It takes a great team to effectively grow your business. Whether you have already built your team or are still working alone, growth is necessary to your success. And putting on an assistant is your first step to growing your team.
An assistant allows you to focus your energy and expertise on the most important aspects of your business, mainly prospecting. Your assistant can handle all the office housekeeping tasks, data entry, making reports, looking up contact information, etc. while you make phone calls, field appointments and build relationships with customers.
As you prepare to build a solid team for your business, ask yourself these simple questions so that you know what you want to accomplish:
• What does success look like for us?
• How will we know when we’ve achieved it?
• How am I measured?
Make sure you are clear on these core business points, because you have to communicate them to your team members. One proven way to do this is for you to follow the Big Three concept.
Your Big Three states that every day:
1. You are responsible for listings, sales, and income production
2. You are always prospecting to generate listing leads
3. You are providing direction to your team
You will also have a Big Three for your assistant to focus on daily:
1. Campaign management: Organizing photography, copywriting, advertising, proofing brochures and text ads—all of those details beginning at the point the property is listed.
2. Database management: Entering and categorizing new contacts with all their details into the database.
3. Marketing automation: Setting up marketing campaigns for the proper categories and contacts inside your database.
Now, there is no reason a good assistant can’t do some prospecting along the lines of overflow open for inspection call-backs, 10-day call-backs, just sold call-backs, and following up on past inquiries from your major real estate online portal. However, remember that prospecting is the single most important task you do inside your business, and it is primarily your job because it requires your expertise, experience and connections. Prospecting is all about building relationships and those vital relationships need to be personal between you and your clients. Remember your assistant is there to allow you to do your job—not to do your job for you.
Once you have an assistant in place and handling all those maintenance tasks you can start building and growing your sales team. To do this you must be actively checking in with them daily.
A morning huddle with your team will keep everybody focused, on track and informed. They need to know what your expectations and focus is for each day. One of the most important things you will teach your team is how to use their time–and yours. Give them a structure, and tell them what you will be doing and what they are expected to accomplish. Other ways to check pulse with your team include quick surveys and recognition awards.
You teach your assistant to do the tasks you need done by having clear simple guidelines and streamlining the way your organization works. You build your team on your core business values and reinforce these values consistently to your team so that they always know what to do and why. It all begins with you knowing what you want to accomplish and communicating your expectations clearly so your team can help you achieve success.
I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s Coaching Tip, and look forward to seeing you here again next week.