Build Your Best Team

Sarah Kirsch Richardson

Tru Realty

Working as a team in real estate can be highly profitable and a rewarding experience as you help others grow professionally. If you’re at your best working independently, a team environment may not be the right move for you. But if you’re a people-person driven by a desire to see your business continue to grow and thrive, building a team is a great way to meet your goals. Taking the time to develop a strong team environment gives you the ability to delegate tasks, go after every lead, and build a base of people who will have your back.

Before you begin recruiting and hiring, take a step back and identify the smartest course of action for the business you’re currently running. The five steps below will help you put your best foot forward to build a successful team and thriving business.

1. Financial Stability

Do not build a team until you’re financially ready to take on the responsibility. You need to find your own success – through profit and strong savings – before you begin hiring others onto your team. Seeing positive revenue after taxes, overhead, and savings is the key first step to knowing if you’re ready to begin building a team.

2. Business Plan in Place

How can you expect others to jump on board when they don’t know what the boat looks like or where it’s going? Identify your own personal goals as well as goals for your business and develop a mission and vision statement for your company that others can believe in. Establish best practices for things like responding to clients to ensure that when you are ready to hire, your new employees will deliver a consistent experience to clients. Documenting a systematic approach will allow them to understand expectations from the get-go.

3. Recruitment Strategy

Unless your revenue already reflects this possibility, do not hire a full team all at once. Build your team strategically by setting revenue and workload goals that indicate when you’re ready for the next step in building your team. Although it might be tempting to start with a Buyer Agent hire, the more practical first move is hiring an administrative assistant who can help you with scheduling, emails, and social media – all of the tasks that keep you away from spending time with clients on the front lines. From there, your goals will identify when you’re ready to hire Buyer Agents, Inside Sales Agents, Listing Agents and eventually customer service representatives, personal assistants and even marketing support.

4. Personality Matters

Hiring someone who has the right level of experience with a good personality-fit for your team is the recipe for success. You should know the personality traits you’re looking for in your team members. Consider using tools like the DiSC assessment test during the hiring process to get a pulse on what it might be like to work with that person and how they might fit in with the bigger team picture. Trust and camaraderie exist within a strong team if everyone gets along. It only takes one or two people with toxic personalities to destroy what you’ve built. And if you do happen to make a mistake in hiring someone who does not seem to be working out, don’t wait until the issue is out of control to fire that person. Let them go sooner rather than later.

5. Appreciate and Motivate

Each person has their own driving factors as to what motivates them. Take time to understand what motivates the individuals on your team. DiSC results are a good place to start, so keep some of those traits in mind as you engage with them. Show appreciation for the work they are doing to support your business, and they’ll remain loyal, dedicated workers.

Building a strong team is hard work. It takes time, dedication, and smart planning to get to a place where you’re leading a team you can trust. A strategic approach to planning and prospecting provides the best chance of developing a successful team.