Increasing Agent Productivity With a ‘Sales Manager’ Coaching Style

As a manager, team leader or broker, your No. 1 task is to help, support and lead your agent’s weekly and daily success. Yes, you also help with contract questions, but your primary job is to drive listings, sales and revenue.

The speed of the leader (you) determines the rate of the pack (your sales associates). How effective are you at impacting your agent’s listing and sales success? How valuable are you to their success? Do you add value in a way that helps them grow their business? I often ask managers if they were to go back into sales, how many of them would be top agents? A sales manager is meant to drive, create and increase the sales team’s success. You should have monthly goals for your team and then help them achieve them.

Training, coaching and developing your agents every day is a great way to be impactful, and this will be your best retention and recruiting strategy. Here are some proven ways to communicate value and impact your agent’s success to drive listings and sales:

Be a sales-driven manager. Get rid of the admin duties and focus on your agents’ listing and sales activities. Every time you see them, ask them what they are working on. Do they have a listing appointment yet for the week and how you can help them get one? Leave the admin duties for your administrative support staff to handle. Focus on increasing sales efforts for your team and amazing things will happen for your agents and your team.

Have monthly goals for listings and sales and share them with your sales team. Not having a goal means you are just willing to see “what happens” instead of “making it happen” with purpose and intention. What are your monthly listings goals and sales goals? Make it a point to communicate these to your agents so they know where the office is going. They each contribute to your monthly goals. When they know you have goals, they want to achieve their own. Everyone wins and you create a flywheel in your office that creates loyalty and high producing, thriving sales team members.

Hold training workshops in your office to coach agents on how to use your exclusive marketing tools to convert more leads. Your agents need to hear things seven times, seven different ways to retain the information you are sharing with them. Hold a hands-on workshop showing them how to use your exclusive technology tools to create more listing and buyer opportunities. Tell them to bring their laptops to the workshop so they can send out ecards or posts to their spheres during this workshop. Agents will typically carve out the time to do the things they know they need and should do, but may never actually do it. By holding this workshop, they will be forced into creating opportunities and appointments from these efforts. 

Plan and deliver impactful sales meetings that add value. Agents need direction, motivation and recognition. They get that at sales meeting. Leverage your sales meetings to drive sales. Eliminate admin announcements and focus on how to increase listing and buyer opportunities for your team. Educate, motivate, inspire and coach them to a victory during your sales meetings.

Engage with your agents daily and weekly. Make it a point to see or speak to your agents daily or at least once a week. Reach out via text or phone call or stop by their office and ask them “Do you have a listing appointment this week yet?” Text, message them on Facebook or create a private Facebook group for your agents where you can inspire, motivate and keep them on top of their game daily. Your leadership and your connection to them will create powerful and positive relationships, communicating to them that you care about their business results and success and that you are their partner for success.

Implementing these strategies will take your leadership skills to the next level and create a winning sales team that is looking to you for guidance, direction, support, sales skill improvement, recognition and so much more. You can create amazing, month-after-month success for your agents by being the energetic force that helps them succeed.

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Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 25 years of experience in real estate, Johnson now shares her proven methods through coaching, consulting and keynote speaking services nationwide. She is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour and is the Official Real Estate Coach for McKissock Learning and Real Estate Express. Johnson has been named a RISMedia Real Estate Newsmaker in 2020 and 2021 as an Industry Influencer and Thought Leader.