I speak with a good many brokers who are evaluating how they will adapt their company to the ever-changing brokerage business. In their plans are a wide-ranging array of ideas for betterment. They often include: merge or acquire others; sell the company; invest in agent tools; shrink or grow the company’s geographic footprint; contract with specific management or agent training vendors; and so on.
While those tactics are not flawed, what’s often amiss is a core analysis of whether the very business model they are running is still viable. Well executed, each of the ideas above can provide lift for the company, but if the tactics are not being applied inside a high-growth organization (HGO) and business model, the tactics will provide a short-lived and anemic improvement in outcomes. Tactical investments in human and operational resources need only be made once you know the efforts will be supported by an operating environment that will leverage the investment and gain lasting results.
Is your company a high-growth organization? Focus on the following questions and concepts:
– Is the business structured to scale up without driving up your operating expenses?
– Does the organization put the right people in the right place to innovate and move the company forward?
– Does the leadership serve the organization and its partners, or is it the other way around?
Align Your Mission and Vision to Evoke Passion for Achievement
The organizations that achieve exceptionally high growth have an invigorating and energizing story that makes stakeholders want to get out of bed in the morning and make it happen. United Real Estate’s mission is to change the financial trajectory of our agents’ and brokerage owners’ careers and sometimes even their lives. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning. We succeed in achieving our mission frequently.
Leadership and Staff Must Truly See Things Differently
The operational and strategic processes that brought your company to where it is will very likely not provide for future growth. Change in our business is accelerating.
There are indeed many ways to run the railroad, and I’m not suggesting otherwise. I would, however, encourage brokers to dial into what is working for high-growth companies and adopt some of the core principles that are helping brokerages like United Real Estate become the fastest-growing brokerage in America. Moving from No. 139 to No. 8 in transaction volume in a single year in RISMedia’s 2021 Power Broker Report didn’t come by accident, and it certainly didn’t happen due to tactics. Our mission is right; it is nurtured daily by our operating business model and people. It drives us daily, and we believe we’ve only just begun seeing where it will take us.
The characteristics and habits of high-growth organizations make them exceptionally efficient, productive and enduring. Evolve now or risk wasting valuable time and resources.
Rick Haase is president of United Real Estate. For more information, contact Haase at Rick@United-RealEstate.com or 504-251-3757, or visit www.GrowWithUnited.com.
