Don't Be Limited by Your Greatness

Ever feel like you work too much? Miss important family events? Like you should be home when working, and working when home? Like you’re always playing catch-up and never quite get ahead? Have you ever thought about growing a team in an effort to create more balance in your life, or hired an administrative assistant or buyer’s agent, only to have the effort go down in flames (and get on your last nerve in the process)?

You’re not alone. This story repeats itself with thousands of real estate agents each year. They can’t get off the never-ending real estate treadmill because they think their customers demand to only work with them.

Sorry to deflate the egos of these agents, but there are plenty of other people who deliver service that’s equal to or better than you. Let’s be real. Selling a home isn’t rocket science. You don’t need a master’s degree or special training. It’s actually pretty simple. Coming to grips with this is the first step to creating balance in your life.

It’s not too late to create a new reality, one where you’re able to have a life worth living and a business worth owning. The first step in achieving this reality is to create leverage by hiring both an administrative assistant and buyer’s agent.

Here are my five tips for hiring to fill these positions:

Hire an assistant (client care coordinator). This person should do everything you aren’t absolutely required to do yourself. They should handle nearly all phone calls, listing/marketing/closing activities, in addition to personal things like having your car washed and picking up your dry cleaning.

Don’t give up just because it’s hard. When you hire someone, don’t expect them to know exactly what to do at the outset. You’ll need to spend scheduled time each week to teach them what to do to support you best. Give them the time and the opportunity to succeed.

Create systems for everything. Every activity that occurs three or more times needs to have a written system outlining the process. You’ll need to avoid the temptation to jump in and do it yourself instead of writing the system down, because once it’s written, you might not ever have to do the activity again. Let this be your motivation.

Hire a buyer’s agent. If you truly want to create leverage and a balanced life, you can’t work with buyers anymore because it’s simply too time-consuming. Spend the time to hire someone good, then train them as well as you trained your assistant. If you don’t know what to teach them, begin with what made you successful.

Let them do their own jobs. Don’t jump in and do work for your team members. Instead, let them do things on their own before giving them advice and guidance based on the quality of the completed tasks. Give them the opportunity to learn and improve.

If you’d like a couple tools to help with the list above, email me at Cleve@GoGaddis.com and I’ll send you an outline of the system for hiring an assistant, as well as a tool for teaching a buyer’s agent how to categorize and successfully follow up with leads. These two systems should give you a great head start in systemizing. Just get started…you’ll be glad you did.

Cleve Gaddis is a master coach with Workman Success Systems and team leader with Gaddis Partners, RE/MAX Center in Atlanta. He learned sales the hard way, selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, and now puts those skills to use in helping his team close $60 million annually. He loves to share his systems and strategies to help others succeed. He hosts the Call Cleve Atlanta Real Estate Show heard weekly on NewsTalk 1160 WCFO. Contact him at Cleve@GoGaddis.com. For more information, please visit www.workmansuccesssystems.com.