RISMEDIA, February 2, 2009-The real estate industry has been hit hard by the economy-do not give up. Now is the time for companies to work with as much effort on the business as they do at the business.
There are two sides to the real estate industry-its product and its people. For the sake of this article, we will focus on the people. People are one of the two most critical business issues within a real estate company. They touch 100% of your clients and generate 100% of your revenue. Prior to this slump, people could make money in their sleep, and people did not have to be skilled at what they did to make your business money. And so the world turns, and with revolution comes change. Now people have to be skilled to stay in this business.
To experience success, people must master the position of sales. That’s right. It’s a sales world after all. People are responsible for building rapport, managing the sales process, being assertive without overpowering, and having good listening and comprehension skills. The combination of these skills is what it takes to compete for sales transactions.
So what are companies doing to recruit sales people these days? And wouldn’t it be nice if these recruits brought with them very important skills? Many companies are participating in a vicious cycle. They are using the economic downturn to focus on experienced agents alone; missing out on a significant opportunity to build bench strength and welcome in the next generation of workforce. In simple terms – they are missing out on good sales people. And what if every company deployed the same strategy? Wouldn’t this mean the real estate world would never turn, but just rotate?
So this brings me to a validation analysis conducted by AlignMark. The company sets out to truly measure on-the-job success of those experienced agents, comparing them to agents without experience. Now here comes the punch line. Over the last 12 months, studying the results of hundreds of people from across the country, there was no measureable difference in transactions of those brand new agents with strong sales skills and experienced agents. It’s a sales world after all.
AlignMark is a Human Capital consulting company working with companies around the world, specializing in recruiting, selection and agent retention. To learn more about this validation study and how to find the next generation of sales people, contact or visit www.alignmark.com, AlignMark, Inc., Glen Jaffee, gsjaffee@alignmark.com, 407 659-3576.
