As a manager you get to choose the direction your office is to go. The choices you make when planning will tell you the results that you will have. When you look at just three critical areas of recruiting, training, and office environment you can predict your office's future.
Recruiting
The people that you target for your office tell you what revenue you will be bringing in during the year. For example, target agents who work in an area that your office is not currently covering. This will expand your reach in the community. It will also tell you whether this area has a high turnover rate or not; if it does traditionally, you can count on that volume coming to your office if you are successful in securing agents who are currently working the area you targeted.
Perhaps you want to raise the average sales price in your office. Then you need to target agents who are selling higher priced properties. When you concentrate on bringing in only agents that work the price range you want to attract, you can count on your average sales price increasing.
Perhaps you want to concentrate on brand new agents. This being the case, when you start them on their prospecting programs, make sure you help them pick areas that will have a long lasting effect for the agents-an area with a good average sales price. It's easy to point new agents in the right direction-the direction you want for your office. You might have some focusing on farming, others on fsbo's, others on cold calling, and others on expireds. Try to have all your new agents working different segments of the market and your office will be a winner. New agents bring more to the bottom line because of their commission split, but they also cost more in time and money in the beginning of their career. Make sure they get started right and you can count on the sales volume coming in within six months.
Training
If you want to grow your sales volume and your office is full, what are you going to do? First of all you look at your bottom quartile and get them on a regimented program whereby they have to perform or they are adjusted out of your office. This program can be a mentor program with another agent, or one-on-one program with you personally. If they are not bringing sales to your office, they need help. You need to plan what you are going to do with these particular agents and give them 3 months to perform. If you see improvement, your sales will go up. If not, you have room to add agents to the office.
Another emphasis to grow your sales volume with existing agents is to provide them with a series of prospecting classes. All agents forget that the basics got them where they are today. You have to keep reminding them that prospecting works, but only if you do it. Plan five-minute training segments during your sales meetings, and weekly or monthly classes either with speakers or with successful agents from other areas on various ways to prospect. You might even have a prospecting contest to make it interesting.
Office Environment
You decide what the culture of your office is. The "feeling" in an office definitely comes from the top down. There is no right or wrong, but there are styles. You can have an office of all individuals or you can have an office with team spirit. The choice is up to you. Whichever you choose will decide the future as the agents who will come to work for you will be whichever style of office you run.
Looking at these three areas when you are planning your year is important. It helps clarify what to focus on and how. Your choices in these three areas will decide your future.
