“Growth sucks cash”
Verne Harnish
Verne Harnish is an outstanding business writer. His book “Scaling Up: How a few companies make it and why the rest don’t” is a must-read for every business person.
Verne says that growth sucks cash. If a company is to grow, recruitment processes must be refined and they must work. And you must have a recruiting champion, somebody dedicated to bringing the right people into the team and helping them develop into winners.
In a real estate business, the recruitment champion is the leader. This is not a task that you can effectively delegate, and herein lies the problem:
Growth does suck cash, but it also sucks time – yours.
A leader who actively lists and sells is often the best salesperson in the company. Many have one or more assistants. They are busy people. Unfortunately, they’re often busy selling, and not growing their company. Most of the profit, they generate themselves.
This is not a business. It is a job.
Failing to recruit devalues the business. What do you have to sell if you are the top producer? You can’t sell yourself, so that leaves only the rent roll. Building a sales team makes the business more valuable.
These leaders often try to recruit people, but they are so busy chasing income that they spend little time inducting recruits, training them, helping them to become as productive as possible as quickly as possible.
Lack of time and attention in a salesperson’s first year is a major reason for the high turnover of salespeople in the real estate industry.
Why don’t more leaders grow their business? Too busy! That and the investment required.
Without recruitment systems, and induction and training systems, recruiting becomes hit-and-miss. This is recruitment in many typical agencies.
In the absence of proven recruiting systems, leaders resort to poaching competitors’ salespeople, which is the worst of all recruiting methods.
I urge all real estate leaders to decide on the future of their business. Do you want to be the best salesperson in your company, or do you want a team of winners who make sales for you, who are happy, productive, and profitable? Your Dream Team.
If you think this is a pipe dream, contact me and I’ll introduce you to many leaders who make a million dollars profit and who don’t list and sell. These people are leaders. They have recruited their team and now have a real business.
You can have a team like this too, but there is a price to pay – in time and money.
Gary Pittard