We (my wife and business partner, Fran) were fortunate to spend two days last month facilitating a training event for a group of around 20 mostly top 10% real estate agents. In fact (even including four people in attendance with less than 4 months real estate experience, and one non-selling principal) the average person in the room would still have been in the top 10% of real estate agents in NSW/ACT.

Exceptional, Top 10% Agents:

Even though this was a super successful real estate sales group who far exceed the industry “norms”, both in terms of customer service and results achieved (including lifestyle results), they were still amazed by the impact of a few key points in our discussions. Today I will focus on two of these points:

1. Advocates:

The impact of having even just a small number of advocates in the community can massively build both your success, and your enjoyment, in real estate.

Many of the real estate leaders in our group were well aware of the great asset some advocates were to their lives and business success. They also put a fair but of effort into recognising the efforts of these people. However, everyone agreed it would be beneficial to allocate more of their time into both recognising and growing these advocates. The salespeople who achieved exceptional results in this area actually allocated both time to speak to these people, as well as to meet, or do things with them personally. This might be coffee, golf, or a box seat at an event.

If you are unclear on what an advocate is my definition is:

“These are people who will go out of their way to give you business. They won’t just mention your name to someone who might be needing an agent, they will tell them why you are the best, email or text them your details, and maybe even call you to give you the person’s contact information. Again, if they do all this, and you don’t win the business, the people who did all this for you they are still advocates.”

2. Consitency:

That the difference between an average agent, and a top 10% agent, was rarely to do with ability, knowledge, or skills. So even though most agents in attendance were top 10% agents they had not really considered this. When I asked them though; “What makes you a top 10% agent?” the key word that come from them was very much in line with my experience in both owning an agency and working with many high performing agents. The answers consistently had one key word and that was it, consistency! They either said something like “I just did what I knew I should do consistently” and I became a top 10% agent, or (even higher impact for me) “When I started doing what I already knew I should consistently, my results grew expedientialy.

The difference when most salespeople became more consistent was not a lightbulb, it was simply they started to plan better. This didn’t mean the suddenly started doing everthing they planned, however they definetely did more.

While we covered significantly more over the two days, and in particular ways to both work more with advocates and to be more consistent, these two points I believe were the highlights.

If you, and your team, wish to become a top 10% real estate agents than I would highly recommend you allocate some personal development time. You should consider both how you can build, and recognise, your advocate network, as well as setting up your system or support processes to ensure you do what you know you should more consistently.

If you wish to discuss any further matters relating to becoming a real estate leader please contact me on michael@bwmiles.com.au