Structure, Structure, Structure…

All organizations are hierarchical.
At each level people serve under those above them.
An organization is therefore a structured institution.
If it not structured, it is a mob.
Mobs do not get things done, they destroy things.

I’ve been thinking and studying a lot lately about the structures that support a successful Real Estate Teams (or successful teams in general), and what would be the optimal organizational system.

I’ve been watching closely as I see Realtors building teams of assistants and sometimes just creating more confusion in the process.

Here’s what I’ve discovered.

A simple way to think about our team, and its needs, is to break it down by the periods of our relationship with your new prospects from the time they first enter our system, all the way to the time they become advocates.

This model is based on the premise that we can’t do all things at all times, and a way to divide our team up into three individual Operating Units, based on the function they provide along the timeline of our relationship with a new prospect.

The simplest way to think about these units is as the Before Team, the During Team, and the After Team.

In this model, the ideal situation would be to have separately run units that serve their function completely.

The reason I’m suggesting separate teams like this is because of what I see happening in teams that don’t have independent roles. The priority is ALWAYS on the urgent transactional things that are going on “in the business”, and consequently marketing, after-sale service and nurturing lifetime relationships take second priority.

If we have a “team” who’s sole function is to do one thing, it can become very efficient at doing that thing. There is no prioritizing, no juggling or compromising, it can focus 100% on performing its best.

The BEFORE Team

The BEFORE team is responsible for everything that happens to get NEW prospects, and create new business. It’s the division that runs our marketing, delivers our message to the market and converts prospects to clients.

The Before Team is constantly testing and refining our marketing. Its focused single mindedly on one purpose: to deliver buyers who are ready to buy and sellers who are ready to sell.

The product of this independent unit is measured in the number of these people it yields, and the cost to deliver them.

Think about how focused we could be if we had a team whose only purpose was to generate leads, and that team didn’t have to get bogged down in serving those leads, or get caught up in the details of a transaction that’s falling apart, or putting out fires.

The DURING Team

Imagine what it would be like if we had a team whose sole purpose was to deliver world class value during the actual transactional process of helping someone find a home or sell their home.

Wouldn’t it be great if every time the Before Team converted a qualified buyer or seller to a client, they had a team waiting to devote their whole attention to the needs of the client? Think about how relaxing that would be.  The During Team takes a buyers or seller already committed to working with us, and all they have to do is find them the perfect home and negotiate the contract.

This team needs to be very operationally excellent. They need to be organized and systematized so that all the details get taken care of, and everything gets done efficiently and every aspect works together to create a WOW! experience for our clients.

The AFTER Team

The function of the AFTER team is to pick up from the point that someone has a contract on their home, and is preparing for the move. The goal is to provide an outstanding level of after sale service, make sure the clients have a smooth transition into their new home in the first 90-days and then focus on building advocates.

This would be like a concierge service, and an advocacy service. The measurement for this team is the number of referrals we generate – the YIELD from our portfolio of clients. I say yield because our clients (aka database) are really our biggest assets. If we manage this asset well, we can yield a constant stream of referrals and new relationships every year.

Think about this; If we manage a “portfolio” of 300 clients for a 20% annual return, that would be 60 new transactions each year. That’s certainly worth having someone who is responsible for making that happen.

The best part is, to get a 20% annual return on each client means that they would have to either refer ONE person, or move themselves again in the next 5 years.

How easy is that?

What if we could get 30% or 40%? The potential here is huge, and if we have a division of our company, an independent UNIT who is singularly focused on this one task we can see how profitable it could be.

So how do we get started?

The important thing is that we start differentiating the roles of our business, and start holding each unit accountable for it’s own results.

The next thing is to realize that an Independent Unit operates interdependently.

Not a hard concept to grasp but a difficult one to master.

Think about it this way — the quality of the leads generated by our Before Team is reflected in the quality (and number) of clients being serviced by the During Team.  In turn, the quality of the service delivered by the During Team impacts the production of referrals by the After Team.

If, together, we start thinking about our business like this, and notice how simple actions can make a big impact I believe the future will be totally different.

Questions to be asking along the way…

• How many leads is the Before team generating and what does it cost?

• How many transactions is the During team able to handle? How much does it actually cost to sell a house or find someone house?

• How many referrals is the After team capable of generating each month? How many advocates (people who are referring 2 people a year) have can they develop?