Failing our way to Success!

Steph...this is great.  I know that accountability is huge.  We're huge, huge, huge into coaching.  Life planning is huge, and with it come victories personally, familial, professionally, in health, and financially.  Its needed all the way across the board.  Need people who want to grow and be coached.  This is realy a great post Steph.

Thanks for this topic, I am very interested in hearing the responses since I am thinking of expanding my "team" from just assistant and buyer's agent to more...

Anxious to hear all the responses.  I'm an all to myself, but you never know what the future will hold!

I have no idea how to help you, but this is well thought out. Thinking it out isn't something most people do in my opinion.

Like the others, I am curious to see the responses. Here is my 2 cents:

We do rentals, so it's a little different. But, I think the concept would work.

My leasing agent (the person who shows the rentals and collects applications) is paid a salary. Then we have a goal of number of properties to rent. This month it is 15. A bonus kicks in at the tenth signed lease, and the goes up until 15. After 15, it "rolls over" to the next month. We set two months at a time. I time the pushes to coincide with the most active market times. I.E., we don't do this in Dec. I plan for Dec. instead of try to get everyone to produce in Dec., and set the goal high in June, that gets us the biggest "ROI" if you will.

I would recommend reading the following book. I found it to be very resourceful.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/69451/Recommended-Reading-For-Owners

HI Stephanie

Our whole team is new, but based on the Millionaire Real Estate Agent book mentioned above.  We do have a scoreboard that tracks listings and sold and we use Symplifi software from Topaz software.  We are all licensees so everyone has "a piece of the pie" which is much more motivating than straight salary.  The key is to play to each team member's strengths and if you have someone not working and just can't find a new position for them, then to help them move on to a place they might work out better at.  Good luck! 

I owned my own company for years and trained people in all levels of the company.  I have taken the team building videos, seminars and classes specific to the team building task.  This is in a constant state of adjustment.  The key is create a list of rules and guidelines that will enhance your business.  Do job descriptions for each area, automate as much as possible.  I do use contracts and will adjust pay according to performance...then bonus with team results.  It takes some efforts up-front but the rewards are worth the effort.  When people leave you also re-evaluate like you have done and make the changes you have been meaning to do.  Good Luck. nice post.

Steph, great to see you have the opportunity in front of you for improvement. If you've measured what's been working and not working of the past 3 years, you probably already know what changes you need to make. My biggest piece of advice is make sure every expectation is clearly spelled out. Every "worker" has to know what's expected in order to achieve. Setting up incentives is a great way to get them to over-achieve and BUILD your business. However, that only works on sales-minded types, so carefully choose your team members so that you have folks that are motivated to make more. Good luck!

Steph, after reading your response above, I also wanted to mention that, although it's tough to get everyone together, you're going to have to "require" it of them. If they're part of the team, they must be expected to treat it as a job and make it top priority. Many people have the tendency to be "too nice" and let things like this slide, but it's imperative that everyone be involved in the strategizing of your business.