WFG News

Building the Team that can Build Your Brokerage

By December 9, 2016 No Comments

When we look at the most successful real estate companies, many of whom are our clients, we are struck by two things. First, they were founded and are managed by exceptional leaders. Second, they are built on the foundation of a good team. One thing the best leaders seem to grasp intuitively is that while they could be members of any number of great teams, they cannot, in and of themselves, be a team. So, they build them. Looking at how the best leaders build their teams is fascinating. We’ve been observing this for some time and will share some insights in this space.

One thing we’ve noticed is that even before the leader begins recruiting, she determines what roles she needs to fill. In some ways, it’s similar to the work we do on the marketing side with buyer avatars. We need to know, in general, all we can about our prospect before we can effectively target our marketing outreach. The same is true for marketing internal positions on the teams we build. Leaders know this, so they determine in advance what they are looking for.

Building a winning brokerage is just like building any other successful company, at the foundational level. The leader must find a team member who can manage the back office, one to handle the finances, someone who can sell your product and offering and someone to handle the legalities involved. Often, a technology executive is a plus and, in our business, we are seeing more interest in a vendor management executive. In some cases, one executive will handle a number of roles, but if the leader hopes to build a national brokerage, it will be important to distribute this work to capable executives.

In every case we can think of, the C-suites of the real estate companies we work with are filled with extremely capable executives, any one of which could be the leader of their own teams. And, that’s part of the secret. As the companies grow, this is exactly what happens.

Leaders that recruit great team members for the roles of the C-level executives they need to form the foundation of their companies do very well. But the leaders who recruit leaders for these positions do better. We’ll tell you why we think that is true and some of the ways they do that in future posts.