Coaching Your Team to Results
I recently interviewed Anna-Marie Ellison, Managing Partner of ERA King Real Estate who has grown her agents’ business on average 22% year-over-year using a few strategic processes and a software system that kept her fully integrated with her team.
In 2019, Anna-Marie had 32 of her agents sign up for one-on-one monthly business coaching sessions, to help them develop their business goals. On average these agents have seen 22% growth in their take-home earnings! How did this get accomplished?
There were two key components to their success: consistency and accountability. Both are hard to achieve without having a well-executed plan coupled with the proper tools to track and measure success.
The Well-Executed Plan
For Anna-Marie, her time and energy is used very intentionally and it does not change when it comes to her coaching sessions with the agents. Anna-Marie had a structured plan to keep her commitment to her agents and their coaching. They consistently meet once a month for 45 mins and keep that meeting no matter what. If they can’t be in-person they meet virtually.
Sticking with the plan helps Anna-Marie’s agents know she’s just as committed as they are to their business plan and just as invested in seeing them succeed. During their sessions, they discuss the key indicators of success and answer these three questions:
How many listings did you get this month?
How many buyers did you get this month?
How many offers did you write or receive related to those leads?
After those are answered, there was one more item - the “Brain Dump”. This is where Anna-Marie will work with the agent to record and pull out the names of other potential business leads, thinking through the process of prospecting. 3 questions and the brain dump is all that’s expected in the meeting, and that normally only takes 20 minutes, but the meeting doesn’t end there. Anna-Marie has specifically added time for the agent to freely talk about anything real estate or non-real estate related.
Anna-Marie, although a superstar in her role, isn’t superhuman and can remember facts from month-to-month. So how does she keep track of all this information? Well, that’s where the right system comes into play.
The Right System
In Anna-Marie’s case, her brokerage’s main goal is to holistically support their agents. They see them as human beings and not just numbers. So they’ve adopted the system, 3 Data Pulse, to help them stay connected and informed, not just for agent productivity but also for recruiting and retention.
“3 Data Pulse has been a backbone for several of our offices for almost 2 years now. Leadership loves that you can see the notes and what was discussed in other meetings. It’s allowed me to make sure we are giving consistent information to our agents when they come in and ask questions, as well as automatically follow up with agents in the time between our meetings.” - Anna-Marie Ellison
After each interaction with an agent, the manager, staff member, or key leadership will enter the details of the discussion into the system. Every time there is a company meeting, training, or a fun gathering, participation is entered into the 3 Data Pulse system. “It creates consistency in the information so that the data is easy to digest and we can get a big picture idea of what’s really going on with our entire agent population,”says Anna-Marie.
“Tracking is the most important aspect that 3 Data Pulse gives us,” Anna-Marie says. “You can’t measure what you don’t track and we can now be aware of how many times we are interacting with everyone.” How often have you thought that you just spoke to someone a week ago and really it’s been months? 3 Data Pulse enables leadership to follow up with those who may be liable to fall through the cracks.
The key information that’s collected in the 3 Data Pulse system has helped Anna-Marie and ERA King Real Estate know who their ideal agent persona looks like to recruit agents who will be a great fit for the team. “We don’t need a bunch of agents to work with us, just the right ones, and this system helps us do that.”
When asked what her favorite “Ah-Ha moment” was in using the software to help their agents’ growth, Anna-Marie mentioned, “Sometimes people just need to hear that we are happy to have you with us and we care about you. These conversations are so important and this system helps us to not only look at their production and KPIs but to also know when someone reached out and said hi.”
Sometimes as leaders there can be a tendency for us to look at our team members as just top producers or another item on the spreadsheet because there just simply isn’t enough of us to go around. However, we are in the relationship business when it comes to leading a quality team, therefore, making it even more important that we see our team members as human beings. Using a well-executed plan along with a system specifically made to keep you connected and informed, like 3 Data Pulse, will help you and your team grow.
