How often has one of your agents said, “I’m leaving because I can do better over at brand x?” Maybe that’s true; perhaps it’s not. Yet from my experience:
It’s Not You; It’s The Behavior
I assume you have a defined niche, a clear idea of your ideal agent, and a compelling value proposition. If not, you have work to do! Yet in my years of experience, I’ve yet to meet a broker-owner or team leaders who did not honestly care about the growth and well-being of their associates. So, with that foundation, what’s the deal? You and I know it’s in the daily habits of our associates, the consistent and creative marketing, and delivering a solid experience from start to finish.
My business partner, Ben Hess from Recruiting Insight, wrote an eBook on the “psychology of recruiting,” where he covers some of the basic science of human motivation. One of those concepts is that our brains are wired to jump to quick conclusions. This is useful in reacting quickly to the environment around us, yet sometimes fast conclusions lead to a flawed conclusion.
What if there was a better way? What if you mastered the science behind what motivates your associates? If you understood the science and knew how to apply it, you wouldn’t have to guess at what strategy to use you would know and could retain more agents in your team, office, and firm.
There are several books that I’d recommend building your mastery, like Atomic Habits; The Miracle Morning; The Power of Habit; Do Hard Things, and more. If you took each of these books and had to summarize them into the basic drivers of what motivates us, it might look like this?
Daily Habits
A sense of belonging
Instincts
In The Power of Habit and Atomic Habits, we learn how much of everything we do in a typical day we do out of habit without even thinking about it. And many times, we don’t even remember how those habits got formed. An important part of getting someone to create a new habit is breaking things into small steps. For example, in my work with Tom Ferry over several years and studies, we found that most agents have similar common habit challenges:
Relevant and consistent marketing
Prospecting Consistently
Maintaining and working a database
Organization and Time Management
Maintaining a Winning Mindset
So, what if you got really good at helping your associates solve those problems? For example: where are the listings? We know in this market where the listings are. The listings are in David Knox’s 7 D’s:
Death,
Divorce,
Diplomas,
Diamonds (engagements),
Downsizing (10,000 people in the US turn 65 every day),
Daily Grind (job changes), and changes in
Discretionary income.
An essential part of getting your associates to create new prospecting habits is to break things into small steps. So, can you break things down into a system of: “for success – here’s how we do it here!” One example of the leading indicators to break down and make simple? New appointments created each day or week. What if you had a 90 new appointment hustle in your team, office or firm?
Besides habits, a fundamental need – even more so now than ever – is the need to belong. As a broker, how do you rate yourself on creating a belonging culture? What if your associates felt like they belong at your firm by having a voice, and the ability to contribute so they feel important enough to stay? Is there a way in your firm to:
Give the work a deeper meaning (every home sold creates 2 jobs)
Make more people feel more valued more often (M Cubed)
A balance between collaboration and competition
A venue to share wins, breakdowns, and breakthroughs
Connect the organization and community to the brighter future you envision
Be the collective voice of reason in all market conditions
A strategy to connect the languishing with the thriving
Instinct – according to Gary Klein, Ph.D. – is the way we translate our experience into judgment and actions. I suspect as you read parts of his article, you had some thoughts like:
I had a feeling about it.
That was my hunch.
I feel that in my gut.
So now it’s time to act. Just like your agents, break down one of these leading indicators and make it simple and execute. The ideas you just had reading this article are worthless without execution. One of our clients is conducting a 14-day sprint at 8 am every morning on “How To Earn Listings In This Market,” another is starting a book club, and yet another a weekly pizza, prospecting, and profit session.
To win the day? Leave nothing to chance and do all you can to eliminate the “it’s my broker’s fault” mindset.
Information in the hands of everyone can be a powerful thing and rocket fuel for innovation.
Yet, focus and discernment has never been more important. According to Domo’s Data Never Sleeps 10.0 report, the total amount of data predicted to be created, captured, copied, and consumed globally in 2022 was 97 zettabytes*, a number projected to grow to 181 zettabytes by 2025.
Over the last 10 years – image and video platforms – Instagram and YouTube have created the most exponential growth. The least? eMail.
Every MINUTE of the day:
6 million Google Searches (10 years ago, 2 million)
500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube (10 years ago 48 hours)
65,000 Instagram posts (10 years ago, 3,500)
347,000 Tweets (10 years ago 100,000)
1.7 million FB posts (10 years ago 684,000)
231,000 emails sent (10 years ago 200,000)
26,000 Yelp reviews and 6,900 Tinder matches
Everyday:
10,000 US citizens turn 65
400 REALTORS® retire or exit the business
600 REALTORS® start their real estate practice
800 REALTORS® switch sponsoring brokers or go independent
Understanding the implications to your business, along with focus and discernment, has never been more important.
Mindset, Game Plan, Skills and Tools
* A zettabyte is a measure of storage capacity and is 2 to the 70th power bytes, also expressed as 1021 (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) or 1 sextillion bytes. One Zettabyte is approximately equal to a thousand Exabytes, a billion Terabytes, or a trillion Gigabytes. Do the math – old math or new math; that’s a lot of data.
Orville Wright and his brother Wilbur did not have a pilot’s license. They did not need permission to change the world. All they needed was creativity, passion, and persistence. Luckily for us, they had an abundance of all three. #WinTheDay
America’s happiest cities. Researchers for decades have studied the science of happiness and concluded that some of the key ingredients include: a positive mental state (a growth mindset); strong social connections; job satisfaction; health, and financial stability. One study suggests the incremental amount of happiness stops at around $75,000 of annual income.
Many factors affect our happiness, so the study included a panel of experts who commented on various aspects of happiness, like:
Can money buy happiness? No. The consensus: it’s far more important to have a sense of purpose and a way to give back.
Does happiness increases or decrease with age? Yes. The consensus seemed to be a trend of more happiness in younger and older individuals and less in the 40 and 50 age group! Maybe the burden of providing for the family?
Does where you live influence happiness? The consensus was yes with a footnote. So research suggests it’s not about the place, but the match between the place and who you are as a person combined with the family and friend connections.
I’ve lived in 8 states (VA, CO, TX, KY, OH, MI, CA, and MN) and 10 cities, and what I’ve found? Grow where you are planted! Every city, state, and region has a history, a story and a community. As I recall, Abraham Lincoln said it best:
Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. I’ve had a lot of clients, associates, and others asking about:
SVA (smaller issue)
Credit Suisse (bigger issue)
Signature Bank
I have a great circle of economic minds… my notes from various conversations on this topic:
If you go back to 1974 you can see 12 significant hiccups in the financial systems, including the 1994 bankruptcy of Orange County, California, where I raised my kids and grandkids.
Of the 12 events since 1974, 60% led to a recession. With the FED lowering rates from 1 month to 11 months post each of those events.
The FED policy has been the most aggressive tightening in 40 years, yet all the indicators seem to be the economy is absorbing this at a rate not seen before. But something broke…
Concentration (all your eggs in one basket) is a high-risk strategy not to be taken by the faint of heart.
A surge in deposits (influx of COVID money into the economy and more) in a low-interest rate environment lead to a surge in deposits. To boost yields, SVB (and others) turned to long-term bonds, yet SVB did so WITHOUT hedging. (A high-risk move & looking back, was a massive mistake of judgment and leadership)
Policy matters – in 2018, we saw a rollback of the Dodd-Frank requirements, which raised the level of banks subject to stress tests. SVB was not subject to stress tests and extra accountability. As we are seeing – accountability matters.
What will the FED do?
Who knows, but probably no hike or up to 25 basis points as we see conflicting issues, especially persistent Core Inflation.
Core inflation is still high (too much money chasing too few goods)
Retail sales and producer price index weaker
The recent labor report was mixed
A business associate and well-respected economist, Dr. Lawerence Yun, said it well several years ago, “easy money and ample liquidity has implications.” Expect more volatility, heed the benefits of diversification, and a flight to quality. This is not a time to take undo risks.
For my real estate friends – control what you can control – life still happens: birth, death, divorce, jobs, non-owner occupied exchanges, and more. Serve those that need your services. Now more than ever, they need a local area expert. I’m seeing a flight to quality in full-time professional agents with stable track records of delivering results. if you don’t have this base, it could be time to team up and join an experienced team lead.
