In a recent interview, the new CEO of Woolworths Grant O’Brien said that it took him a number of years to learn the difference between leading an organisation and managing one. He had to make the transition from manager to leader.
Thriving bustling real estate agencies are similar. There comes a time when a tipping point is reached - it’s no longer possible for one person to wear the two hats of leader and manager. The roles have to be split and if the selling principal assumes the leadership mantle, someone else needs to come in and manage all the nitty gritty administrative aspects of the business and that’s where someone like Mandy Wurth enters the picture.
Mandy Wurth doesn’t need her name on the shop window or to be the owner of a business. She’s quite happy to manage an agency and help people to get to where they want to be. In the position of General Manager, Mandy has worked with some of the most successful agencies in Australia - from Toop&Toop in Adelaide to McGrath in Sydney’s Lower North Shore. She knows what it takes to work with some of the best selling principals and agents in the country. Managers take on the day to day burden of running an agency and release agents to do what they do best - sell.
So when a General Manager comes into a business - what does he or she look after?
Marketing and Building the Brand
Mandy says, “A Manager will work out your marketing budget and how you are going to spend it. They will determine how you are going to market the company and your salespeople - what you are going to do to get your name out there in lights. They will examine your company website, all your direct mail-outs, brand control and your public relations. Clean data is essential so a manager will ensure that the data is clean and set rules for data entry. And a manager will also make submissions for awards - awards are the one thing that you’ve got to be onto all the time because they keep your profile high and ensure that you are hitting industry standards.”
Winning the business
A Manager will make sure you’ve got your company prospecting plan in order which includes mainstream marketing, allocation of call escalations and company leads. A Manager will also handle follow-up after appraisals and surveys. Mandy says, “I’m so dogmatic on surveys. I really want to know what my vendors are thinking - mid-campaign, at the end of the campaign, any time - and, if necessary, I’ll call them halfway through just to have a chat.”
Delivery of Service
For many, says Mandy, delivery of service is an “administrative nightmare but it’s the one thing that actually is the foundation of your business. It ensures your systems and procedures are correct. A Manager will handle agency compliance, manage complaints and also run team meetings from your sales meeting to your management meetings to your administrative meetings. Lots of principals just want to know about the sexy stuff, but it’s the boring stuff that actually makes things happen. It’s about collecting VPA, and if that’s not done you can find yourself in a half a million dollars debt very quickly. For some, that’s boring, but it’s actually part of what you need to do within the role.”
People
A Manager handles the recruitment, the retention, the on-boarding, packages and incentives, training and development, reviews of staff as well as outplacement. Mandy says, “You don’t recruit people and give them a desk and a phone book and say, ‘There’s your phone’ anymore. Onboarding is a detailed process that can take more than six months.” And if the time comes when you have to let someone go, typically it’s the Manager who will handle this task. Mandy says, “Outplacement is when we free up someone’s future. It’s still one of those things even today that I am not comfortable with, but it’s something someone has to do. You need to follow a lot of processes now before that can actually happen - that’s the law.”
Innovation and Development
A Manager organises company plans and meetings. Mandy is of the view that, “you’ve got to have at least two planning meetings a year to be able to step aside from your business and look at what’s going on within your business, examine industry trends, seek team member contributions, and set projects up and work through those because there’s always something going on.”
Infrastructure
This entails managing the company website and external portal accounts as well as your company database program. Mandy says, “Your infrastructure has to be solid at all times.”
Finance and Administration
Managers manage all email communication as well as trust accounting, monthly reports, insurance and liability policies that have to be kept up to date, cash flow that needs to be monitored daily, budgets and cash control. Mandy says, “They are the most important things that I think, from my position, you need to keep a handle on all the time.
Delivery of service is an “administrative nightmare but it’s the one thing that actually is the foundation of your business”.
You have to understand what are committed funds and what is left over, and manage them accordingly. Now, I mightn’t put all the figures together myself - someone else might do that - but it’s my responsibility to look at them, look at any anomalies there might be in there, and then work through why and then deliver that back to my principal.”
Key Performance Indicators
These are clearly very important - if a business isn’t profitable nobody wins. Mandy believes that a Manager’s role therefore is to “achieve profit targets and set and manage targets.” She also thinks that it is the Manager’s role to drive income opportunities. She says, “This is not just about looking at how can we make more money in sales or leasing, or whatever it might be, but what are the other opportunities we have. For example, administration incentives - administrators are the backbone of your business. They’re the ducks, the little feet underneath the water that keep everybody going, so it’s important that they are incentivised.”
Finally Mandy thinks that, laughter is a KPI as well. She says, “Laughter is one of the most important things I think you’ve got to have in your business. Yes, there’ll be stressful periods. That’s business and, yes, the boss and I will fight. But you’ve got to have a lot of laughter as well.”
Looking at all the things a manager is responsible for it is very easy to see that a successful agency is a combination of the yin and yang - the detail and the big picture; the dream and the reality. Each needs the other. If you’re groaning under the load, it might be time to consider looking for a General Manager to share the burden.