The pros make building and managing a massively successful real estate team look effortless. After all, they’ve typically done this for a long time and have worked out the kinks long before they achieve market dominance.
Easy peasy, right? Not so much. You’ll know this all too well if you’re just starting a real estate brokerage or are looking to level up your current team: it’s a lot harder than it looks.
This is where The High Performing Real Estate Team by Brian Icenhower comes in. The book is an incredible resource for leaders. It’s all about bridging the disconnect between leads looking to motivate and improve their team, and the agents and staff who are looking to manage the pressure of those expectations.
About the High Performing Real Estate Team
Brian Icenhower is a real estate coach, speaker, and author. The book is broken up into 5 parts, which cover each of the components of growth the author has identified via his work with Icenhower Coaching and Consulting.
This book is grounded in real-life coaching experiences and backed by research data.
He’s all about starting from where you are, envisioning where you want to be, and finding how that relates to your team’s individual goals and motivations. He says this is the key to bringing your team along with you on this journey (or as Brian says it, on this metamorphosis).
So, let’s dig into what makes this book great:
It starts at the beginning. This seems like a silly statement, but if you’ve checked out some of the books on real estate teams out there, you’ll notice that they’re all over the place. This book avoids that by asking you to introspect and take an honest look at some of the factors that are driving your current status quo.
It explains why your current approach may not be working.
The book takes you through several common factors that create the perfect storm for under-performing teams. It then presents a holistic, multi-factor solution that considers all of the various components that go into a real estate team’s performance.
It helps you bring your team along.
Brian sums this point up beautifully:
“Sometimes a growth goal won’t strongly resonate with someone until the right conditions come along.” – Brian Icenhower
The book is centered on the fact that real estate teams are, well, teams. They’re made up of a group of individuals that are unique. It’s not enough for leaders to dictate a vision top-down. The highest performing groups have leaders that create the right pre-conditions for their (and by extension the team’s) success.
5 stages of your real estate team’s metamorphosis.
Part 1: What’s Your Viral Goal? Commission Earned, Volume Closed, or Units Sold?
In the first section, you’re introduced to the foundation of his philosophy: the viral goal.
According to Brian a viral goal is defined by, matters to, and is shared by the whole team.
Instead of deciding what’s important to you as a real estate leader and dictating it, he says taking a more collective approach encourages grit, even in the face of less desirable tasks.
“Too often, either willfully or simply thoughtlessly, real estate leaders and team members fail to include their team as a whole in their vision for growth and in the goal-setting process. It’s easy to mistake your personal dreams for the dreams of everyone on the team.” – Brian Icenhower
So, focusing on a collective goal that is meaningful to every person gets to the heart of the differences between leaders’ visions, and the day-to-day experience of real estate agents, assistants, and the overall team in executing that vision. It’s about channeling enthusiasm in a focused way.
That goal is a starting point. From there you take each of the things that need to happen to make that goal a reality, and carefully craft them into growth-focused (but still realistic) SMART goals. Day by day, quarter by quarter as each person plays their part in these goals your team will build up to that vision.
Icenhower drives home that having a collaborative vision and clear goals are your foundation. Motivation and mindset, as well as your team’s organization and compensation structures all figure into this equation. As you seek growth for your team, you need to think about growth for each individual as well. After all, managing a massively successful real estate team is all about blending the individual and collective.
Part 2: The Sales Team Activities That Will Grow Your Pipeline
The next piece of the puzzle is focusing on the right activities that will get you to your goal.
What does the “right activity” mean? It’s the action item that actually generates results. You’ll need to separate these from activities that feel productive to do but are just busy work that doesn’t make an impact.
When you’re judging the effectiveness of an activity you can think about it in two ways: results or completion.
If you’re thinking based on results, you’d look at the endpoint of your team’s efforts, such as sales volume. This measures success, but it’s important to realize this number can be affected by several things outside of an individual Realtor’s control. For instance, market conditions will have a large impact on sales volume. Even veteran, top-performing agents are impacted by this. So as you can imagine, it’s demoralizing to agents to simply have one point of reference for all that they do.
Completion-based evaluation means looking at the number of action items completed, such as the number of phone calls made. How many action items your team completes is something that’s in their power to control. You can break down all of the steps needed for a larger goal, such as sales volume, into the individual actions needed to hit that goal.
Measuring the number of calls made, meetings booked, and other components of a finished deal also means you can pinpoint weak points for individual team members more easily. After all, if your agent misses their sales volume target, what does that mean? Do they need coaching on their introduction pitch, conducting follow-ups, or something else entirely?
Instead of giving generic advice in the dark, you can see where the breakdown is happening and provide targeted, high-impact coaching.
Part 3: Cultivate Personal Responsibility Through Team Accountability
Next up is perfecting the art of execution through accountability. After all, goals and activities are only as good as the consistency with which they are completed. To encourage getting things done and continuously improving, your team members need to be accountable to each other.
Practice real estate team accountability with regular huddles.
Accountability can be an awkward and comfortable thing all-around, and so many leaders skip this or teams will do this sporadically. Unfortunately, a lack of regular accountability is problematic. It creates confusion and uncertainty. It holds agents back from one of the key benefits of being part of a team in the first place.
A well-implemented accountability system isn’t a punishment. Instead, it’s an opportunity to practice collaboration and develop a mutually supportive environment. According to Icenhower accountability needs to have three things:
- Commitment to action
- Accountability to peers
- Regular updates
To make accountability a positive thing for your group, you’ll need an open environment where it’s okay for people to be vulnerable. This means looking at the numerical targets being aimed for while also holding space for the person and their experience.
Icenhower’s big recommendation for doing this is to “praise the process not the person”. He says this helps center the team on the actions without feeling defensive or personally attacked when there’s room for improvement.
When it’s not personal, there is room for vulnerability and growth. Listen to how people respond to accountability, and encourage them to take charge of the things that are in their control.
Part 4: Powerful Team Tools to Drive Growth
At this point, you have your team’s viral goal, broken down by the activities needed to get there, with public accountability to keep everyone on track.
Managing all of these factors means keeping track of a lot of moving pieces. At the same time, you need to keep your team members’ individual motivations and personalities in mind. To manage this effectively, the book recommends using a team dashboard coupled with coaching using the DISC model.
The dashboard creates visibility and should foster a competitive spirit. With that being said, it’s a common mistake is to focus only on its competitive uses. A well-designed dashboard should be a collaborative accountability tool that is accessible to all members. It captures all of your team’s activity goals and shows how individual agents are progressing towards them.
Centralizing all of this information into one spot can also help your team refine or change goals as needed based on performance and their experience in the field. You can also really quickly pinpoint areas where a Realtor may require additional support or coaching.
Combining the dashboard with an individualized understanding of your team members’ motivations and strengths can help deliver effective feedback. There are many tests or models you can use to help you with this, but the book recommends the DISC model.
DiSC model of personality can help you deliver personalized feedback.
The DISC model will give you behavior profiles based on four components:
- Dominance
- Influence
- Steadiness
- Compliance
These profiles can be used to inform coaching, evaluate personal suitability for roles, and gain better insight into your team’s dynamics.
Keep these needs in mind when you’re evaluating real estate tools, such as your real estate CRM. While purchasing the book gets you access to manual spreadsheets and templates to inspire your real estate team dashboard, having this part of your existing technology ecosystem eliminates manual work and embeds your team’s ethos right into how you work.
Part 5: Huddle Up and Make a Plan
The book drives home the importance of consistent public accountability for a well-functioning team. The last part of the book is all about this – the art of the huddle.
Huddles are different than the typical time-consuming, (dare we say soul-sucking), corporate-y affairs that come to mind when you think of a “meeting”. Instead, a huddle is short, frequent, and to the point. These are energizing, mission-critical points of contact, and are never canceled.
An effective huddle has a central focus. Typically the point of focus is the growth needed for your vision. Metrics should be discussed, and achievements should be celebrated. Ask follow-up questions and provide the instant, actionable feedback your team needs to refine and improve.
Week by week, your team can see how their daily efforts are building up towards the bigger, audacious goals you’ve collaboratively set together. The real magic of a good huddle is that it’s by and for everyone.
Final thoughts
The book is chock-full of incredible advice for Real Estate Brokers, Team Leaders, and Realtors. We covered the highlights, but there’s so much more nuance and data in the book.
There’s something for everyone, and it’s worthwhile to introduce this book to your team before you dig into setting your viral goal and developing them into a high-performing one.
