I’ve been working in real estate for around 20 years.
I grew up in the family business, so this industry is more than just a career – it’s in my DNA.
I spent the majority of my real estate career as a sales agent and took over as CEO seven years ago.
I didn’t take on a CEO position as an industry outsider or rise up from an operations role.
I was one of the leading salespeople in the team, so I know from experience what agents need to perform.
If you’re onboarding and developing new agents, here are five fundamental ways to level up your people.
1. Invest in high quality relationships from day one
It’s important to attract agents who care more about relationships than results.
It’s easy for new agents to chase quick wins or sick back and wait for leads.
As an agency owner, help your sales team build their first relationship database – with an achievable target of say 80-100 people per month.
You can run call sessions, so they know how to speak with prospects.
Measure connects, conversations and database growth, not just deals.
Takeaway: If you do one thing, help them build their first 500 people in their database.
2. Build extraordinary product knowledge
Encourage your agents to build deep product knowledge, especially if new to the field.
They have to outlearn their competition.
As the leader, it’s up to you to create this learning culture and support it day-to-day.
Leadership actions could include creating a training calendar covering topics like market stats, approvals, sale methods, and how the council operates.
Position new agents new more experienced ones, so they can overhear calls and pick up on techniques.
Encourage roleplay around pricing, features, and prospecting dialogue.
New agents can often feel lost or directionless without listings, so it’s important to manage this by focusing on building up their product knowledge.
Takeaway: Set a weekly or monthly learning theme and hold them accountable to share back what they’ve learned.
3. Put in the reps
You can’t expect agents to confidently present to a prospect and win a listing without practice.
Body language, dialogue, and tone are important to master, and the only way to do this is to train, much like an athlete.
A common leadership mistake is letting agents practice on clients, instead of internally as a team through roleplay or training blocks.
Get them practising listing presentations and objection handling in a safe setting.
Encourage them to record video or audio and get feedback from the seasoned agents on the team.
Takeaway: Run a weekly training session with new and experienced agents.
4. The power of self-promotion
As a young agent, I door knocked and got my face out in the community, when I had no budget to hire marketing support.
This was a blessing in hindsight, because people got to know me in the community, and I was able to grow the business – instead of waiting for
leads or a marketing budget.
It also allowed me to build up my resistance to rejection.
Coach your team on fear of rejection, judgement, limiting beliefs, and why the best time to start is now.
Just like you set sales KPIs, set self-promotion KPIs.
For example, number of doors knocked, social posts, and community events attended.
Help your team find their version of door knocking. Plan out a simple content plan if they’re learning towards social media.
Takeaway: Challenge them to pick one self-promotion method and commit to it weekly for 90 days.
5. Gamify growth
KPIs can be scary, especially for new agents and employees.
But with the support of a real team culture and a philosophy of ‘better each day’, real momentum and magic can happen.
KPIs should feel like a game, not a threat. Most new agents hear KPIs and get scared.
Help them see KPIs are there to help them succeed.
Create a visible scoreboard for activity metrics such as calls, appraisals, listings etc.
Introduce team competitions and incentives, and run random prospecting competitions.
Prizes could be as small as a coffee voucher.
The key is creating healthy competition, camaraderie and alignment, not individuals working in isolation.
Takeaway: Build a visual tracker where your team can see their weekly activity results.
If you coach your people to be team players, to put client relationships above everything else and show up every day ready to do the work, you’ll build a happy, high-performing sales team.
