Acknowledging noteworthy events will lead to increased agent loyalty
Doesn’t recognition feel good sometimes? For instance, if you paint your home and your neighbor goes out of their way to say, “Your home looks great,” doesn’t it lift you up? I’ll bet it does. And not only do you feel good about yourself, but you also appreciate the person who complimented you for noticing what you did and saying something positive about it.
As a real estate broker or manager, you should make an effort to regularly give that same feeling to your agents. They key word here is “regularly.” Give your agents acknowledgments and compliments on a daily basis, instead of reserving them only for weekly, quarterly or annual meetings or events, especially for particularly notable accomplishments.
Here are a few simple tips for incorporating this into your daily routine.
Set Up Triggers: Choose some events that, when they happen, you definitely want to give a personal recognition to your agent. A few suggestions include:
– Individual sales over X dollars (e.g., $1,000,000-plus)
– Reaching X number of sales
– Anniversaries with your company (1 year, 10 years, etc.)
Even if these are the only items that you choose to acknowledge on a regular basis, your agents will feel a greater connection with you than if they were to simply pass unnoticed.
Notice Events Daily: You need a system in place that will easily and reliably bring specific events to your attention. You can set reminders in your calendar for recurring events (e.g., birthdays and work anniversaries), but the most impactful items, such as large sales or hitting a certain volume for the year, may happen at any time. To stay on top of these, you need to either review activity for the triggers on a daily basis or, better yet, have a staff member do that for you. If using staff, simply have them provide you a brief list of trigger activity each morning, along with who did it and their contact information.
Make It Quick: For the vast majority of these acknowledgments, a simple call will do the trick. You can also say something face-to-face if they are in your office or send a text or a note. Anything will do, as long as you convey your personal notice (hint: avoid using auto-signatures or canned messages). While there will be some events—such as a 50-year anniversary—that will demand a higher level of recognition, in most cases, a simple acknowledgement will brighten their day and let them know that you saw what they achieved.
Keep It Manageable: You need to keep your daily contacts to a reasonable number—probably no more than five per day. If it is consistently more than that, adjust your triggers to keep it manageable. This is a particular concern for brokers and executives with multiple offices. In those cases, you will usually need to screen for truly remarkable accomplishments while letting direct managers recognize lesser, but still important, accomplishments by employing this system themselves.
This type of ad hoc recognition serves multiple purposes. First, it fosters a positive culture of achievement and builds agent loyalty through your active engagement in their success. It also insures against outside recruiting efforts. There are endless stories of agents feeling slighted by lack of managerial recognition, and you don’t want congratulatory calls coming from your competitors when your agent would rather have them coming from you.
This leads to how you can also use this system in your recruiting efforts, but that is a topic for another day!
For a FREE copy of Sherri’s “Sales Meeting Agenda Checklist” to increase agent attendance and engagement, positively celebrate performance, and to drive more sales, 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.
