Want your real estate sales team to focus their efforts, up their game and smash targets? Of course you do! (You clicked on the link, after all.)
But there’s more to motivation than Vince Lombardi quotes, leaderboards and Red Bull. And, let’s be honest, your bleary-eyed Monday morning sales meetings could probably do with a shake-up.
Well friends, there’s no silver bullet. Increasing motivation - and turning that motivation into sales activity - is a process. And it all starts with solid reporting.You’ve got the data there - but what are you doing with it? Lost appraisals, listing volume and commission stats can give you a new level of insight into the effectiveness of your sales efforts - and an opportunity to discover new (and better) ways of doing things. You just have to use them.
Let’s take a look at 3 ways your real estate CRM can help kick your sales team’s performance up a notch.
Daily Goals and the Dashboard Progress Bar
It’s well known that the most effective way to reach a goal is to break it down into smaller, bite-sized measures of progress. Your real estate office software programs can help you do this.
Have you ever signed up to run in the Bridge to Brisbane, City2South or Round the Bays - promising yourself you’d eat clean, train mean and kick fitness goals before the big day? But then, suddenly, it’s 3 months later - the day of the race - and the only time you broke a sweat was during a particularly brisk walk to the coffee shop?
It’s OK - we’ve all been there. In fact, I’ve had this exact experience three years in a row.
When the time came to hit the pavement, you probably mentally broke the run up into 10 one kilometer spurts of energy: one kilometer is much easier to tackle than 10 whole ones. It’s a classic psychology/productivity hack. Don’t ask us how it works - it just does. Daily reporting is based on the same concept. Measuring your financial results and growth is a good way to track the big picture of your business - but it’s small, consistent daily activity that drives your sales team and produces measurable results.
First thing’s first: you’ve got to set some goals. Studies have shown that goal setting increases motivation - and that those with clearly defined goals are significantly more likely to succeed than those without. But it’s no use setting a target of 5 new listings per month if you don’t know how many opportunities you need to identify, how many leads you need to get and how many cold emails you need to send each day to get there. Instead, work backwards from your big goal - whatever that may be - and work out what you need to do to get there. These are your daily goals.
Now what? Well, the super-successful Dilbert comic strip guy handwrites his goals 15 times a day. My mediocrely-successful roommate scrawls them on her bathroom mirror before work each morning. You lucky people have the Rex dashboard.
The approach to measurement
If you’ve been putting follow-up activity into the system, you should have a list of daily reminders you need to complete on your dashboard - a virtual to do list. The number of phone calls you need to make, emails you need to send and tasks you need to complete should align with your daily goals. And (excuse the exercise analogy - again) we know that you run faster when you can see the finish line. That’s why Rex’s dashboard includes progress bars across phone calls, tasks and other contact points. This shows you how far you’ve come for the day - and how much work you have left to go.
If you’re consistently ticking off reminders and filling your daily progress bar with green, chances are you’re gonna get those 5 listings.
Weekly Real Estate Sales Reports
Real estate is a 24/7 business, and things happen fast. But you don’t need us to tell you that. The overnight enquiries and “Your mailbox is full” message are a constant reminder that you didn’t sign up for the 9 to 5 rat race.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in day-to-day tasks when you’re always on the go. But, as an agent, it’s important to take a step back and self assess. And when you’re the boss, being able to glean a holistic view of your team’s performance overall is critical. That’s why great agencies always implement a weekly one-on-one meetings between agents and their managers (or principal).
One-on-ones help in assessing the week that’s been as well as plan for the week that’s coming up. Before you go putting this in the ‘too hard’ basket and tell me you don’t have time for another meeting - pump the brakes. We hear you. We know that a whopping 37% of people’s time is spent in meetings (and 91% of people daydream during them, anyway). But the thing is, about half of the meetings you attend are a waste of time - and the average person spends around 31 hours in unproductive meetings every month.
Think about it. How often does a relatively easy decision get drawn out across three meetings? How often do you get sidetracked into discussing Sally’s trip to the beach last weekend, or Tom’s kid’s football match?
If you set an agenda and stayed focussed on the things that mattered most, every meeting you attend would be productive. We bet you’d actually be saving time.
Here’s an idea: use a report as your agenda. If it’s not on the report, don’t mention it at the meeting. Simple! You’ll be outta there in no time.
The approach to measurement
There are more than 40 types of reports you can create in Rex - that’s a whole heap of data at your fingertips. For the purposes of a report to help run your weekly one-on-ones, our favourite is the KPI reports. This will show:
- The number of appraisals won or lost during the week by each agent
- If lost, the reason why the appraisal was lost
- New listings
- All current listings
- Listing expiring within the next 30 days
- Listing days on market
- Number of reminders completed by type
- Notes added by type
- Feedback added by type
Simply tell Rex which period you want to pull data for, and Rex will create a report filled with pretty, visual graphs.
At the weekly meeting, every agent should discuss their goals in light of any progress, setbacks, or changes - and modify, if necessary. Did everyone achieve their targets last week? What should be done differently this week?
If you’ve got a bunch of listings expiring within the next 30 days, you know you need to pull your socks up. If you’ve been losing listings to the agency across the road, it might be time to check out the competition and strategise. The aim is to identify issues before they become a big problem.
Monthly Report
Ah, the monthly roundup. Such potential! And yet, so often squandered.
A monthly meeting is the prime time to tap into your team’s competitive spirit. Every agent can run a Stat ($Gross Comm) or Stat ($Comm Earned by Agent) to see if they’ve met their monthly target, which can then be ranked on the leaderboard. A bit of healthy competition brings out the best in everyone - unless you’re Lance Armstrong. No one likes being at the bottom.The approach to measurementBut a monthly report doesn’t just help individuals track their progress. It’s also a nifty little tool to assist agency owners plan for the months ahead. We think it’s so important that Rex includes two:
- the High Level KPI Strategies report provides a bird’s eye view, holistic analysis of monthly activity around listing volume, average sales and commissions
- the Cross Period Sales PRI report lets easily you pull up last year’s metrics, so you can compare October 2016 with October 2017 and see if you’re on the right growth trajectory.
For agency owners, these stats assist in planning not just the next month - but the next 3, 6, 9 months. This is where things get really serious.Forecasting is about more then choosing whether to pre-order the Veuve or YellowGlen for this year’s Christmas party. If you consistently use Rex’s reporting feature to plan and monitor your cashflow, you’ll be well prepared for any cash shortfalls. In fact, with this level of transparency, you may even be able quickly identify areas for improvement and avoid shortfalls altogether.
The punchline
If you’re not using real estate software to measure sales activity, you’re unlikely to increase it. Even if you did, how would you know it?
Rex gives you access to more data than you can poke a stick at. Now, you just need to give it a purpose and make it part of a bigger strategy.
As Uncle Ben said, with great power comes great responsibility.
