Team leaders and owners of teams face challenges within their sales teams in creating a culture of all top performers. Often a team leader will build the team backwards by adding salespeople first without having support staff and without having systems. This is a difficult way to start, grow or scale your successful sales team. It is so vitally important to have a culture first, then produce results. It is hard to take producing salespeople and try to force culture upon them. Many leaders want the culture but haven’t built it or some don’t know how to start with culture and build the team within.
If you are looking for a way to drive more listings, sales, market share and top-line revenue to everyone on your team, including you, then you need to really stop and take a look at what type of culture you have. Do you have a healthy culture? Is there mutual respect? Do your agents commit and show up every day, to every team meeting or event? Are they all-in? Are they using your marketing and sales tools, or do they complain about having to use them? Are they running their own businesses while on your team or are they in alignment with your team mission and vision?
It’s hard because most of the time when things go sideways regarding your expectations or goals for the team, you have already invested a lot of time and money into them and feel like it will never be simpatico to your vision of what you imagined your team culture would be like. You can make improvements; you can even start over or take your existing team and create the real estate dream team. You have to stay true to your vision and level up your leadership skills fast.
Here are a few proven methods to create a winning and thriving culture from inside your team:
- Set expectations and over-communicate. Everyone must be given the expectations letter and talk so they know exactly what you expect of them. People are not mind readers, so you need to tell them what you want from them. They also like structure and direction. Over communicating with your team means everyone knows what is always going on. No one is caught off guard or missed anything because you intentionally over communicate. It is so powerful. People need to hear things seven times, seven different ways. This concept means you must tell them verbally in person, in writing, with visuals, on email, with another reminder and so on. If you feel like a broken record and are sick of yourself saying it, your agents are just starting to get a grasp on whatever it is you are telling them. It really works and your agents will love you for always keeping them informed, trained, coached and with the knowledge they need.
- Collaborate as a team and share monthly team goals. Creating a winning team means working together as a winning team. Sharing monthly listing and sales goals at your weekly meetings will bring about a commitment from everyone to reach the team’s goals as well as their own. Collaborate and create opportunities for your agents to work together to brainstorm ways to generate listings, ways to generate more listings inventory in specific neighborhoods, or even sharing best practices in a panel discussion or break out session during your sales meetings. These will create true collaboration and amazing results.
- Promote an environment of mutual respect. When you set the tone for your office you are literally the leader and the example. The entire team and culture is a direct reflection of you, the leader. Fostering mutual respect, integrity and professionalism within your team sounds easy, but you must monitor it and address issues swiftly and fully. You can be the leader and create incredible team loyalty and camaraderie. This also leads to a healthy competition in your office.
- Recognize, challenge, motivate and thank your team. One of the best ways to build your winning team is to continually recognize, challenge, motivate and thank your team members daily. Recognition is the greatest feeling in the world and challenging your team members only makes them better. You can challenge them as a team or individually, or both. Positive reinforcement and motivation help drive people to reach for more and work harder to attain their goals. Thanking your sales team members is so important. Gratitude and building genuine relationships with your team members is the key to creating winning, highly performing rockstar agents that want to come to your sales meetings and be a part of your team. Caring and knowing about people’s real lives and interests builds relationships for life. Your agents will want to be at coaching and training sessions. They will see incredible value in your leadership and know they are valued and on the right winning team. It’s a win/win for everyone.
Make sure you are leading your team to greatness. That you deliberately create culture by your keen awareness, your emotional intelligence and your commitment and dedication to growing your team of agents will happen organically. When you have a highly motivated, educated, and focused team of professionals working together your culture will drive your productivity and it’s a beautiful and humbling thing to experience.
Download and review my Agent Podcast, “YouROCK! a Real Estate Sales Podcast with Sherri Johnson” at www.sherrijohnson.com/yourock with over 200 episodes including action packed strategies for helping your team make another $100k in the next few months. Also, download Sherri’s Exclusive GoldMine Pipeline™ Strategy to get your agents closing more leads into listings, sales and ultimately income. This system can double their production, fast! Go to www.goldminepipeline.com for my Free EBook and the Worksheet! These are just a few of Sherri’s proven and exclusive leadership and development strategies that produce amazing results quickly. For more information about Sherri’s exclusive turnkey, team solutions to scale your team, contact Sherri Johnson at www.sherrijohnson.com/onetoone for coaching plans.
