I've been doing quite a bit of thinking recently about what agents expect from Sales Managers, and how that matches up with the business needs of the brokerage as a whole.

It's a fairly established fact in most of the "major" brokerages (a regional, or at least multi-office firm) that the primary job description of a manager is to grow the office.  However, many times that gets translated to pack the bodies in until we need a larger space.  Is this the best use of resources?

I can tell you, having worked on the training side of things that many managers feel they would love to help make their existing team of agents more successful.  The biggest problem, much of the time, is that those very agents are not open to adjusting their mindset or adapting to new models.  Now, I know the Active Rain crowd is one in which all users are taking incredible leaps of faith into new technology and expanding their knowledge sphere.  But are we the 20 in the 80:20 rule?  Why can't we make that 50:50?

What I guess it comes back to is, do the consumers care whatsoever about the skill of their agent?  Does it matter, or is the most popular or highest name recognition agent always going to win the day?  If so, then I guess a manager is best left packing the bodies into the office, and leaving each and every agent to go it alone.  Not so sure I love that idea...