By Amy Stoehr
What does a world-class real estate operation look like? Over the years, a consistent model of success has arisen for all teams I’ve coached.
A world-class real estate operation:
1. Rewards its clients with world-class service that they not only count on, but also enthusiastically tell others about.
2. Operates with a net profit. Period.
3. Runs on systems that are constantly being fine-tuned and enhanced.
4. Offers a happy and productive environment that everyone looks forward to participating in daily.
5. Looks, smells, and feels like a world-class operation.
For those of you who’ve read Good to Great by Jim Collins, you’re already familiar with the concept of making sure that first, you have the right people on the bus, and second, you make sure everyone is in the right seat on the bus. Having the right people on your team, in the roles where they excel the most and benefit each other the most, is paramount.
Your goal as a team is to work together to make sure that all actions going forward support your world-class vision. Each member of the team deserves to be happy, productive, and valued. If you’ve never heard of the Canoe Theory by Dave Hibbard, I suggest you pick up a copy. It takes the concept of Jim Collins’ bus and expands on it further, and if you can get your hands on a copy, the audio format is worthwhile for everyone on the team to listen to individually and later discuss as a group.
An important component of world-class operations is clearly-articulated consistency. Examine your standards of operation in the next week. How consistent are you being as a team? Do you have a clearly articulated dress code? Hours of operation? Script for answering the phone? Time-off policy? All of these things communicate to the world what your team is about. I’d be willing to bet that if I asked each of your team members separately their perception of what each of these examples currently are, they would likely generate varying (inconsistent) responses.
People and standards come first. When those are solid, you’ll find it exponentially easier to work together on the five components above.
