These are the innovative times for Brokerage Management. Driven by the demands of a new consumer and the challenges of a struggling business model the Brokerage community is responding with an impressive array of or new management procedures, processes and practices. While some of these advancements are addressing age-old dilemmas, others reflect new expectations and performance criterion.
For the true management devotee the most promising of these developments are occurring in the area of Agent Panel Management (APM). Driven by annual desk costs that now reach or exceed thirty thousand dollars in many parts of the country and faced with the environmental realities of non-productive or marginal Agents, leading Brokerages are taking a very disciplined approach to what has traditionally been seen as a Management Immunity zone. This article will examine several aspects of this new approach to the challenges of managing a Real Estate sales force.
This story starts as the very beginning of the Agent experience. Much attention has been given to the shortcomings of the traditional recruiting process. While industry insiders still laugh about the Mirror Test or managers who, at the last minute pulled candidates off buses in order to meet quarterly recruiting quotes tied to compensation, the fact remains that regardless of the standards used, the retention and success rate has been unnecessarily low and the loss rate financially too high.
Today more and more Brokerage executives are mandating personality testing. While it is true that the sales award winners circle is filled with agents of every personality the research clearly demonstrates that year after year certain personality types excel while others consistently fail. Todays Brokerage can no longer afford to avoid the sure thing and play the long shot.
For some firms this new approach has required a change in the way they envision their sales force. The traditional view saw a room full of individuals despite the fact that they all derived their support from a common budgetary line item (Office Costs). The contemporary executive is more likely to view the sales force as a team or a production unit that must generate an acceptable return on the firms budgetary investment. Like the owner of a professional sports team these Brokers acknowledge personal performance but nurture and reward overall team performance and seek to capture the synergies of success. A recent industry survey clearly demonstrated the economic benefits of this approach by comparing the performance of mega offices managed with the new approach (100 Agents or more) with smaller units. These Brokerage executives seek to build a high performance sales team by raising the median bar and polishing individual achievement.
Agent monitoring and benchmarking are rapidly becoming the subject of Tuesday morning sales meetings. Like golf coaches who film and review each swing, Managers are discovering that the events of failure are quite predictable and almost universally curable; if they know about them. The benefits of having the entire team review these films are also becoming more obvious.
Technology and the ability to capture daily activities in a cost effective manner are assisting with this new approach. In fact, technology has become the third member of the Management Team along with the Office Manager and the Field Trainer. Programs now include performance-monitoring features as well as default mechanisms that alert management when the team or an individual Agent is falling below agreed upon standards. The net Agent loss/gain report is becoming a critical Management tool. An Agent loss, now carries a financial reality previously carried under the to be expected category. Managers who enjoy the rewards of a positive performance are also increasingly feeling the effects of a bad recruiting decision.
Training and professional development are feeling the effects of this new way of thinking as well. Traditionally, training professionals conducted classes for the masses in an effort to ensure that each Agent had at least the basic skills and knowledge necessary to do the job. Now faced with the reality that classroom education has a very low level of impact, Brokerages are deploying personal coaches or Field Trainers. These trainers, are often successful Agents enlisted to improve team performance, and work with Agents to improve both their overall performance and their specific shortcomings.
The term Standards of Practice (aka mandatory) is also becoming a more common technique. Compared to the traditional Brokers abject terror of Breakage, todays successful Broker increasingly understands that weeding out the unproductive and under performing members of the sales team has a positive effect on not only the bottom line but also, more importantly, on the attitude and production profile of the whole team. Leading firms are now mandating a wide range of behaviors previously left to the Agents discretion. Personal technology, standards of practice, production, training, space sharing, monitoring and personal coaching to just name a few. Relating again to the highly paid athlete, the new attitude seems to be that if a premium is to be paid then the certainty of success must be supported at all levels.
This approach is also being extended to Office or Sales Management. Here again, the personality profile is proving to be very helpful. While the traditional model allowed for one Management style to fit all of the Agents in the unit, the contemporary approach identifies specific management tactics to be used for each personality type. This approach is consistent across not only management and productive requirements, but also with recognition and compensation programs. The Manager and the Field Trainer work together to enhance the Agents emotional well being and task performance and, at the same time, are given the responsibility and authority for determining when in the event that the firms best efforts have failed (with the assistance of the computer) to create a high performance Agent. This triple entry management approach ensures that the hard decisions are made.
Finally, this new system is integrated into the firms marketing program. In response to the consumers demands for a more accountable, responsible and predictable transaction, these firms are in a positive to be able to tout their team performance approach as a clear value indicator. This system will also protect the Agent against the ravages of Internet based Agent monitoring and reporting systems. Value for the consumer, value for the firm and value for the successful Agent, sounds like a win, win, win, situation.
