Archive for Motivation
Turning your Leadership Style Upside Down for more Effectiveness
Posted by: | CommentsThis January and February, I’m featuring the topic ‘leadership’. Why? Because it’s one of the biggest real estate industry trends (and probably world trends) of 2012 and beyond. Look for leadership strategies and trends (not just in the real estate industry), plus ready-to-use documents to go from ‘maintenance management’ to leadership. And, check out my complimentary recorded webinar for leadership. See more below, too.
Is your leadership style ‘tell them what to do and expect them to do it’? It seems so easy. You’re the chairperson or manager. Just take charge, tell people what to do, and they’ll do it. NOT. It’s just not that simple. At least, it’s not that simple unless systems are already in place and people on the committee know what their tasks are.
Seven Truisms about Effective Participative Leadership
It’s not enough today to be good at a traditional leadershp style. In fact, you have to really ‘turn your leadership style’ upside down to become effective. You must become a ‘participative’ leader. Here are seven truisms to help you flex your natural style toward more participation from your team members.
Truism #1: New chairpeople don’t know what’s expected of them
Just because people accept the title it doesn’t mean they know how to proceed with the job. Most people have never chaired a committee, so they don’t have the skills. It’s especially challenging when it’s a new task. They need to have clear direction, a job description, job responsibilities, and exactly who to go to when the job doesn’t get done.
Truism #2: People don’t know HOW to get it done
Even when people know what to do, they don’t usually have checklists, systems, deadlines, and assignments to get it done; it doesn’t work to leave it to a person (95% of the time, the other 5% will figure it out on their own) to decide how to get the job done.
Truism #3: Myth: “Leaders are the “idea people” and aren’t supposed to get into implementation (someone else will figure out how to get the work done)
When leaders say that, they immediately put others into the “secretary” mode. Their mentality is, someone else beneath them should be able to figure out how to get that done. That’s a secretarial or assistant’s job, isn’t it? But, your committee members don’t work for you. They work with you. You can’t expect someone to raise his hand and offer to be your assistant because you came up with the idea.
Truism #4: Verbal-type people resist processes and systems
There is a natural resistance in us (maybe especially in we verbal-type people) to organizing processes and systems. We love to talk about the idea. We don’t like to clarify exactly how that idea gets into process.
Truism #5: We ‘big idea’ people think we can delegate systemization to an assistant
Having worked with assistants for over 15 years, I have found that not true. Assistants need help in systemizing any process that YOU want done. They are good at systemizing their own processes–but not good at all at systemizing ours!
Truism #6: Leaders know committees take most of their time REPORTING to the larger group, not deciding on issues or processes
A mistake that committees make is to try to design processes within the large committee meeting. Instead, create task forces to report back quickly to you.
Truism #7: When accountability factors aren’t built in, things don’t get done.
This is a dicey issue, because you’re working with volunteers. Or, in the case of a real estate company, with independent contractors. At the same time, your association or business also expects the services and programs you promised. There’s a great difference between “do it the way you want” and expecting results and “do it the way you want” and let’s check how it’s going regularly.
Sharpening Your Participative Leadership Skills
What truisms do you want to add from your experiences in leadership? What do you see of yourself in these truisms? How can these help you lead? What needs to be done in your leadership position to gain greater skills? These skills are learned over time, and the pay-off is an association or business that is ‘owned’ by all those involved, with empowerment assured.
Leadership Strategies By the Month
Do you want to step into a better leadership style? Be more effecctive? Recruit more and better? I’ve created a very special, unique program for managers and owners: Once a month I share a specific leadershp strategy to recruit, choose, train, coach, and retain winners. These are proven strategies to get you out of a rut, take you past crisis management, and energize and inspire your team. See more at 365 Leadership. This new series closes for enrollment March 15. Find out more here.
Business Planning: How to Fire Up You and Your Agents
Posted by: | CommentsNote: Through November and December, I’m going to help you with your 2012 business plans. You’ll find free documents from my business planning system for owners and an invitation to a complimentary webinar. Why not subscribe and be sure not to miss a thing?
In an earlier blog, we discussed why most busienss plans fail to inspire. I named 3 components of a real business plan that put the inspiration and motivation into a business plan: Vision, Review, and Mission. In this blog, we’ll discuss the first component–vision.
Is your business plan missing vision? Below is an explanation of why having a vision is so important to the success of your business plan. In fact, I believe the lack of vision in a plan leads to a demotivating and certainly uninspiring plan.
For you managers: I think helping your agents create an inspiring and motivating plan will remove their reticence at doing a plan.
Why Vision is Important
A few years ago, business professors, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, studied very successful companies to find out the differences between ‘stunning’ (high profits and highly regarded), and other like companies who were almost as profitable, but not so successful). They published the results in the best business book I’ve ever read, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies.
What did they find was the common difference between the highly profitable and merely very successful?
A common vision and values shared by every person in the company.
Porras and Collins’ conclusion was that the desire for profits isn’t the main driver for profits. The focused and tenacious vision, shared by all in the company, was the biggest determinant for profits.
Components of Vision
Your vision is made up of your core ideology and your envisioned future. 
As you can see from the chart on the right, excerpted from my business planning system, your core ideology is made up of your core values and core purpose. If you look at your life, you’ll see that the things that inspire and motivate you are the things that adhere to your belief system. That’s what this part of the vision statement says about you.
Your envisioned future is made from a vivid description of this future, and BHAGs—big hairy, audacious goals. Those are goals five years out, that you really don’t think you can attain.
The Power of BHAGs
Surprisingly, as Porras and Collins found, when companies stated these goals, they actually attained them in three years! (Inspirational goals that are congruent with your core values and core ideology are powerful motivators!).
What Vision Does for Companies
Here’s Porras and Collins’s function of a vision statement:
Provides guidance about what core to preserve and what future to progress toward. Made up of core ideology and envisioned future.
Here’s an example of a vision of one of the book’s stand-out companies:
Our basic principles have endured intact since our founders conceived them. We distinguish between core values and practices; the core values don’t change, but the practices might. We’ve also remained clear that profit – as important as it is – is not why the Hewlett-Packard Company exists; it exists for more fundamental reasons.”
- John Young, former CEO, Hewlett-Packard
How to Construct your Vision
How do you want to see yourself in this business? How do you want people to talk about you and your business after you retire? What values are most important to you? What ideology do you follow in your business?
Managers’ exercise. To figure out what your core values are, imagine that you are opening an office on Mars. You can only take three agents with you on your spaceship. Name those three agents. What are the core values of these agents? Who in your office doesn’t exhibit those values? Why is he/she still with you?
Looking back: Imagine you are at your own memorial, watching from above. What are others saying about you? What’s most memorable about you?
Voicing those BHAGs
What is a great goal you would love to accomplish in your business, but really don’t feel it’s possible for you within five years? Write it right now.
Why We Don’t Reach Those Lofty Goals
Is that goal that’s been eluding you congruent with your core values? What I mean by that is, does that goal feel comfortable to you? For instance, if that goal is that you’ll make two million dollars, and you don’t like the feeling of that much money, because your values are aligned differently, you just aren’t going to reach that goal. That, I believe is the reason many of us don’t reach some of our goals. Those goals aren’t in alignment with our core values.
Here’s what great motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said about goal-value alignment:
You can’t consistently perform in a manner that is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
Fnding your Alive, Powerful Motivation
In my business planning system, I also provide another method to check your motivation.
Click here to get this document.
I’m convinced that we reach or don’t reach our goals based on the intensity of our desire, driven not by cold numbers, but by the warm emotion of aligned values and inspiring goals. Yogi Berra said it well:
Life is like baseball; it’s 95% mental and the other half is physical.
Substantial Savings
Want the whole planning system at a substantial savings? In November, I’m knocking $25 off the regular price ($99.95) for the leader’s planning system, Business Planning for the Owner, Manager, and Team Builder. With dozens of tips on business planning, and all the customized planning pages you’ll need, this system is a treasure trove of how to run your business more profitably. I also coach you on 2 audio CDs, to give you insights into planning strategically.
Click here to find out more.
Why You Can’t Get your Agents to Plan–and What to Do About It
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Note: Through November and December, I’m going to help you with your 2012 business plans. You’ll find free documents from my business planning system for owners and an invitation to a complimentary webinar. Why not subscribe and be sure not to miss a thing?
Let’s get real. Your agents aren’t motivated to build that business plan–and we aren’t either. We know we’re supposed to write business plans. Yet, if your agents are like 95% of real estate professionals, doing that seems just like an exercise in futility. Most business plans don’t inspire.
Leaving out the ‘Magic’?
There are components left out of most plans—components that put the inspiration and motivation into your plan and your agents’ plans. I’ll give you specific guidance for you to put that magic into business plans, so you and your agents are inspired every day—not only to complete the plan, but to use it as a very personalized and specific guide to your success.
Why Are Most Business Plans Useless?
Unfortunately, when most people write business plans, all they do is fill in some blanks with ‘guess numbers’. The problem here is that numbers in blanks aren’t inspiring. They aren’t motivating. They don’t call out and suggest to you that you should look at those numbers once in awhile!
What Really Motivates Us?
If numbers inspired us, we’d all be gazillionaires selling real estate. After all, we say we want to sell more homes than the average agent. We want to make more money than the average agent. You know the drill, and I’ve heard it from hundreds of agents hundreds of times. Yet, if numbers and money were motivators, our results would be different than they are. The fact is that money, in itself, is not a motivator. It’s
what we want to do with the money
And that’s as individual as we are. Martin Luther King didn’t say, “I have a business plan.” He said, “I have a dream”. You must include the ‘dream’ part of your future in your business plans to make that plan useful to you. That means, you as a business consultant, need to include the three ‘missing’ parts of business plans that I describe below.
Building the ‘Why’ Into your Business Plans
That’s the motivator. In other words, we have to have a big ‘why’. Most business plans don’t build in the ‘why’. That’s why they fall flat, and leave us cold. That’s why agents don’t want to go through the exercise of creating them. Managers always commiserate that they can’t get their agents to write business plans. You wouldn’t want to write a plan, either, if you know it wouldn’t help you with your business the next year.
The Tools to Find that ‘Why’
Most people think of business plans as projections of numbers. But, that’s not all there is to a real strategic plan. There are three parts of a business plan that provide that inspiration, that motivation, and that ‘why’. And, those are the parts of the planning process that are most frequently left out:
- Your vision—why you’re in this business; how you see yourself after you retire
- Your review—what happened in your business that will make an impact on your business in the future
- Your mission—who are you in the business
In the next few blogs, I’ll show you how to create these parts of your business plan and get your agents to plan, so you give yourself the inspiration and motivation you need to create and implement your plan.
Substantial Savings
Want the whole planning system at a substantial savings? In November, I’m knocking $25 off the regular price ($99.95) for the leader’s planning system, Business Planning for the Owner, Manager, and Team Builder. With dozens of tips on business planning, and all the customized planning pages you’ll need, this system is a treasure trove of how to run your business more profitably. I also coach you on 2 audio CDs, to give you insights into planning strategically.
Click here to find out more.
The Clues: How to Teamify your Office for More Profits
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You’ve decided you want to move into the world of participative management, and create a real team. How do you start? Here are some great resources.
Start reading books on visionary leadership and team building. One the best is Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, Porras and Collins, Harper Business. For a quick read, choose Ken Blanchard’s High Five: The Magic of Working Together. Author Jon R. Katzenbach has several recent books on teams, too. Pay attention when successful leaders in other industries talk about how they “teamified” their associates using vision, values, participation through advisory groups and rewards for common focusing such as profit sharing.
Lots of Clues on the Sports Pages
Read the sports pages. Ask yourself, “Why is that person considered a good coach? Why did that person fail? How did that person get a bunch of highly gifted, undisciplined athletes to stop playing as individual stars and start playing like a team? Why do some “teams” fail with more gifted athletes than the team who wins with less individual gifts and more team play?
Leaders Build True Teams
I don’t believe that teams fail. I believe that leaders fail to build true teams. The main reason leaders fail is because they don’t know how to be team leaders. They have never experienced being on an effective team of any kind or being led by an effective leader. So when they call it a “team,” it’s merely a group. They say they want team play, but instead they reward individual play. They ask for cooperation and fair play, but when a dispute arises, those values fly out the door so that the higher producer is “protected” by management. They say they manage by a value system, but what is it—and where is it? In reality, they manage by expediency.
How to Recognize a Team
To recognize a real estate team, you will see evidence that:
- Individuals give up some self-interest for the good of everyone, e.g., no one steals leads or bad-mouths team members to sales associates or the community to get the upper hand.
- Your leadership council makes win-win decisions, not win-lose ones. An example of win-lose would be a decision in which sales associates win, management loses.
- Team members are accountable to a common goal, e.g., each team member agrees to sell a certain number of homes to support team goals.
- New team members are highly supported and encouraged to set goals and achieve them. For example, no team member joins an office where they must “prove themselves” alone to get any attention.
- Systems exist that support teamwork such as advisory councils, task forces, and a business plan that mirrors the vision and values of the team.
- Team rewards exist such as like profit sharing.
Why Bother?
Why bother to learn the leadership skills required to create a team? Because, it’s more rewarding—both financially and emotionally. I’m a flutist, and I can tell you there’s a much greater synergy in playing a flute concerto with an orchestra than in playing a flute solo—alone—or even with a piano accompaniment. Learn the skills of teamwork, for, in the next decade, trend watchers tell us that teamwork in the workplace is critical to profitability. It’s even true in real estate.
Want to get specific strategies, that you can immediately implement, to build your team with confidence, take a look at 365 Leadership. It’s a small-group coaching program ONLY for owners and managers. Each month, you’ll get a new leadership strategy to recruit, coach, train, and motivate your associates. You’ll build new structures to get out of that old ‘top down’ management that agents hate! Take a look at 365 Leadership and see what others think of the first program. Our next program starts in September.
You deserve the kind of coaching and support to take your management career to the next level!
Building your Team: Start with the End in Mind
Posted by: | CommentsWhy bother to re-structure your leadership style to build a true team? Because you’ll recruit more and retain better
. Bottom line: more profits.
To build a team: Start with the end in mind. Today, teamwork will exist only when there is a common vision in the office—a vision created by leadership.
Is That Vision Strong?
Ask yourself: Do you have stated values and a vision of where you want to be at the end? Is that vision inspiring? Has the team adopted the vision, is the team energized about it, and is the team working together toward it? This is one of the things we work on in 365 Leadership, our small-group coaching program with a new leadership strategy every month.
Ensure the Team Is in Tune
Are you sure your team is a ‘team’? Or, is it just a group that you work into a frenzy once in awhile? It’s difficult for us to tell, if we’ve never been in a real team. Let me use a musical analogy to try to explain how a team sounds and feels.
I play piano in a jazz group. I’m the leader. So, before I call a tune, I have to start with a vision—a clear idea of how I want a particular tune to sound. I have to pick the tune, hear the rhythm in my head, get the feel, review the structure and decide on the parts I want the members to play—all before I call the tune to my jazz members. Then I’d better be sure everyone in that group agrees to the terms and conditions of that vision before we start—or it’s going to sound like a mess! I’ve actually called tunes and had band members say they couldn’t play the tune in that rhythm. I’ve hired jazz members who wanted to play their own version of the tune–rather than our version! Better to know it before beginning, or else the band doesn’t sound like one band—it sounds like three players each choosing a different tune.
Building a Team is Easier if you Have a Model
Great and profitable companies (outside of real estate) today have visions that fire up their associates to have a sense of meaning and accomplishment. This creates a teamwork atmosphere. Think England’s The Body Shop, which sells personal care products. Soap doesn’t fire up those employees, their environmental causes do.
Recommended reading: Read the best business book of all time (my opinion): Build to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by Porras and Collins. There are dozens of stories and quotes about visionary companies.
Commit to a Common Focus
So you have enlisted your team members in a common vision. Now, how do you get everyone’s commitment? By helping team members determine what’s in it for them. You will hear a sports star say, “It didn’t matter if I scored 50 points. We lost the game.” If that person were not a team player, it wouldn’t matter if the team won or lost.
Accountability is Key
First, build in accountability. Each team member must have a defined role, with responsibility to perform that role well. We in the real estate industry have really fallen down on that one. We don’t require much of anything from our team members. Still, we call them a “team.” What if the Los Angeles Lakers had no defined roles and no accountability for players to master their roles? They wouldn’t have won a championship!
What would be examples of accountability?
- Being accountable for your goals to a “peer partner.”
- Being accountable for your goals to your manager.
- Being accountable for some training for your associates.
Reward Team Play
Second, reward team play. Behavior that’s rewarded is repeated. What do we reward in real estate? Individual sales achievements. If we want team play, we must devise systems to reward team play. What would team play rewards look like? They could be commission or profit sharing for recruiting, peer coaching for retention, etc. This is an area that real estate companies must build, otherwise sales associate have no reason to play on the team. Other reward systems might be rewards for a team in a contest, rewards for coaches in a coaching/mentoring system and rewards for participation in sales associate advisory councils.
Get The Strategies to Build that Team
Want to get specific strategies, that you can immediately implement, to build your team with confidence, take a look at 365 Leadership. It’s a small-group coaching program ONLY for owners and managers. Each month, you’ll get a new leadership strategy to recruit, coach, train, and motivate your associates. You’ll build new structures to get out of that old ‘top down’ management that agents hate! Take a look at 365 Leadership and see what others think of the first program. Our next program starts in September.
You deserve the kind of coaching and support to take your management career to the next level!
Before You Decide NOT to Hire a Coach…
Posted by: | CommentsMoney is tight. You are experiencing more challenges than you thought possible in real estate management. Who can afford a coach? Well, maybe now is the time you CAN”T afford NOT to hire one.
Ask yourself: How are you going to get better? How are you going to break through those ceilings of achievement? What are you going to change about your recruiting, your training, your coaching?
“I’ll Get Coaching and Training from My Company”
How’s that working out for you? The real estate industry is cyclical. You’ve heard people say that. There are ‘buyers’ markets, and ‘sellers’ markets. There’s another way the real estate industry is cyclical, too. It’s cyclical in its approach to supporting its agents. When I started in real estate, (almost three decades ago!), there was no training. Then, companies started training programs. When I went into management in the early 1980’s, we were also taught to coach agents to higher productivity. But, as money got tight, and real estate companies became less profitable, they dumped their training programs. They asked managers to also sell. Just ask anyowner or general manager today whether they have time to train and coach……….you know the answer. It’s ‘no’.
Coaching is Big in the World of Business Today
However, in the world of business generally, coaching has become a big thing. It’s even swept into the realm of real estate again in the form of paid, independent coaching programs. But, you may be one of those who says, “I don’t need a coach. I’m a self-starter. I can reach my goals on my own.” Having been in real estate for three decades, I’ve heard that comment a lot. But, my experience has shown me that almost everyone benefits from coaching.
Skills Come from Practice and Coaching Assistance
As a pianist since I was four years old, I know that peak performance comes only with practice—perfect practice. And, 
therein lies the rub. When you attempt to learn to play the piano by yourself, without a teacher, you can’t hear yourself play. You can’t make adjustments fast enough alone. You need a great piano teacher who is helping you assess your performance, make adjustments, and challenges you to stretch to higher goals.
Skills: The Secret Ingredient
The difference between one person’s success in any field and another lies, in part, in their comparable skills. All experienced pianists can put their hands on the keys. They can play the notes. But, most pianists haven’t mastered playing the notes. They haven’t mastered the interpretation. That takes practice and coaching.
Could You Benefit from Coaching?
If you’re:
- Not optimizing your talents
- Not attaining your goals
- Spending too much time spinning your wheels
- Spending too much money for little return
- Hitting ceilings of achievement
- Feel as though you’re alone in your predicament
You will benefit from a professional business coach.
What Your Coach Can Do For You
- Help you focus on our goals so we get there faster.
- Motivate you to get into meaningful action.
- Encourage you to keep on keeping on.
- Offer resources for new ideas so we can take a different look.
- Appreciate your efforts when no one else seems to!
Real Estate Salespeople and Managers—a Special Breed
Approximately ninety percent of all real estate salespeople and managers have behavioral styles that are highly aggressive and/or promotional. That’s not like the normal population! In other words, we like people and we charge ahead (my motto is, when all else fails, read the directions……). Only fifty percent of the normal population exhibits those behavioral styles. Other styles are more task focused and embrace procedure. Yes, we salespeople-types have special talents—and special challenges. Our biggest challenge is focus. We’re great with people. We get into action fast. Our problem is that people and actions pull us in various directions, and we lose the one thing that drives us toward our goals—focus. The first and biggest benefit a coach can give us is to keep us focused.
Coaches Provide Much-Needed Models and Systems
Models and systems are woefully lacking in our real estate industry. After all, we’re the people who’ve always said, “Fake it until you make it.” What if your surgeon said that? Or your accountant? Historically, we real estate professionals have had an aversion to following procedures.
Yet, in the world of business, systems are the basis of all business growth. For us too, systematizing is the best way we can build big, profitable businesses. A competent coach uses proven models and systems and processes that do more than stop our crisis management. They teach us how to think about our business.
A Coach Helps You move Faster and With More Confidence
Armed with great models and systems, you and your coach have a common language from which to work. You will benefit from gaining focus. You will accomplish more faster, gain greater confidence, and be able to set higher goals as a result of your coaching experience and relationship.
Want to see if coaching may be for you? Take this evaluator.
What’s your Job Description?
Posted by: | CommentsWhat’s your job description? Did you get one prior to taking your present position with your company? Very few managers did. If you didn’t, how do you know what to do every day? How do you know the priorities expected by your ‘boss’? (Or, if you’re the boss, how do you know your priorities?
Your Present Job Description
Did you have the opportunity to do the time analysis provided in my previous blog? If not, I suggest you go back to that blog and analyze the number of hours you’re spending in
Business producing activities
Business supporting activities
That gives you a great idea about your actual, practical job description. Is it the one you want? Is it the job description you thought you were following?
A Prototype Job Description for You
I’ve created a prototype job description with hours allocated to various types of activities. 
Click here to get it and compare it with your job description analysis. What do you think of my descriptions? What do you think of my hourly allocations?
After your analysis: What do you want to change to move your office forward? Do you need to move more into leadership, and away from ‘maintenance management’?
Awesome Leadership Strategies…….
Don’t have time to create and implement the ‘get-ahead’ strategies you need to recruit and retain? I’ve created this 12-month subscription series just for you. The first session is ‘live’ Feb. 22 (if you miss it, you can get the recorded webinar, though). And, the first session is FREE. Registration ends Mar. 15 for this series. Only $39.95 per session for 11 sessions. One new leadership strategy every month, ready to implement. Learn more/register at 365 Leadership.
Are you Managing your Time as a Maintenance Manager or Leader?
Posted by: | CommentsHow well are you managing your time? Are you doing the things each day that actually make you a leader? Take the analysis below and see how your time allotment reflects your perceived job description.
We’re trying to tackle the biggest challenges of today:
Lack of agent motivation (well, I just couldn’t resist the picture….) 
Agents have lost hope and become depressed
Agents are increasingly seeking other employment to supplement their income, making it more difficult for managers to coach, train, and just communicate with them!
Challenges Difficult to Address through Traditional ‘Management’
Traditional management hasn’t been working well to address the concerns of today. Maybe we could get away with that in an ‘on fire’ market. But, this market won’t settle for just traditional management.
Maintenance Management
I’ve gone a step further from traditional management’ to term what I see every day as ‘maintenance management’. Here’s what maintenance managers do much more of every day:
Handle crises
Go to or hold meetings
Get educated
Handle paperwork
I could go on and on. If you’re used my start-up plan for new agents, Up and Running in 30 Days, you know I call those kind of activities business support activities. They’re certainly important, but, they won’t move your office into more profitability.
From Maintenance to Leadership
Which activities will move your office toward more production and profits?
Recruiting/selecting
Coaching
Training
Specific leadership actions and strategies
I call that type of activities business producing. Those are the activities that put a manager into leadership.
Are you in ‘Maintenance’ or ‘Leadership’?
Before you answer whether you’re a maintenance manager or a leader, do a little analysis in where you spend your time. That will give you a handle on the job description you’ve created for yourself. It will tell you whether you have created a ‘maintenance management’ job description, or whether you’ve moved into leadership.
Click here to get my time analysis tool.
Do you want to move into leadership with confidence? Want new ideas to implement? Don’t have time to create all the supporting documents, training, and tracking?
365 Leadership is for you. Check it out here. First session ‘live’ Feb. 22. It’s FREE. Subscription registration closes Mar. 15.
Your Clients Are Tattling on Your Agents
Posted by: | CommentsWhat do you think clients think of agents in general–and who are they telling?
A recent California Association of Realtors’ survey of buyers revealed that buyers rated their overall experience at an all time low: 4 out of 100!
What does this mean about the level of customer service clients think they’re getting from agents? If you said, “Not much.” You’re right. And, now, clients have a way to let everyone and their brother know what they think of their agent. Check out
These are agent feedback sites. You’ll see the good, the bad, and the ugly. In fact, you’ll be stunned, I think, at the impact a testimonial has in writing—on the net.
This is a huge trend: Clients providing feedback that can be accessed by everyone. Now, even Realtor Associations, like the Houston Association of Realtors, is regularly surveying members’ buyers and sellers for feedback. Expect this trend to get bigger quickly.
What You Need to Do
First, check those sites (and others as they appear) regularly. There are some stunningly wonderful–and some stunningly awful–reviews on those sites. As the marketers know, a bad review is ‘tattled’ by 9 more people!
Second, collect surveys from each transaction regularly. If they aren’t wonderful, fix it fast. The consumer is increasingly relying on what others say, not on what we say about our service. Be on the cutting edge of the curve, not way behind it.
If you’d like my survey, click here.
Lots of Room For Growth
Recently, I was speaking to a group of ‘old pros’ in the Minneapolis area. I surveyed them and found that only about 20% sent out surveys! But, that’s not much different from the normal agent population. It’s time we got into the 21st century and did some basic marketing, to keep our businesses healthy!
Management: Lessons from my 8th Grade Teacher
Posted by: | CommentsI’ll bet you have at least one teacher who made a huge impression on you (good or bad!). Mine was Louise K. Taylor. She was our small town’s most famous (or infamous depending on your point of view) grade school teacher. She got a hold of us just as hormones were raging—and attempted to tame and prepare us for high school.
Gaining Attention, Respect, and Motivating to Action
Louise K. was known for her statement the first day of school. She would stand up, walk toward this unruly, somewhat disrespectful group of eighth graders and say, “You’re probably wondering what the “K” stands for?” Then, after a pregnant pause, she would scream (and I do mean ‘scream’), “Killer”!
Well, that statement sure tamed us, at least for a short period of time. And, it either scared us into performing at our best, or created a few ‘deer in the headlights’ thirteen-year olds who literally stayed paralyzed the whole year.
Mrs. Taylor’s Management Principles We Need to Apply Today
Mrs. Taylor (Aka “Killer”) actually used two management principles that I believe brokers must implement today to assure their agents will survive and thrive in this challenging time.
1. Mrs. Taylor established expectations. When she yelled that first day of school, she made clear, in her ‘opening statements’, she wouldn’t tolerate our not doing the work or failing. These were her standards. But, not only was she frightening us into submission. She was also doing something extremely important for successful management: Implicit in those standards was her promise: She could teach us to succeed at a high level in high school and college. All we had to do was to do the work.
Mrs. Taylor scared us into action and reinforced those actions with encouragement.
She was proved right again and again. Not only did we thrive in high school and college, the basic English and math skills Mrs. Taylor drilled into us in little ole Lebanon, Oregon, have benefited us through the rest of our lives.
2. Mrs. Taylor had a plan of action to get us past those expectations.
Everything Mrs. Taylor did and taught us was backed up with a specific, proven plan of action. She knew how to structure learning, how to get us to practice perfectly, how to give us feedback, and how to help us set ever higher goals. This couldn’t have happened unless she had
A proven plan that she knew got the outcomes she wanted for us
Her obvious faith in her plan gave us the guts, the determination, the motivation to do the work. We knew that she knew that plan got us results.
Managers: Do you have plans of action (coaching and training tools) that you absolutely know get proven outcomes? Are you communicating that with great confidence to agents? If not, what foundation are you using to help your agents past standards?