How Brokers grow their top teams and GCI – A segmented and focused approach across multiple teams.
We all know about the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, especially in Real Estate. The onset of team growth over the last 10 years has shifted that closer to a 94/6 paradigm in most small to medium-sized brokerages. For Broker/Owners looking to grow GCI, there are 2 options: external and internal. For Brokers looking to grow and scale their GCI more rapidly, the only real answer is internal. Typically, the top 10% of your brokerage can attribute up to 70% of the total GCI for an entire office, branch, or company. Growing your top 10% even with small increments can have a significant impact on GCI alone...growing your top teams by 20% changes a lot.
How do you grow your top teams? Buy more leads...add more support...upgrade your technology? Creating a support platform that is focused and segmented across teams, roles, and tasks. As technology continues to evolve into greater complexity, you empower your sales leaders and teams by taking some of the complexity off their plates to allow them to do what they do best.
Here is an approach of segmented and focused support across multiple teams.
Expand your tech stack and adoption. Let’s examine the Pareto Principle again. This time it is twofold. Adoption of the technology provided to your entire sales team is typically about 20%, and of this amount, 80% are only using 20% of all features. Creating higher adoption across your entire bandwidth can have immediate results and create a strong baseline. Most CRMs allow multiple teams to leverage the same platform while maintaining strong firewalls, keeping all teams within their own silos. Outside of sales, the most important and challenging position to find for all growing teams is a CRM Manager. Use your top CRM Manager for all teams or your office to manage all teams and allocate costs instead of trying to find multiple experts to fill this crucial position.
Creation and Utilization of Shared Resources and Roles. The CRM Manager is one of the most vital positions for growing teams, responsible for managing customer relationships and data. Having a dedicated CRM Manager can streamline operations and ensure consistency across teams. Adding Virtual Assistant Roles improves efficiencies and is cost-effective. Virtual Assistants can offload routine tasks from sales teams, allowing them to focus on high-value activities such as building relationships and closing deals. They also offer scalability, enabling teams to expand operations without the burden of hiring and training additional full-time staff.
Efficient Management of Leads and Clients. Once your CRM has a standardized baseline created, it can also standardize day-to-day activities, filters, messaging, processing, and lead flow. The intention is simple – create a single, high-performing “mousetrap” instead of multiple, average quality, and fragmented ones. Clearly, not all teams will work the same; however, creating a single role to manage 75% of the same functions for all teams creates significant efficiencies. A strong CRM manager can manage up to a $4M to $5M producing GCI.
Lead generation consolidation. The sales funnel for lead sources is set to broaden, encompassing a variety of channels such as online platforms (both paid and organic), open houses, existing relationships, past clients, and advertising. A prevalent gap in the industry is not merely establishing connections but effectively integrating these connections into a CRM system. Adopting a scalable mindset is crucial here. As lead sources proliferate, it's essential to employ consistent processes, steps, and best practices across similar lead sources. This approach ensures these leads are effectively integrated into your CRM, allowing your manager to assume responsibility. Segmenting this lead consolidation step is crucial to reduce a lengthy process for the sales team, and by breaking this process down to include added support, input, and consolidation of your CRM Manager and support team will maximize the capture of all opportunities. Your top teams excel at establishing connections, identifying solutions, and fostering trust with clients. However, many teams struggle to maintain consistent engagement with a growing client base. Creating a secondary support role with cost allocation can also be supported with live or virtual support, focusing on lead data entering CRM, cleaning, and dispositioning into the best nurture or awareness plan.
Improved Client Segmentation and Personalized Communication. Your digital marketing platform is another area that can create tremendous upside that can help brokers segment their audience based on various factors like buying readiness, property interests, and past interactions. This can enable more personalized communication, improving client engagement and conversion rates. Analyze client data to categorize and segment them based on preferences, buying behavior, and demographics for more targeted marketing strategies. Develop Personalized Communication Plans: Tailor messaging and content to cater to individual client segments, fostering stronger connections and increasing engagement. Segmenting messages, groups, and frequencies will also help to determine efficiencies and gaps. Balancing automated, AI, and human interaction will become a byproduct of this process, which will be insightful. Also, expand your action plans to engage with your client over the entire lifecycle and not just a small segment of it. If most clients purchase a home once every 7 years...if they spend 12 months with the home buying process every 7 years, what are you doing to continue to grow your relationship for the other 72 months? This allows you to now focus on other action plans like closing, post-closing, adding a review, providing an annual CMA, sending newsletters, outreach, etc. This segment is often overlooked and is crucial to building the full lifecycle and end-to-end relationship that we all desire.
Cost Allocation Methods and Approaches. Cost allocation can be considered, integrated, and managed in multiple ways. The standard approach is a result-based method that can allocate GCI, transaction count, or production-based metrics as a percentage of costs for each team. A team’s production of 34% of GCI would contribute this same amount to all shared resources. A usage method can be utilized especially for time spent and repetitive tasks and processes – a top team that utilizes these resources for 4 hours a day would contribute 50% of total costs. An Equal allocation method could also be a reasonable approach for teams with similar production for GCI or units. A more advanced and hybrid method could also be considered, such as a flat shared cost for CRM Manager and usage allocations for VA resources. Further, Margins for teams are roughly 3 to 7 times more than the overall 3% for standard brokerage models. Housing Wire
Creating a Bandwidth of Tasks, Functions, and Management Levels Across a Support Team: Embracing Efficiency and Growth. In the realm of real estate teams, my observation suggests that less than 10% take advantage of a lower-cost, virtual assistant. However, the adoption of such support is crucial in establishing an efficient and growth-oriented model. By identifying a CRM Manager who can oversee all client relationships, you can now introduce an additional layer of support within your team. This new support role can be dedicated to handling 50% of repetitive tasks, monitoring operations, generating reports, and managing day-to-day functions. By allocating these responsibilities to individuals with a strong attention to detail and a penchant for organization, you can optimize the productivity and effectiveness of your team. This shift in task distribution does not Growing the top teams and Gross Commission Income (GCI) in a brokerage is a complex yet rewarding endeavor. It requires a strategic approach that leverages technology, shared resources, efficient lead management, personalized communication, and thoughtful cost allocation. By focusing on these key areas, brokers can create a support platform that is segmented and focused across teams, roles, and tasks, empowering sales leaders to excel.
The real estate landscape is ever-changing, and the adoption of a segmented and focused support system is not just a trend but a necessity. By embracing efficiency and growth through the methods outlined above, brokers can position themselves and their teams for success in a competitive market.
Key Points Summary
Embrace Technology: Expand your tech stack and adoption to create a strong baseline. Utilize a top CRM Manager to manage all teams and allocate costs effectively.
Utilize Shared Resources: Creation and utilization of shared resources like Virtual Assistants and CRM Managers can streamline operations and improve efficiencies.
Manage Leads Efficiently: Standardize activities, messaging, and lead flow to create a high-performing system. A strong CRM manager can significantly contribute to GCI.
Consolidate Lead Generation: Integrate various lead sources into your CRM system and adopt a scalable mindset. Segmenting this process maximizes the capture of opportunities.
Personalize Client Communication: Improve client segmentation and create personalized communication plans to foster stronger connections and increase engagement.
Implement Cost Allocation Methods: Consider various approaches to cost allocation, such as result-based, usage, equal, or hybrid methods, to align with team production and needs.
Create a Bandwidth of Support: Embrace efficiency and growth by identifying support roles that handle repetitive tasks and day-to-day functions, allowing the sales team to focus on what truly drives results.
By implementing these strategies, brokers can not only grow their top teams but also significantly impact their GCI. The path to success lies in understanding the unique dynamics of each team and applying a segmented and focused approach that resonates with their specific needs and goals.