In my last article, I touched on three of the challenges we had to overcome to achieve our growth goals. Now, let’s dive in and examine some of the things my amazing team at Coldwell Banker Premier was able to accomplish to help us along our path. None of this happened overnight, so don’t beat yourself up and think that this is an impossible feat.
Infrastructure
The initial goal I was given was to essentially double the size of our company. That’s not something you can do without pre-planning. We elected to bootstrap our infrastructure changes until we had opportunities ready to go. The first thing I focused on was agent management and training. I needed to ensure that if I added large amounts of agents to the company, we had the support to deliver what they needed.
Action Item: Take an honest look at your current tools, technology, and how you train agents. Do you have the right combination that works? Can you effectively deliver the information in a way that will be useful? An honest SWOT analysis can do wonders to identify weak points in your value proposition and help create opportunities to make corrections.
Processes
I have always been a process-oriented person. So much time and effort can be saved with the help of a tested and efficient process. The glaring deficiency I saw was in our onboarding for new agents. There were “too many cooks in the kitchen” and people felt as though they were being passed back and forth so much that they didn’t really know who was doing what. Without a rock solid onboarding journey, we would never be able to scale at any level to make a difference.
Action Item: Assess your processes and see if they accomplish their purpose in the best way possible. What are the “pinch points” where balls get dropped or progress stalls? Once you have a list, you can systematically work to make those changes. Get your staff involved early in the exercise and listen to what they have to say. Their feedback will be invaluable.
Team
The people that support your operations can make all the difference in the world, for good or bad. Choosing your team should be done carefully and purposefully. As my CEO says, “Be slow to hire and quick to fire.” Make sure that person is going to accomplish the task you have set out to complete. Trying to fit that square peg into a round hole will only lead to disappointment, discouragement, and leave the agents questioning your ability to deliver on what you promised them when they signed on.
Action Item: Before you embark on a hiring frenzy, look at your current roster of talent and see who can be repurposed into a new role. Is there room for advancement in your company? Perhaps someone has a skill that is being underutilized. It’s much cheaper and easier to promote from within than to train someone new to your culture and process.
In the next article, I will outline the specific actions we took and how I was able to leverage resources like RealTrends, HousingWire, and The Gathering to learn needed skills and network with some of the best people in the industry. That collaboration was instrumental for me, personally, as I navigated this massive undertaking. Having access to people with much more experience than me was an incredible benefit and helped me more than I can say. Stay tuned!
Stephen Meadows is Chief Operating Officer of Coldwell Banker Premier.
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