The Best Real Estate Broker Leadership Training in 20 Minutes

Video Transcript

Prefer to read along? Here’s the full transcript from this training video.

One of the things I’ve seen with coaches, with leaders — when we’re trying to coach systems with our agents and clients — there’s a core skeleton that needs to be put in place. And without constant supervision, that skeleton goes away. Our coaches see this in a very big way. Without constant maintenance, even on a leadership team, what ends up happening is the team will get away from their systems.

I’m going to briefly show you something that I hope all of our clients already know. But then I want to get into some of the things we talked about with our leadership group at our last leadership summit in Orlando that we haven’t covered before.

It is amazing. Back when I used to coach clients myself, I would always instill these things with every team or brokerage that first started coaching — right away. It was something I did in the first three or four calls. And then what would happen is, over time, if I didn’t keep my eyeballs on it, it would start to disappear. More often than not, it would just totally disappear.

Here is the concept — and it’s not a concept I created by any means. It comes from the book The Four Disciplines of Execution.

I wrote a book called The High Performing Real Estate Team that’s designed for real estate teams and brokerages to really dial in on a lot of the specifics in real estate. A lot of it is based off the 4DX book. For those of you that like EOS and Traction — those come from 4DX. 4DX was kind of the grandfather of all of these newer business books.

So let me break it down.

Discipline One is Focus on the Wildly Important Goal. What is that team’s goal? We talk about how to make that goal viral so that all the people on your team have individual goals that, if they all hit them, tie into the overall goal of the entire team. It just permeates your organization.

Discipline Two is Act on Lead Measures. This is what usually goes away first. For agents, what are they doing to generate new business? We can’t just track lag measures — how many they’ve got under contract, how many they’ve got pending, how many they’ve closed year to date, how much GCI. Those are all lag measures. We can’t do anything about those. We have to focus on lead measures: lead generation activities, marketing activities, training activities — things that are pushing agents forward toward their goals. Things they can control. Without focusing on lead measures, you’re not focusing on anything actionable.

Discipline Three is Keep a Compelling Scoreboard. That’s probably the crux of the whole thing — a scoreboard that tracks lead measures. For a brokerage, lead measures are typically recruiting and retention activities. How many trainings are we doing? How many recruiting appointments are we having? How many coaching appointments? These are the things that push productivity up. You’ve got to have gas pedals you can step on when you need more revenue. In down markets, when things slow down, you can start to see who’s been skinny dipping. The people who don’t have 4DX in place — their production goes down with the market. They have no gas pedal. You can see them griping about the market rather than stepping on that gas pedal to take territory.

Discipline Four is Create a Cadence of Accountability. We do that through a meeting. We’re meeting, we’re looking at the scoreboard, we’re talking about difficulties, and we’re working through them on a very regular basis. Is there a team meeting? And in that team meeting, are we just talking about pending transactions — which is in the rearview mirror — or are we talking about lead measures? That’s the key.

Having all four of those in place is absolutely crucial. And quite frankly, it’s a very small percentage of agents that have a dashboard. It’s a very small percentage of teams that have a dashboard. It’s a very small percentage of brokerages that use a dashboard and get together and meet around it on a regular basis. So there’s absolutely no focus on growing — and then you wonder why agents won’t produce, or leaders won’t recruit, or you can’t get agents to engage. There are no expectations set, nothing on a dashboard, no accountability.

For brokerage owners — you tried to recruit for a little while and then you quit because there’s no accountability on it. The vast majority of agents try to do things to generate new business, but those activities are hard, conversion rates are low, and they end up quitting. We really have to put 4DX in place and create peer accountability around your leadership team or agent team. That peer accountability will create professional responsibility and personal responsibility within each individual. You don’t even really have to say anything. You just put it up there. If I’ve got a big goose egg next to my name, that creates accountability. I don’t want that goose egg to happen again.

If you want to dive deeper on the techniques, read the first hundred pages of 4DX, or get my book The High Performing Real Estate Team, which goes into a lot of the intricacies as they relate to running a real estate organization.

Now let me show you our broker/manager dashboard and what that might look like.

It is shocking how small a percentage of brokerages — even though they want to increase revenue — are doing anything to actually drive it. I put that into two categories: recruiting and retention. Recruiting means doing things to actually attract agents to your office. Retention — and there should be a slash next to it — retention slash productivity. We have to increase productivity. If you increase productivity in a real estate brokerage, you’re not going to lose a lot of agents. Those are happy agents. They’re selling more, they’re getting value from your brokerage. The ones that leave are the ones that are struggling.

So we’re really trying to provide all the tools we can to increase retention by increasing productivity. Those two go hand in hand. And if you’re recruiting, it’s much easier to recruit when you have strong productivity systems in place — because then recruits realize they didn’t get this from their other brokerage. Most brokerages have absolutely none. They have a weekly sales meeting at best, and in that meeting there’s no productivity focus. It’s just new forms, new real estate laws, how to handle existing transactions. All lag measures. We need to do things to help our agents get clients.

This recruiting dashboard is very thorough. We’re actually tracking contacts made, appointments set, appointments had, follow-up appointments had, and recruits joined. With a brand new recruiter, it’s good to break it down this much because then we can diagnose. If they’re making contacts but not setting appointments — what are they saying on the phone? If they’re setting appointments but people aren’t showing up — what are we doing to actually commit people to the appointment? If they’re having appointments but not getting follow-ups — that’s a big problem.

Follow-up appointments are crucial. If you’re going out there and trying to close in one visit, you will continue to struggle. If you want to recruit people with talent — high producers, people who can diversify your agent mix — those aren’t one-and-dones. You’ve got to build rapport. You have to demonstrate value. You have to dig into your agent management portal and learn different ways you can help different agents, even ones who have sold more than you have or have big real estate teams.

If you get some of those successful producers to come to your brokerage, heads turn and the herd starts to follow. You’ve actually proven your value because someone saw it and made a public decision to join you. If you’re just a one-and-done recruiter, you’re going to end up only bringing in brand new licensees or agents who are struggling and have to make a move. A good recruiter knows how to get someone who is actually happy where they are — and get them to come to you because they know your organization will help them sell more and get a little more of their personal time back.

If you recruit real estate teams and big producers, and they make that public decision, it won’t feel like a demotion to other successful agents to come to your office. If your office is full of brand new agents, it’s going to feel like a demotion to anyone who’s established. That is prolific across the country.

Going for the hard close on a first appointment is a great way to pack the walls with bodies. But if you meet and stay in relationship, that’s how you get big producers to eventually make the move.

On the recruiting portion of the dashboard, after the training wheels come off a recruiter, I really focus on appointments and follow-up appointments. I’m teaching patience. They want to see that recruits-joined number move — but that’s a lag measure. We can’t do anything about it directly. So I do the Karate Kid “wax on, wax off” thing: you only succeed with me if you have a lot of appointments. If you have a lot of appointments, I know that over time people will start to join, especially if you stay in relationship.

In that first appointment — unless it’s a brand new licensee who needs to make a decision right away — all we’re trying to do is set the second appointment. How do we close the second appointment? What value can we promise them? How can we move their business forward? Track those first two metrics a lot. Early on, it’s nice to get the diagnosis: how many people did they reach out to, where are they having trouble setting appointments, where are they having trouble getting people to show up, and ultimately how are they getting someone to cross the finish line and join.

Being able to spread it out like that is really important because it lets us diagnose and creates motivation. Most never stay with recruiting long enough to actually get through all of that and have a proper diagnosis.

In your leadership meeting, what could be a more important conversation than brainstorming ways to overcome difficulties hitting your lead measures? That’s the most productive thing you can have in a leadership team meeting. Recruiting is the oxygen. If we are not growing, we are actually dying. And if we aren’t tracking how many recruiting appointments we have, we’re not going to recruit a lot. We’re doing it casually, and there are always going to be more fires to put out.

Stephen Covey calls it the Whirlwind — all the problems that live in a real estate office. The agents that need your attention. You’re only going to recruit when you have extra time, and there’s never extra time. We gripe about agents not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but they’re not lead generating because they’ve got their own whirlwind going too. Most leaders are doing the exact same thing — just blaming the agents instead of focusing on what they can control. Get out of that victim mindset. That’s where the scoreboard comes in.

Now moving down the dashboard — these are your retention measures. Everyone on staff, even your front desk person and your file compliance person, is reaching out to engage agents. They’re actually contacting agents who don’t show up for anything and inviting them to the next event. Could be your sales meeting, a mastermind, a training class, an awards ceremony. We’re trying to reach out to a few people a day, depending on the size of your office. It could be by text or phone. But we have to drive the needle up to get more engagement because the more agents plug into your productivity systems, the better off you’re going to be.

Then we’ve got consulting appointments — or coaching appointments. How often are we actually trying to increase each agent’s productivity? For example, your front desk receptionist — can she help people import their contacts into the company CRM? Yes, she can. She can sit right next to an agent and show them how to do it. Most of the training agents need is very fundamental. Maybe they need to set up a website, maybe they need to get registered on a tool. Everyone on your leadership team can do this. You don’t need a bunch of coaching wizards.

It does help to have a couple of people who have gone through our courses in the agent management portal on your leadership team, but they don’t need to go through everything. Most agents just need to learn how to work their sphere of influence, how to start reaching out, how to continuously add people to their database, how to set people up on listing eAlerts — basic functions that your entire leadership team can be coaching.

Give everyone a small sliver of their job profile dedicated to lead measures that move the revenue needle forward. And then training — how many training classes can each person conduct? Training on how to import your database, how to use the MLS, how to use a CRM, how to fill out contracts. These are not rocket science. You can spread training across your entire staff and even create a master faculty of your agents so they’re all contributing. Give them access to the agent management portal so they have training materials, instructor manuals, student workbooks, and presentation slides. All they’ve got to do is watch a video on how to do it, take notes, and turn around and deliver it. Or we hold them accountable to delivering it online.

For agents who can’t come into the office, just make it part of the consulting appointment. All of a sudden you’re putting accountability everywhere through leadership — and it’s all geared toward things that drive revenue, which is increasing agent productivity.

And if you can demonstrate that — I would actually bring a dashboard like that on a recruiting appointment. Show a recruit that your entire office staff is fighting to get time with agents. Because if they don’t, they’re going to feel guilty when they’ve got a zero next to their name on Friday. You will see a very aggressive office staff — rather than everybody hiding from agents, they’re all out there trying to hold agents accountable. And watch how drama goes away in your office. Agents will know you’re running an accountability culture.

I see coaching clients deviate and move away from using these dashboards because it’s extra work. Just like agents move away from lead generation because it’s extra work. It’s very easy to quit and just take business when it comes — and then you can’t drive your business forward anymore.

Without constant maintenance — and this is a shameless plug for coaching — I can’t tell you how many times I’ve coached someone for an entire year, asked to see their dashboard, and they’ve said, “Oh, we stopped using it.” More often than not, if I didn’t have my eyeballs on it, the lead measures went away and they were just tracking lag measures again.

And here’s the thing: if you start a dashboard and then stop doing it, you’re actually making things worse. You’re reinforcing to all your agents that it wasn’t important. The reinforcement by omission is stronger than ever. You’ve got to own it and stay with it.

Bringing dashboards back isn’t easy either. That’s why we have the Growth Operations Systems class — designed to be done as a group, as a leadership team, to slowly bring back the importance of accountability and tracking. It’s not something you just shove back into place. You’ve got to rebuild the buy-in.