Commercial Property Agents – Sales Team Management

It is really hard to monitor and then enforce the performance of a large commercial real estate sales team.  A large team will have diverse sales people each requiring special attention or guidance given their stages of market share and industry knowledge.   There are also the characters of the team to take into account when addressing progress and activity.  All these variables need to be taken into account so you can achieve momentum from each person.  Here is an extract from our Newsletter.

The secret to the process is to split up the team into 3 categories of sales performers.  When you do that you can drive the team in its separate groups.  Each of the 3 groups will take your training and guidance differently.

Keep your high performers away from the newer team members.  Invariably we find that the top performers are not good role models to explain their activities and encourage new recruits.  Top performers are too busy getting on with their own business and normally they do not want to be tied down with average people to train or coach.  Do not frustrate the higher performers in the group as it will impact your commissions.

So you can split up the larger sales team or group into 3 segments such as:

1. New Starters – these are usually members of your team that are still learning the ropes and have not yet established reasonable levels of personal market share or market knowledge.  I would expect that members of the team would stay in this group for around 12 months.
2. Improvers – these are people that have graduated from the ‘New Starters’ group after they have proven themselves with new business, listings, client contact, and commissions.  You can also put people into this group if they have just joined your business from another agency.  This then gives you time to assess how they do business and relate to clients.  It would be normal for members of this team to stay in the group for 12 to 18 months.  Beyond that time they should have graduated to the top level or high performer’s team.  Some people will never graduate out of the ‘Improvers’ team, and if that is the case then they soon become people that have limitations and need special attention.  You can then choose to train them and or help their self-confidence and market knowledge.  If they still fail to improve then they become an economic decision at the next staff review.
3. High performers – these are the members of your team that have really made it to the top of the team in commissions and listings.  As to what levels of performance sets these people apart from the rest is up to you as the team leader, but the benchmark should be realistically high in the current local property market given your office activities and market share.

As to what criteria you set to split up the groups is really up to you but in most cases it should be based on results in listings and commissions.  These 2 facts go hand in hand.  Clearly a person that only has listing results and low commissions also has a problem to address.

So the message here is for the office principal or sales manager is to split up a large commercial real estate sales team to the smaller groups.  Each group can be coached and helped into the requirements of the local property market.

When you take this approach with the team, sales and leasing results become easier and simpler to enforce.  You can soon see people that are just not reaching the benchmarks you have set and deal with it appropriately.

You can get more tips on Commercial Real Estate Agency Management and Sales Team Performance at our website http://www.commercial-realestate-training.com/

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