Congratulations! You’ve started thinking about building your brokerage culture.
But, wait. How do you scale quickly while still running a booming business?
We want to help you effectively build and seamlessly maintain your team to ensure the longevity of your success. We will start by looking at how you need to prepare, who you should hire, how you should hire, and, lastly, but so importantly, building a brokerage culture.
Before we dive into building your brokerage culture, if you haven’t had a chance to see it, we wrote an article on the hiring process. It shows how important it is for you to write down your values, build your foundations and find a team to thrive with. We highly recommend reading it.
How to hire people who will thrive
Hiring is one of the most important and difficult tasks to complete when building your team.
And before we get even further on the art of hiring right, make sure you have an HR plan in place. We go through the importance of a human resource strategy in this article.
Even the pros warn you are going to make an error at one point or another. Either someone won’t get along with another team member, they might not get their work done, slack on the paperwork or eat all the snacks.
The good thing is, you will also learn a lot from the whole process. You will need to make sure your team is solid enough to run efficiently so that you’re not making minimum wage, yourself.
“As a rule of thumb, if you’re running an efficient team, your expenses will run 15%,” says Bernice Ross, CEO, RealEstateCoach.com.
You need to look for your dream team. One that runs smoothly, successfully and with positivity. According to Deloitte’s research, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe corporate culture is important for a business to succeed.
To do this, you need to think about hiring dynamics. You need a team that operates in harmony. You don’t want all the same people, but you do want them to get along. This is a crucial part of building a brokerage culture.
There are a few personality tests that you can offer prospective team members during the hiring process.
Tests such as the Myers-Briggs or DISC personality tests are effective tools to gain insight into someone’s intrinsic self. There are certain personalities that work well in different parts of this industry, according to CleanSlate.
Remember to hire according to your vision, values and goals. Your team must align with what you want to accomplish.
And if personality tests do not interest you, there is always hiring with intuition. For some, intuition is more natural, but most people have it. Sometimes, we second guess our intuition, but as they say, trust your gut.
There are three types of intuition, according to the HeartMath Institute.
Source: https://www.followupboss.com/blog/real-estate-team
Implicit refers to knowledge that you gained in the past from a lesson learned. Energetic sensitivity is a reaction some people get when it detects and responds to environmental signals. Nonlocal intuition is something that you feel and can’t explain, similar to a hunch. These three forms provide an informal insight into the kind of people you interview.
In the hiring process, it’s also important to understand the prospective team member’s ‘why’. Discovering their motivation is important to unravel whether their purpose aligns with yours.
Here comes the hardest part. If you hire someone and you immediately realize it’s not the right fit, you need to let them go and do so quickly.
One or two bad seeds can be toxic for the entire team. You need to think about your business, but you need to think about your team. Building a brokerage culture is almost entirely based on how the team is feeling.
A word of caution: When hiring, don’t rely on just your gut.
Create a checklist for yourself. Always check references, be clear about brokerage culture, define roles and expectations in writing, comply with all HR regulations, keep updated documentation on all staff and, finally, create incentives and rewards to encourage loyalty.
All of these combined will give you the foundation you need for building a brokerage culture that thrives.
Here’s how to keep them (happy)
One of the most valuable key points to take away from this Inman survey is how important company culture is to those who work with you.
Not only does a positive work environment give you that good energy when you walk in, it inspires people to work productively and efficiently. Energy begets energy.
Now that you have hired a solid team, let’s look at ways to keep everyone happy and ready to tackle anything.
As you can see, nearly 75 percent of respondents feel that financial success is very dependent on company culture.
Here are some of the most important components to building a brokerage culture from some of the most credible sources.
Connect and engage with your team. The earlier the better. Being the first one at the office or on a call shows initiative and passion. You can set the tone for the team and let them build off of it.
Try to extend trust and clarity to new team members so they can get to work with as little management as possible. There will always be a learning curve for new team members, but don’t forget you have other team members who can help out. Seeing them interact will give you a good idea of whether or not they will be a good fit, too.
Communicate clearly with everyone on your team. The reason why some might not be motivated is usually a result of a breakdown in communication. Make sure you keep a “door is always open” policy so that confusion and miscommunication can be eliminated.
Support your team. Providing them with the information and tools that they need to succeed to reduce hard feelings and resentment. This also means showing them that you are proud of their accomplishments. Being a leader is about generating positive relationships with those around you by supporting them, not diminishing them. Support losses and cheer gains.
Gratitude is the latest and newest recommendation for building a brokerage culture. Fostering a feeling of appreciation amongst each other will set the tone of the whole office and reframe challenges as opportunities.
You can see why most people stay at a company. These are the top three attributes to focus on. As you can see, most people see their company as positive as well as agent-first and technology-focused. Those rank higher than being laid-back or hierarchical.
Remember, it’s up to you to create the company culture from the beginning. When looking at why people want to leave or switch companies, the first few reasons stem from bad management.
Leadership isn’t for everyone. But if and when you choose to take on the task, do so with dedication and purpose.
The next step?
Empower your team and let them take the lead. That is how you scale success.
The only way you can invest that kind of energy is if you have employee loyalty. Building a positive brokerage culture will not only recruit new talent, it will help keep them.
Unfortunately, problems and challenges will occur along the way, but you have chosen a new path that isn’t linear. The main goal now is to become a leader and you will do that by building a brokerage culture.