Like most busy real estate professionals, you’ve probably found yourself daydreaming a time or two about forming a team…and exactly what it would take to get the right people on board in order to lay the foundation for success today—and well into the future.
Pam Ermen—a national speaker, coach and trainer, and president of Real Estate Guidance, Inc.—explored the team concept during the 2017 REALTORS® Conference & Expo.
“Teams aren’t inherently good, and they aren’t inherently bad,” noted Ermen, who began building teams back in the 1990s. “There’s no general brush you can use to stroke across whether a team is affecting something,” she added. “It's not a trend, but rather, a business model.”
A vehicle for real estate growth, Ermen took attendees through a series of business growth stages. Established via a Harvard Business Study on small business, Ermen explained that the following stages overlay the growth of teams extremely well:
Stage 1: Creativity (identity/brand)
-A temporary state
-Unbelievably important, because if you don’t develop your brand, you don’t have anything of value
Stage 2: Direction (systems)
-Can’t move out of stage 1 without creating the systems that are necessary to replicate the brand experience
Stage 3: Delegation (duplication)
-Determine your pay grade and the jobs/tasks you’re doing that fall below it
-Beginning with support roles, hire to fill in the areas where you’re spending the most time
Stage 4: Coordination (team associates)
Stage 5: Collaboration (innovate/re-invent)
-Highest level of leadership that allows you to innovate
Once you’ve moved through the process of developing your brand, putting systems into place, figuring out how to replicate the process, bringing in admin support and filling people into sales roles, you’ve freed yourself to move to a level of leadership that allows you to innovate. “And that’s when it makes a difference,” noted Ermen, who encouraged attendees to think about companies that have a reputation for being innovators: Uber, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, etc. “They’re innovating because of their leadership,” she added.
But how do you go about creating a culture of collaboration that inspires people to take action and take part in what you’re doing? The following videos, suggested by Ermen, are a good place to start:
How Great Leaders Inspire Action
Core Values & Company Culture
Why We Need Core Values
“If you watch all these and then hold a team meeting, you will go into it with a totally different perspective of the people in front of you,” concluded Ermen.
