Far too many agents and salespeople have lengthy meetings as part of their business day and business week. When it comes to commercial real estate, you cannot waste your time. As a common rule, your meetings should not be longer than one hour, and that includes office based meetings with the team.
Many salespeople loose focus after an hour; they prefer to be out and about in the market or making cold calls. Any sales manager or principal that calls a lengthy weekly meeting is really wasting everyone’s time. It is important for the meeting convenor to get to the point of the meeting and let everyone have their say and then make a decision; you can do that in one hour.
If your meetings are longer than one hour then you have too many issues to cover or you have too many people in the meeting. Either way you have to split up things so you achieve more in less time. A sales team is not like a public service team where the mindset is to debate and refine. Salespeople like direction and decision; they then take action (or should).
Productive salespeople are part of a great real estate business. Frustrating your salespeople is not good practice. Keep the business flowing and get your people back out into the market as quickly as possible.
It is better to have 3 meetings of one hour duration, than cover too many issues in one 3 hour meeting once a week; most of the issues will not be acted on if you push through too many things. Salespeople have to be productive and lengthy meetings destroy that momentum.
Here are some great meeting rules for real estate teams:
- Get your meetings done early in the day to ensure that you have everyone’s focus. The time of 7:30am is great for this.
- Keep your meetings to one hour duration so you can cover things quickly. Do not call meetings unless they are really warranted.
- People that want to talk and take the floor of the meeting too much need to be controlled so they do not take over. Some salespeople do talk too much. Let them get their point across then take other comments from the team. Keep things moving.
- Set the agenda so you can move through key issues. Send out the agenda 2 days before the meeting so everyone can prepare their comments.
- Keep minutes of each meeting so you can refer to them later. Send out the minutes within 24 hours so any actions can be commenced.
- Keep people accountable. Salespeople are commonly great at avoiding doing the issues requested.
A short meeting is a great business tool. In a real estate office use your meeting strategy to simple effect. If your meetings are effective and short you will find that the team will attend and participate; those that do not do that should be counselled and eventually moved on if they do not.
If you want more tips for a commercial real estate office, visit our website at http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/
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