It’s been 9 months since I successfully made the transition from solo agent to real estate team leader. Previously, I was a 7 million producer and now my business has drastically changed since my first hire. My team and I are on pace to sell around 20 million in volume, which will triple my transaction count — and this is just the beginning. Most agents will tell themselves that they are not ready to build a team, when in fact, they are. Once you have a working knowledge of the following concepts, you’ll be ready to start building your own team:
1. Leverage the 80/20 Principle
2. Set Great Standards For Your Business
3. Envision a Strong Organization and Systemize Your Business
1. 80/20 Principle
Simply stated, the 80/20 Principle is the concept that 80 percent of business results come from only 20 percent of our efforts.
When you walk into a doctor’s office, you typically don’t see a one man show — your doctor acting as the receptionist, nurse, and the doctor — do you? Instead, each role is held by a respective ‘specialist’ who has been specifically trained for their role and each role has their set wage.
This same concept can be applied to real estate and should be common place. In building a team, real estate agents should use this framework to assign specialties to their team members in order to maximize workflow. As Gary Keller, co-founder of Keller Williams Realty, says, “I must incrementally remove myself from every aspect of the transaction based on the equivalent hourly rate.”
2. Set Great Standards
Imagine that you are walking into a department store like Nordstrom. What do you think of first? The first thing that comes to my mind is their reputation for great customer service! Customer service is a core brand principle that all Nordstrom employees embody in all of their actions without prompting from management.
John Nordstrom and other great, large organization leaders have taught us that if you can instill great standards in the people you hire, you should be able to scale your business. You should also be able to provide the same, if not better, service where ever you take your business. As Gary Keller says, “If you plan to be successful in real estate, really successful, you’ll have to embrace standards. Standards are about defining levels of performance and then holding yourself and others accountable to meeting or exceeding those levels. When I am doing all I can do and cannot do any more, I know I am missing a key relationship.”
3. Envision a Strong Organization and Systemize Your Business
It is up to the leaders in every organization to have a mission, vision and powerful systems to attract the right people to their business.
“You must have a vision and build a talent pool to deliver it” — Gary Keller
Talented people want to know why they are with you, where they are going and how they are going to get there.
I used Chime CRM to launch my business and continue to use this platform to grow my team. Chime is an all-inclusive platform that streamlines various marketing and follow up campaigns so our team can focus on being top-of-mind for our prospects.
As stated by Al Ries and Jack Trout in their book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, “The human mind is an inadequate container.” The basic idea they share is that under the constant bombardment of advertising and marketing, the human mind becomes saturated by brands and can only hold a finite number of organizations at any one time. Using a system like Chime allows my agents to focus on creating personal relationships with our prospects instead of spending valuable time on administrative tasks.
Growing your solo real estate business into a fully-fledged team can seem like a daunting task initially, but my success is living proof that the potential business growth opportunities are well worth the effort.
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Wilson Leung started his career in real estate at the age of 16 when he was given the opportunity to manage a duplex in San Francisco. Charged with the daily operations of the property, his tasks included marketing rental units, screening tenants, coordinating maintenance and repairs, maintaining budget and records, researching applicable law, and handling tenant issues to ensure all parties were happy. Over time, Wilson managed, and eventually supervised the sale of, additional residential, mixed-use, and commercial units. After experiencing success in property management and sales early in his career, he was determined to identify and assist more people with real estate needs and he obtained his real estate broker’s license at the age of 23. Wilson’s extensive property management backgrounds affords his clients with local expertise on to the constantly-changing real estate market, superior and heightened awareness as a fiduciary, and valuable industry relations that are leveraged for his clients.