While this blog is written as real estate sales specific, it is about good leadership and management generally. To quote Dwight Eisenhower: “Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he (they) wants to do it”

So, in terms of salespeople how to you get them to do something you want done, because they decide they want to do it?

There are three critical steps to making this happen.

1. Finding out what the team member is excited by
2. Working out how working to your goals (as their principal or manager) can help them achieve their goals
3. Putting a process into place and monitoring the progress of the strategy decided on

Nearly all agency principals are quite good at part 2, Working out how the goals can be aligned. Some managers and leaders though find it hard (although it is not difficult) to have the conversations with their real estate sales team members about what it is they are excited about achieving. Some managers and leaders find it hard to monitor with the real estate sales team member their performance to achieve their goal, (however again it is not difficult). The leaders and managers who run top offices and teams though learn to combine all three.

I am in the fortunate position of working with many top 10% and better agents and agencies (in fact currently over half of our clients are now the top agencies in their area). In EVERY one of these number one real estate agencies in their area, there is now a manager or leader that focuses on knowing what the real estate sales team members want to achieve and the plans to make this happen. Some leaders and mangers do this because they naturally are curious to know what their team wish to achieve, and it is part of their nature to find this out. Others are great at having the process to monitor a plan, but not so good at finding out what their team member is excited by. The difficulty is that most managers and leaders who are great in one of these areas naturally are unlikely to be great in the other area as this is naturally two different personality styles.

To develop from good to great sales managers the most successful leaders and managers have learnt to implement processes to back up their weaker areas. Some examples of this might be a goal setting template, a “Short Form Business Plan” template for the sales team member. Some Leaders and managers do this themselves. Others have split the responsibility with another team member. In this case the principal may have the discussions with the team member about their goals, but delegate to another manager to review the progress with the team member and provide the principal with a summary to discuss with the sales team member to either encourage them more, congratulate them, remind the real estate sales team member about their goals, or work to develop greater skills in a particular area.

At Business with MILES we have templates available to our clients which have assisted many of them bring these strategies together effectively for them and with their teams. Many of our clients, and ourselves, believe this is one of the changes that have made a significant difference to not only the teams financial results and consistency, but also to the improvement in the culture in their offices where everyone works more effectively together.