What Makes Teams Effective and Thrive
Whether you’re growing your team at a steady pace, or experiencing the struggles and setbacks that most teams have—maybe it feels like you take 10 steps forward and 20 back—adopt these seven essential behaviors that high-performing teams live by. These can help propel your momentum and grow your team, as well as your team’s production on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
1. Operate Like a Company
The team leader is the CEO, directly responsible for running the team like a company, complete with a P&L statement, a business plan and goals and objectives designed so that it operates like a well-oiled machine. Lead-generation systems and their ROI help drive the team, but so does a leader that is is innovative, charismatic, driven and results-oriented.
2. Culture Is Priority
Culture can make or break a team’s success. High-performing mega teams are successful because they have a culture, starting with the team leader, where each member of the team has 100-percent bought into working together for mutual success. The philosophy starts and ends with the team leader, and is carried out through staff and other agents on the team. Good culture breeds a sense of teamwork, dedication, commitment and forward-thinking vision for all to achieve their goals.
3. Clearly-Communicated Goals and Direction
Everyone on your team should know their individual numbers and their goals each week, as well as the overall team’s goals. The team leader is directly responsible for leading and directing the efforts of the team. Weekly meetings can help create the “flywheel” of activities that fuel high performance every week. Set the “lead goals” and drive action for your entire team by looking at what your team members are going to do, versus “Let’s see what the results are after the fact.” Looking backwards at results is not a proactive method of driving revenue; it’s a reactionary one. By driving lead goals, you’ll create the momentum that drives everyone’s focus and behavior towards the activities they need to do every day to hit and/or exceed their weekly and monthly goals. Sharing everyone’s daily and weekly successes increases the momentum. Create a private Facebook group where your team can post their activities (listing appointments, showings, offers written, newly converted buyers and listings/sales activity). This will create powerful, contagious success…you’ll see.
4. Outstanding Support Staff
The success of a team is determined by the back-end support staff, who handle all the daily tasks and details, helping to leverage the sales team’s time, resources and effectiveness. Hiring the right staff and delegating allows the team leader to lead and the staff to support everyone’s functions at high levels, providing more sales hours for the sales team to maximize more opportunities.
5. Consistent Team Branding
Top teams have incredibly consistent marketing and branding. All team members use the same team email address, the team logo and all team tools and marketing. When done correctly, this creates co-branding with your brokerage that gains instant recognition by the public. The team also has a comprehensive social media digital marketing plan, and all marketing, both print and digital, is consistent and branded for all team members, including video. This has got to be top priority, because it will make your team the market leader.
6. Competitive Compensation
Team leaders need to offer an attractive, competitive compensation package to their agents and staff. Providing leads to agents is one benefit offered by teams to buyer’s agents and listing specialists.
7. True Scalability
When a team leader can reproduce their systems and service offerings over and over again, they are able to scale their business. By having systems in place for everything—including a homebuyers’ program, a marketing your home system, a sale and closing program and follow-up with leads and past clients and sphere—team members can operate more efficiently and with more time spent with new customers. Scaling your business means every client is given the same five-star service commitment. Systems allow team members to focus more time on sales and customer service.
If you’re struggling with accelerating your team’s effectiveness, look at your systems, your staff and your leadership skills. Do you delegate, communicate and lead your team? Do you have systems for lead generation and customer follow-up through an effective CRM? Do you conduct a weekly team meeting that brings organization and synergy to your team, creating culture, setting goals and driving business? Start by making a plan to implement these seven essential behaviors into your team.
For a free copy of my exclusive “Strategy Guide for Growing Your Real Estate Team” and a copy of the webinar “A Strategy to Build a $10 Million Pipeline of Leads,” please click here.
Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour and the Official Real Estate Coach for McKissock Learning and Real Estate Express. She is also an RISMedia 2020 Real Estate Newsmaker as an industry Influencer. Sign up for a free 30-minute coaching strategy session or visit www.sherrijohnson.com for more information.
