Building a World Class Real Estate Team

Whether you are a team leader, or team member, working in or on a team is important to compete in the current marketplace, and will become more important every year! What do I mean when I say “team?” Obviously, there is the “casual” team of a partnership, and it is the weakest form of business. It’s especially challenging in real estate.

An effective team is:

• Structured
• Organized
• Not casual in any way

These are people who are game on, serious, investing money, and going to crush it. They’re putting their time, effort, energy, and dollars into success. They are segmenting work flow and hiring people. Here’s something to keep in mind: the best of the best in every industry are the people who are specialists. Not just in real estate, but in everything. General practitioners are not the ones that make all the money, it’s the highly specialized doctors that do. It’s not your regular dentist that makes the money, it’s oral surgeons, orthodontists. Only the highly specialized people in every industry make the BIG money. You need to get that workflow segmented so that every single person on the team can do what needs to get done.

Other people who may be on your team:

• Transaction coordinators
• Listing agents
• Buyers’ agents
• Listing coordinators
• Marketing coordinators
• Inside sales agents
• Bookkeeper/accountant
• Attorney
• Executive assistants
• Virtual assistants
• Runners

Another big thing for real estate agents: don’t hire just one person per role. You need to have multiples. If I have just one, and they’re having a bad week or month, that’s bad for the company. It means your company is then having a bad week or month. NOT GOOD! If I have two or more people in the same role, they’re competing and they’re both working hard. They’re motivating each other and now, they’re each more productive for me and for the team. You’ll also need a bookkeeper or an accountant at some point. For a smaller team, you can use QuickBooks Self-Employed. For a larger team, expand to the full software; it’s well worth it. If you’re a team leader, you’re going to need attorney. They don’t have to be on staff, but they should be available to you on demand.

The most important thing to remember as a team leader?

You work for your team members, not the other way around. By providing tools and resources to them, you are removing any roadblocks that are preventing them from becoming as successful as they could be. Remember, there will be things you need to pay for, sometimes long before you make a profit, and you need to be prepared for that. There will be bad months, and you need to be prepared for that as well. That way, during those bad months, you can still make payroll and your team doesn’t implode. You should be expanding once your team grows to a certain level. You should be expanding into other markets. Grow out from your center of strength. If you grow from your center of strength, you have that support hub everybody needs, and it’s far easier to hire, train, and lead your new agents!

When should you be building your team?

RIGHT NOW. There are teams in every major market in the country. You need to be thinking about what you need to do to stay a step ahead. You need to remember to focus 90% of your day on lead generation, lead follow-up, and lead conversion. Above all, World Class Teams have WORLD CLASS:

• Team Members
• Systems
• Technology
• Leadership
• Culture

If there are no teams available, you can build one from the ground up. This requires a lot of effort, work, money, and perseverance, but it can be rewarding.