting your expectations through affirmations and visualization. 

We REALTOR-types have been talking about expectations and actually using them for . . . well, forever.  We set goals, we have minimum standards and so on.   But there’s something I noticed in recent years —  during the downturn — when finding and converting business became so difficult.  Many of us adjusted our expectations down.

That’s ok.  Given the market at the time, it made sense. You have to be realistic.

But today, by all accounts, there is a big shift beginning.  Buyers are waking up and becoming so active that in places inventory is in short supply.  Sellers with equity, motivated by the prospect of getting a much nicer home for a good price are starting to show up.  Put it all together and shake it up . . . and it looks like a good market could be just a few weeks or months away. 

It’s time to re-examine your expectations, for yourself, your company and your staff.  Maybe you’ve been grateful to be closing 1 or 2 deals a month.  Maybe you’ve been ok with that agent who only manages to get one every 5 or 6 weeks.  Put that past reality on hold for a minute and think:  what would be acceptable in a reasonably good market?  Do you expect to do 10 or 20 sides a month?  More?  And your staff:  is it time to expect more from them?  Is it time to decide that a minimum of two transactions per buyer agent per month is acceptable? 

The point is this:  you can’t expect to get more than you expect to get.  Don’t let your down market expectations limit what you  get as the market improves.

Rely on Facts . . . Not Rumors

The other day, Ron McCoy told me about a broker who had been beating herself up because she didn’t have any REO business.  She kept reading in the newspaper and hearing on the radio what a huge part of the market foreclosures had become.  Why wasn’t she getting any? 

All of this gnashing of teeth led this broker to do what Help-U-Sell brokers do in situations like this:  she did a Market Analysis.  Guess what?  Turns out REOS accounted for less than 10% of the business in her target market!  Suddenly all of that energy that was going into stewing and worrying about REOs that didn’t exist could be channelled into capturing as much of her market as she could.

Here at the Set Fee Blog, we did the whole Chicken Little/Foxy Loxy thing a couple of days ago and we all know not to pay attention to the negative press that’s out there.  But why not take it one step farther?  Why not replace the negativity circulating around you with solid market place facts?  Even if REOs are 40% of the activity in your MLS, what’s going on with the 10,000 – 15,000 households where you intend to do business? 

As Help-U-Sell brokers, we rely on market data for so many decisions:  where to set our fee, where to target our marketing, when to gear up and when to wind down.  Confusing times, uncertain times, times when all the birds in the barnyard are squaking — these are the times to update your Market Analysis and examine your data again.  You’ll find the full set of forms and instructions you need to do a Market Analysis in the Help-U-Sell Download Library. 

(You know:  go to www.helpusell.com, scroll down near the bottom of the page and select ‘Help-U-Sell OMS.’  Proceed to OMS Login and, if you’ve forgotten your user name and password,contact support@helpusell.com.  You’ll find the Market Analysis package in the ‘Marketing and Content’ section, under ‘Operational Tools’ and ‘Office Operational Forms.’  If that’s too many clicks, just drop me a note and I’ll send you the package and even help you fill it out!)

Agents Are The Problem, Right? Wrong

Help-U-Sell is a broker-centric business model, which is to say:  the broker is in control of the business.  He/she takes responsibility for studying the market, designing and implementing the marketing, generating the leads, converting them to listings and sales and ensuring the survival and growth of his company.  That does not imply that there is no place in a Help-U-Sell office for agents.

True, if you look at the issues that plague traditional real estate offices, you can easily conclude that the agents are the problem.  Their huge commission splits, constant shopping for a better deal and complacent acceptance of sub-standard productivity have all but destroyed any chance for a traditional broker to make a reasonable profit.  But truth is:  that’s not a problem with the agents, it’s a problem with the broker. 

Traditional brokers adbicated their leadership role to agents back in the 80’s.  Forced to compete with 100% companies, they allowed their commission splits to soar to impossible heights.  Less company dollar meant cutting marketing budgets, focusing what cash there was on attracting more agents.  (It’s really sad that so many brokers who averaged less than 25% of GCI as company dollar thought that if they just had more agents they’d somehow make it up in volume!)

The issue isn’t agents.  It’s broker control.

The Help-U-Sell model is absolutely suited to agent populated offices if the broker stays in control.  This means:

  • The broker decides when, where and how to market — he doesn’t leave this up to the agents
  • The broker pays for the marketing
  • The broker considers every lead that comes into the office to be his
  • The broker demands a high level of performance in converting leads to clients to sales
  • The broker hires only when the business grows to the point that another person is needed (the Buyer Pool is his gauge)
  • The broker stays primarily responsible for the listing function.  That means he takes the listings or has an assistant stand in for him.
  • The broker pays buyer agents in the 50%-60% range — which makes sense because he’s furnishing all the leads and is not asking them to knock doors, cold call or take lisitngs
  • The broker holds everyone accountable and does not hesitate to eliminate poor performers

Agents flourish in this environment.  They come to work every day with something to do, confident that there will be another buyer and another buyer to keep them busy because the broker is marketing and the marketing works.

Sellers receive maximum exposure because the office has a well thought out marketing program in place, controlled by the broker, not a bunch of individual agents.

Buyers get to work with specialists who aren’t distracted by the listings that aren’t selling or the ad that’s due today or anything else that goes on in the other side of the office.

The Broker smiles every month when he sees his bottom line.  His business makes sense because he stayed in control.

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