Experienced Agents: The Four Steps to Coach Them to Dramatically Increased Productivity

Think what would happen to your bottom line if you were able to increase just 5 of your experienced agents’ transactions from 5 to 10 apiece?

Across the U. S. and Canada, savvy companies are realizing that they have a goldmine—and that goldmine is their under-performing experienced agents. So, these owners are now expecting their managers to coach those agents to increased bottom lines. I call this approach to profitability implementing true “agent development systems”.  I’ll be speaking at the National Association of Realtors’ Convention in San Francisco Oct. 30 on this subject.  In this article, I’ll outline the four steps to coaching experienced agents successfully.

A Systematic Approach to Coaching Experienced Agents Yields Profits

As managers, we quickly find out that people don’t respond just because we told them they needed to be more productive—or they told us they wanted to be more productive. A successful coaching relationship depends both upon an established ongoing relationship, the coach’s skill, and the agent’s desire to take action to achieve the next level of success.

Here are the four steps to take to leverage your productivity and profits you deserve from your experienced agents.

Step One: Determine who is coach able.

You and I know that a successful real estate office is built one agent at a time. Set up a meeting with each agent you think is coach able (no more than 3-5 to start). Because you want to ‘stack the deck’, and create a recruiting magnet, pick really good candidates! Have prepared a list of questions, arranged with a place to write his/her answers for each question. Schedule at least 45 minutes with each agent.

Step Two: Evaluate Your Chances of Success through Coaching this Agent

After asking the questions I designed above, take the time to evaluate whether or not you think this agent has the skills and motivation to move his/her career to a higher level.

Step Three:  Get Agreement to the Game Plan and Set Up A Schedule

This is the point at which the agent may say, “I just want to do better on my own. I don’t need any coaching. I just want to be able to ask you questions whenever I want to, and I want you available.” If this is an agent that is not meeting your minimum production standards, I suggest you give them a choice:

          Either

·         attain specific monetary results (a listing sold or a sale) within a certain time period, or you will terminate that person (and you must be explicit when you say this)

or

·         implement a mutually-agreed upon game plan and meet with you on a pre-determined schedule with pre-determined activity standards to be attained and goals to work toward

The game plan: You need to have one ready.

Get Agreement to do the plan. This is a big part of the ‘contract’—agreement on mutual expectations (activities standards) and goals, scheduling, and consequences.

Step Four: Be Ready to Stop Your Coaching if They Aren’t Responding

The biggest mistake managers make in coaching experienced agents is to continue the coaching relationship when the agent isn’t doing the work. Don’t get caught in that trap.

Here are the reasons to terminate the coaching relationship:

1.      Not doing the activity work

2.      Not meeting at the scheduled time

By terminating the coaching relationships that have no pay-offs, you’re freeing yourself to coach those who do want your time and talent—and you’ve pre-determined that these people will be successful. You’ve created the best recruiting tool there is to recruit experienced agents—concrete success from your agents with your personal and professional help.