The germination of this management article came from my friend John McFarlin of Coldwell Banker Commercial United Realtors, one of the most successful, if not the most successful manager of commercial agents in the Coldwell Banker Commercial franchise.

In a recent conversation with John, he briefly related a conversation he had in Cabo San Lucas with a group of other successful CBC managers at their annual retreat.  I shall try to expand a bit on John’s strongly held beliefs about the three things he feels are vital for everyone’s success. Let me interject that John feels strongly that the agent’s success is also his success because to him it’s all one team.  In past conversations with John, he has made it clear that much of his philosophy about managing agents is drawn from his experience coaching High School football in Florida and college football in Oklahoma, which is very much a team effort. Florida and Oklahoma football is also a very serious matter, as you may know.  

John related that there are three things that must be continuous and ongoing for the team to succeed. They are: perceived value, having fun and getting better. This is a deceptively simple statement. Let’s take it apart and look at it carefully.

The first part, relating to perceived value has two components. The first is that the clients must perceive the agent’s value to them. That means that the agent must possess true expertise. Expertise is defined as knowledge, skill and experience in a particular field.  This means market knowledge, which in commercial real estate may not be limited to just the local market, but often means regional, national or even international market knowledge. Of course, it also means product and industry knowledge, such as the language and terminology related to the industry. Every industry has its own unique language and agents must have command of that language. They must have mastery of the terminology of the various product types and their construction to understand the features and benefits of the properties. And they must have the skills to ask the right questions to accurately assess the client’s needs and wants and be capable of laying out a clear path to achieve their objectives.  They must have some experience, which for newer agents is the biggest challenge. To overcome limited experience, they must develop an in-depth understanding of transaction anatomy, meaning that they understand all the steps in both sales and leasing transactions. And they must be able to accurately relate those steps to their clientele. They must also know all the steps to competently represent owners, buyers and tenants. Whew, that’s just the first part of perceiving value.

Not only must the client’s perceive the agent’s value to them, the agent must perceive their own value or they will always struggle in the business. In order for the agents to perceive their value to clients, they must be confident in their capacity to meet the needs of their clientele. Any uncertainty about one’s core competency is always telegraphed to the prospective client at a subconscious level and results in the failure to secure the prospects loyalty by agreement early in the relationship. Agents then compensate by throwing services at prospects, hoping to gain their loyalty. This sometimes works, but as we all know, more often fails. If repeated, this cycle lowers the agent’s perception of their value and a downward spiral has begun. Well-developed agents perceive the value they bring to the clientele, and as a result they aggressively pursue and secure more and better real estate accounts. The opposite is true of under-developed agents. They avoid more challenging real estate assignments; they hunker in the bunker to avoid getting wounded in the field.

John’s belief that we must have fun in our business is also a deceptively simple concept. One could interpret this to mean that we need to take our agents on more outings, such as golf trips, retreats, lunches, dinners and other fun events. And, I do know that John recognizes and rewards the successes of his agents frequently and in fun ways. But I think what he also means is that in order for the agents see this business as fun, they need to be at ease with it. It needs to flow smoothly the vast majority of the time. It’s no fun continuously fighting fires in deals or lurching from crisis to crisis. It’s certainly no fun to watch a deal cave in. An early mentor of mine told me that real estate clients want transactions that are smooth, clear and comfortable. Interestingly, when I made it my objective to make my transactions smooth, clear and comfortable for the clients, I found myself enjoying the business much more. It was more fun, a lot more fun. Since John believes his agents are a team. For the team to be having fun in the business, every player must have a well-developed capacity for doing the business. We all want to play on the winning team, so it s paramount that everyone is capable of delivering on the success of the team’s goal of being the best company in the market service area.

The third operating principle that John related is that we must get better.  It is inherent in human nature to want to thrive, not merely get by. While it is true many people devolve to a place where just getting by becomes the norm, this is rarely true in highly competitive businesses like commercial real estate. Agents that devolve to this low level are washed out of the business very quickly by its commission-only structure. A commitment to continuously improving our expertise, meaning our knowledge, skills and experience, is the prerequisite to high-level success.  The trap is that most agents and to a large degree, the companies they work for, spend all their time working in their business for clients and fail to budget time to work on their business for themselves. The result is that they reach a plateau of production and cannot see any way to improve their income without applying a greater effort. Trying to significantly improve production by applying a greater effort when one is already working full time is ludicrous. What needs to happen is that they need to become more effective.  That means getting better in a whole host of ways. For example, becoming more effective at generating leads, converting leads into clients and improving our services delivery systems will increase effectiveness without greater effort. In fact, often less effort is required when systems are implemented because many indirectly productive aspects of the business can be reduced or eliminated, outsourced, automated or delegated. None of these things will occur without a strong commitment to getting better. 

John’s seemingly simple philosophy, of perceiving the value, having fun and getting better, struck me a being fundamentally correct. I also like it because, like any good mission statement, it’s easy to commit to memory and can become a mantra. I know that John uses it as both a management mantra and his mission statement for managing his agents. 

I’d like to thank John McFarlin for his friendship, inspiration, support for our programs and his permission to expand on his management philosophy in this article. ."

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Robert McComb: Bob McComb is the co-creator of TopDogs.com. At Top Dogs we are committed to helping you help your agents to perceive their value, have fun and get better. If you want to build a winning team, call us at 888 894 5772 or visit www.tdogs.com