Blog / Leadership
105 Listings gaining momentum from harvesting opportunity
with Stephen Cromarty - Love Real Estate
The indomitable Stephen Cromarty from Love Real Estate recently set himself and his team a challenge. How many listings could they sign in a month? Even though stock was tight, Steve set the bar high and asked his team to bring in over 100 listings in one month!
All the negative naysayers said it couldn’t be done but they were wrong.
Steve’s team did it - they brought in an incredible 105 listings, the majority of which were brought in by three agents, their support teams and Steve’s amazing system that harvests opportunity over and over again. So how did he do it?
Empowered individuals through teams
Steve’s staff work as empowered teams of absorbed solo producers and expert in-task specialists. Steve says, “Once you've got a team working in one direction, it becomes I guess the big maul. It's like a group of bike riders cycling along in a peloton - once it gets moving, every aspect of the peloton becomes streamlined. Someone has a role to play at the front, the middle, and the back, depending on where you are on the ride. We gained momentum within a team approach, and it picked up as each day went by and they became really connected. My role here has changed so much to the point where I work on task within projects, not running the team. They’ve got autonomy, they are working with each other. Everyone is a leader connected to what they need to be doing in their position.
Created focused teams
Four people worked in lead generation in data, two with the buyer part of the database and two with the seller part of the database, and there were six agents - three were specialist listing agents who were out there attending the listing appointments and three people sold. Steve says, “They finished on around 230 listing appointments for the month. (We do have the virtual agent and one commissioner and an agent outside of that). Their ratio from memory was for every 2.3 listing appointments they attended that month, they listed a property.”
Daily reflection and action
Change occurs through rigorous scrutiny and action. Steve says, “Every day we would have a brief meeting. We would talk about what we needed to do on that particular day and what the company would be doing to assist them in providing the opportunities as well. The very first thing we discussed is what happened yesterday. We looked at our level of execution, and in order to get company buy in, we had a number of things they were working for outside of their normal commission structure - whether it was a weekend away, or a holiday, a week away. Whatever it was, we had company buy in so that there was a benefit in addition to their remuneration.”
It was a tough month, requiring deep commitment from the whole team. Steve says, “A couple of times throughout the month nobody went home until we finished on that number. We voted on this as a team so we could get company buy in where everyone was here to make sure that we not only got what we promised, but we replaced what didn't happen on that particular day. We discussed what happened the day previous, looked at where we were at, looked at what we could do as a team to assist anyone with any lead, or any possible opportunity that they didn’t get across the line.”
Escalate, leverage and lead to convert
Steve acutely understands that his role in the process was to motivate and model solutions. He says, “Sam Walton owned WalMart and from the period of 1985 to 1992 he was the richest man in the world. If you look at Sam Walton during his reign, he made sure he was there with his team. He might not have officially worked on weekends, but every Saturday he sat with them, every Saturday evening he finished with them. I had the opinion that I had to be out there on the footpath with them pounding the pavement, bringing in some listings, just to show them that, hey we can do this.”
In the bumper month, Steve produced five or six listings on his own, but he says, “It felt as though I listed 80 of them, because I was very much there with them - I was there in strategy. I was providing them the leverage through my knowledge on how they needed to overcome the objections.”
For example, in a case where an agent had got very close to signing the business but was up against another agent or the client had a family friend as an agent, Steve says, “As a team we would come up with the strategies to what we might do to overcome that objection. For example, a strategy might be to provide the client with a guarantee. I think whenever you are questioning someone's loyalty, you are questioning something that within an agent is questionable in itself. It's a very tender topic. The way that we would approach it as a team is that the very first thing would be to get back face to face. Typically you get back face to face with something that you haven’t already shown them that would be to their benefit, so that would be strategy number one.”
Next they would work out pitches to clients as to why they should represent. For example, a strategy would be to say to the prospect, how difficult it is to be honest with someone that you don’t want to let down. It’s hard to ask for price adjustments or give advice to people you know. Steve says they would get the client to think about, “Whether or not they felt as though that relationship might become a blockage and what value they placed on the relationship.”
Steve and his staff are testimony to what people can achieve when they work together. What records could your office set if you empowered the collective abilities of your staff?
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