Your favorite athletes, as good as they are, all rely on coaching to enhance their performance. A good coach can take someone’s natural strengths and build on them to develop an all-star. They can teach techniques and correct weaknesses to bring an athlete up to the next level.
Same is true for those who work in the trenches of the real estate industry. Some agents thrive at making quick initial responses to leads but are challenged by poor organizational skills. They are not good at long-term lead nurturing and building future relationships that can yield transactions and referrals in the future.
While software can help automate follow-up tasks, other team members have trouble staying motivated during slow periods. A good broker coach can lead a team through uncertainty with positivity and insight, even motivating a team during the COVID-19 pandemic. All of this together will help their agents become “a more complete player” or an agent who is able to hit all their tasks out of the park.
Research from Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85% of your financial success is due to skills
in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead.
The other 15% comes from technical knowledge. – Forbes
Why Broker Coaches Are Needed
Real estate agents sometimes get stuck in a rut, or simply can not grow their business. As seen in a recent Inman article, “I got into a situation where I was just completely in a slump,” … “Nothing I was doing was working and I couldn’t find my way out of it. I had been cruising along and I just hit that wall.” – Rosemary Phinney Buerger, ERA agent working in North Carolina. Buerger started working with her real estate coach, Alyssa Hellman at Compass South Consulting.
Buerger said, “She gave me small projects to do that kind of got me back on track. She pushed me to hit that mark I wanted to hit in sales producing and got me rolling in the right direction. My transaction volume increased by “a million and a half dollars in 6 months.” Marion Proffitt, another California-based agent with Bailey Properties told Inman, after working with a coach “my income went up 40 percent,” she said. “That kind of made me a believer.”
Owning a real estate brokerage and being a broker coach is more than just holding agents accountable for goals and numbers. As a coach, you can do much more than teach your team how to sell real estate. Spending time with each agent individually helps identify setbacks they are experiencing. You can help them see things from an outside point of view they do not see internally. A good coach helps agents structure the process and systems of their business to be more successful. For example, helping your agents understand how their clients think and where they communicate now. One illustration of this is, millennials use online apps more than baby boomers while empty-nesters have different needs than younger, single people.
78% of real estate professionals plan to use a coach in the future, according to an Inman survey
Effective Coaching Of Others Starts Within
Many experienced real estate agents have a process that they follow. That process may have worked well for them in the past. However, that does not mean that a good coach cannot teach them new strategies, technologies and different ways of thinking. This will refine their skills and optimize their business and work-life balance. “When work takes up the vast majority of an agent’s waking hours, their personal relationships suffer, as does their own personal well-being,” says Melanie Hartmann, owner and CEO of Creo Home Solutions.
A good broker coach can even help an agent balance their work with their personal life, so that an agent does not burn out from the daily grind. In essence, coaching leads to higher performance. In our “new normal” virtual, work-from-home environment, it is more important then ever to realize that selling real estate and building relationships is evolving.
Inman recently featured an article by Adam Hergenrother, founder and CEO of Adam Hergenrother Companies. Adam recommends coaches practice what he calls “The Fulfillment Formula”. His formula consists of four key elements:
- Health and wellness: Fitness, nutrition, energy, sleep, breathing exercises and stress management.
- Wealth: Money mindset, personal financials, net-worth creation, debt reduction, investing, cash flow management, charitable giving and business financials.
- Spirituality and growth: Journaling, meditation, visualization, self-awareness, letting go, reading, gratitude and the idea of human being versus human doing.
- Leadership and relationships: Leading yourself first, time management, communication, leading through others, change management, creating deep and meaningful connections, and vision-casting.
Going back to the sports coaching analogy, even hall-of-fame baseball players like Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemons routinely worked with a pitching coach. Those coaches help them morph their game as the game itself changed. Well, let’s be honest, the “new normal” COVID world we all live in, has changed the game. So must real estate agents change their approach in some respects to prospecting, marketing, and communication.
The “New Normal” Presents Unique Challenges
A good broker coach can even help an agent balance their work with their personal life, so that an agent does not burn out from the daily grind. This has never been more evident than in the socially distanced “new normal” the COVID-19 requires. In our virtual, work-from-home environment, it is more important then ever to realize that selling real estate and building relationships is evolving. A good coach needs to help motivate and keep an agent’s head in the game.
Making matters harder, some have been agents for years, even decades, and operate on autopilot. This is where a great broker coach can build that rapport with their agents, understand what is going on in their lives and help keep them focuses on setting goals, managing their time and motivating an agent to continue to build relationships, prospect and sell more properties.
Santiago Arana, managing partner at The Agency in Los Angeles, suggests coaching agents to identify the mental blocks that hold them back. By setting time to break those challenges down into smaller goals, and identifying positive steps that can be taken to overcome them, agents can make steady progress toward overcoming them. He recommends prioritizing activities that return the most value. When needed, agents and brokers alike should also reach out to colleagues to perspective and suggestions.
And, when their mood and energy level begins to dip, take a break, stretch and even strike a power pose to let a wave of confidence wash back over them. Positive energy restored, they will again be ready to nurture the relationships that will help them achieve their goals.
“Most top-producers are learning-based. If you want to keep growing, you have to make constant learning a priority.”
– Craig Reger, Principal Broker of the Reger Group
Coaching Can Be The Difference Between A Top Producer And Just Another Agent
Can you imagine Luke Skywalker without Yoda or Tom Brady without Bill Belichick? Great coaching can change the game through leadings, planning and communicating. Motivation is a key part of coaching and for many, just having regular conversations with their broker coach can lead to improvement of an agent’s self-confidence and is enough to motivate them into action landing more clients and closing more deals. Matt Delhounge, who leads the Delhougne Team with RE/MAX, said that in his case his business has grown by leaps and bounds thanks to coaching.
When employees find greater intrinsic motivation, they are 32% more committed to their jobs and 46 % more satisfied According to McKinsey & Company, a strategic management and consulting firm. Motivating your agents and teaching them skills like listening and asking questions, as well as strategies to land more clients and close more deals can be the difference in having a banner year, or just chugging along.
What is the bottom-line? Coaching for your agents and team members is the top investment you can make in your real estate sales professionals.