Let’s face it– even if you’re a real estate rainmaker, building an optimized team around you provides more benefit than performing your role as a lone-wolf advisor. When you’re working solo, you’re always going to be presented with the sour moment of turning away leads due to not having ample time and resources. You can’t do it all. You need a real estate team.
With a team, you’ll be able to build your real estate empire. You’ll be able to capitalize on every lead that comes your way and knead and bend the constraints of your day so that you can get every task completed. [Not only will leveraging a team allow you to bend the constraints of your day, but it gives you the ability to capitalize on every lead that comes your way so you can focus on building your real estate empire.
To borrow from Jim Collins, American author of Good to Great and renowned lecturer on the subject of company sustainability and growth,
“In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances…”
In short, your team is paramount to the success of your business.
What should an optimal team look like and how should you go about building said team?
Below are a list of tactics, strategies and practices involved in building the best team possible for your real estate dominance:
1. Outline your overall “why”
Ask yourself: Why are you looking to build a team under your tutelage?
When you are first building your team, you need to consider your needs.
- Are you looking to delegate some of your work as to have more freedom?
- Are you looking to ramp up revenue generation and have people follow up on the leads you’re too busy to follow up with?
- Are you looking to offer more customer support to your clients?
You need to properly identify and outline your motivations for building a team. There isn’t really a wrong answer, however if you follow the wrong motivation, you are destined to fail your business and your team.
2. Make sure your own office is in perfect working order
“The foundation of building a profitable real estate team is to have your own house in order first.”
— Jan O’Brien, RealEstateTeamBuilder.com
As the business leader, your role is to make sure that your team has the proper resources to take all the excess work that is being presented at your doorstep and capitalize on it. Your team is not there to solve all the problems you may already be experiencing with your business.
Your hires are looking for delegation, direction, and guidance. Only when you have your own office in working order can you take on the role of delegator and leader.
3. Identify the right people for your team
Referencing the above quote from Jim Collins, it’s important to know who you have on your bus before you decide on where you want to go with this team.
Where are you weak? Try to identify potential team members that make up for your shortcomings. Many realty businesses have employed using DISC Personality Profiling to aid them in matching the necessary skills needed in building their team with potential hires.
While DISC Personality Profiling might help in identifying your needs, it isn’t a surefire failsafe. Other successful real estate agent enterprises enact a trial period hiring process (generally 90 days) in order to see if the candidates are the right fit.
84% Of job seekers would consider leaving their current job if offered a job by a company with an excellent reputation.
4. Your reputation will reflect your candidate pool
Your reputation will dictate how much you are sought after in this business. When you reach the point of building a team, you are going to want the best people possible. Are you in a place where the best candidates are going to put you on their radar?
A study conducted by Glassdoor For Employers indicates that 69 percent of job seekers would not take a job with a company that has a bad reputation–even if unemployed. 84 percent would consider leaving their current job if offered a job by a company with an excellent reputation.
In a world where job satisfaction is put at a higher priority than compensation, what kind of culture are you fostering?
5. Hire slow and rely on your gut
Kyle Alfriend is a Realtor with over 20 years experience. He knows a thing or two about hiring a team.
Here’s Alfriend’s three step process on hiring new team members::
- First, his staff conducts an initial phone screening.
- The second step is an interview, which incorporates some Myers-Briggs testing with the main focus of weeding out the bad candidates as opposed to finding the good ones).
- Finally, the candidate gets to Alfriend. As Alfriend puts it, “The more ‘out of the box’ I want them, which is marketing and sales, the more I follow my gut. However, on the more procedural or compliance related jobs, like closing coordinators or processors, the more I allow the questionnaires and personality tests to decide,”
Alfriend says regardless of the position, he always makes the final call ultimately based on gut feel.
The strength and prosperity lies on your decision making abilities and vetting processes. When it all comes down to it, what does your gut say?
As a real estate advisor, you are always wearing a leadership hat. Whether you have only yourself to be responsible for or you are building a team to help you navigate the dynamic landscape, you are the catalyst for your own success. Building a team is tough. We wish we could merely clone a few copies of ourselves and employ them, but of course we can’t. However, you can use various tactics and procedures to build an advantageous team. From there, you can achieve our most ambitious goals.