If you are like many agency leaders, you probably began your career in Sales. And the fact that you now own your own agency means that more likely you were pretty good at it.
This ability is actually a two-edged sword. On one hand you have the ability to train your salespeople and, if you can make them even seventy percent as good as you, you would be very happy. Well, that’s what most leaders say.
But there is a downside: while you are trying to get your salespeople ‘up to speed’ there are bills to pay, and often the salespeople you have aren’t making sufficient sales to do it.
So what does a great salesperson do when sales have to be made? He or she goes out and makes sales. And this is precisely what too many agency leaders do. But if you, the agency owner, has to make the sales in order to cover basic expenses, this means that your Sales Department is not profitable.
As a salesperson, your focus was on making sales.
But as an agency leader, you need a new focus:
FINDING AND DEVELOPING PEOPLE
In our management seminar, the Real Estate Agency Management Program [1], we spend more than two full days on how to find and develop a winning team. The first thing a leader must do is focus on what is important, and a winning agency needs a winning team.
How do you develop this new focus? Do to yourself what you learned to do with clients: show the benefit.
Without doubt you, the agency leader, could go out and make four or five sales this month. Each time you make a sale you earn a fee of, say, $10,000 for your agency. But how many times can you do this each month? Four? Five? Six? There is a limit to what one person can do.
If one sale of residential property makes you $10,000, let’s compare what would happen if you developed a new focus and instead ‘sold’ one potential winner on joining your agency. We call this a ‘Winner Sale’.
Could you train one salesperson to make four sales a month? Once you got that person ‘up to speed’ could you then train another?
See where this is heading: each salesperson you train brings into the agency $480,000 per year. Therefore:
One residential sale you make yourself earns you $10,000. One ‘Winner Sale’ earns you $480,000.
I do hope this thought encourages you to develop a new focus on finding and developing a Winning Team. And if you would like some assistance, we’d be pleased to be of service.
The next presentation of the Real Estate Agency Management Program [1]is being held in Sydney on May 7-11. For more information, or to receive a confidential and obligation-free agency evaluation, please do contact us at info@pittard.com.au [2].
Good luck with your new focus.