When I tell people that the office sales meeting is one of my most valuable tools, I get incredulous looks from brokers, managers and agents alike. Most agents find sales meetings boring and pointless. That feeling is shared by many managers and brokers as well.

I find that the OSM, when run properly, is highly effective for training, retention, and streamlining processes. Consider what can be accomplished at an OSM:

• Educate the agents on sales technique.
• Promote cooperation and teamwork in the office.
• Share market data with your agents so they can share it with their clients.
• Inspire the agents to greater production.
• Stroke the egos of the agents who need stroking.
• Assist in recruiting new and experienced agents.
• Promote your office’s new listings.
• Help secure a listing that the seller hasn’t yet committed to your agent.
• Learn things about your agents that would be difficult to learn otherwise.
• Show a more relaxed and personable side of yourself not often seen in the day-to-day operation.
• Protect yourself from legal pitfalls.
• Share good (and bad) experiences with mortgage companies, inspectors, attorneys and others.

Here’s a guide that will put your OSM on the fast track to success.

Figure Out Your Why

You know why you’re in the business and why you chose to run a brokerage. You teach your agents to figure out their whys as well. Now it’s time to figure out why you have sales meetings in the first place. The bottom line for your sales meetings should be a better bottom line. You accomplish this by using sales meetings to maximize the productivity of your agents and minimize expenses due to turnover, mistakes that could have been avoided and missed opportunities.

Create a System

Now that you know why you want to hold as sales meeting in the first place, it’s time to set up your routine. Meetings involve a little planning, and having a system in place can help streamline the process.

Give yourself enough time to plan. A one-hour meeting takes about 2–3 hours of planning. Yes, that’s quite the chunk of time for a broker or manager who is already busy, but if you commit the time, the effort will pay off.

Keep a file folder on your desk marked “Next Meeting.” As you work through the week, make a note of particular challenges your agents are having, interesting news articles, and other thoughts that will be useful to your team. This way, when it’s time to plan the meeting, you’ll have much of the content already in that file folder.

Hold your meetings at the same place, day and time. Get your agents accustomed to, for example, the first Wednesday of the month at 10 a.m. being ‘meeting time.’ A recurring meeting at the same time and place makes planning easier for all.

Use an agenda template for your meetings. A template simplifies things for you and provides consistency for your agents. Send out a brief from the agenda two days before the meeting. Keep it short and a little mysterious. For example, you might note something like, “I’ll be sharing a visual that earned one of your colleagues a 5-figure commission this month.”

Add in some visuals. Agents will retain more if they see as well as hear what you are communicating with them. A PowerPoint presentation is great for this.

Play up the meeting space. Make sure the energy level in the office is high so the agents know as soon as they walk in this is not a typical day. Uptempo music and a dozen helium balloons are great for this.

Start the meeting exactly on time. Not only are you modeling punctuality, you are showing respect to your agents who arrive on time.

Set Up Your Agenda

An agenda helps you plan, and it also gives your agents an idea of what they can expect from the OSM. Here’s an example of what to include and how to structure your meetings.

Begin with an icebreaker. I start with a question such as “Where were you born?” or “What was your first car?” This gets everyone into the flow of the meeting. It also affords the opportunity to learn something personal about their colleagues.

Make it positive. Start the content section of the meeting with “Great News.” An example might be highlighting an agent or company milestone or welcoming a new agent. This is also a great time to read excerpts from raving fan letters.

Share some tools. You want the agents listening to you, not checking email or texting, so highlighting some tool available to them they may not be using is a great way to focus them on you. I call this section “Tools to Use So You Don’t Lose.’ These tools don’t need to be new; they just need to be effective.

Share the most current market information. I make a point of not only showing the monthly and year-to-date average sales price, but the average days on market, inventory level and mortgage rates as well.

Add in bite-sized updates. The “Administrator’s Minute” provides your administrator the chance to speak to the group about the things they need the agents to do. Likewise, the “Mortgage Minute” is a great opportunity to bring in a mortgage partner to speak for a moment on the state of the industry. I have a marketing services agreement with a local mortgage rep. This minute is when he presents to our office and gets to know the agents.

Introduce your main topic. This is the focus of the meeting and where you spend the most time. While every other section of the meeting should be under 5 minutes, in this section you can go 10 to 15 minutes. If you have a guest speaker, this is where they do their presentation.

A note about guest speakers: Nothing turns agents off faster than a guest speaker trying to sell them something. Before I agree to allow any guest to present at my meetings, I set the ground rule that they are to “teach, don’t sell” in the meetings. They have to provide information that my agents can use in their businesses. I instruct the guest to use the presentation time to make the agents feel good about them, then offer to stay and answer questions after the meeting. That’s how guests leverage meetings into new relationships.

With the meeting drawing to a close, I offer everyone the opportunity to briefly share details about a new or upcoming listing or a buyer whose needs have not been met. Several times, my agents were able to help one another. I then review upcoming events like educational or social events, and of course, the next OSM.

Finally, I conclude the meeting with a bullet point recap of the important points I want them to retain. I also email the slides to all of my agents, whether or not they attended the meeting. For those who did attend, the slides serve to remind them of what they heard and saw at the meeting. For the agents that were not there, it serve to show them what they missed.

If you dedicate yourself to putting on uplifting, vibrant meetings with relevant content, you will quickly see the time you spend on your OSM well worth the effort.

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission

Brokers can’t do it all, especially if they want any kind of work-life balance. Delegating the right tasks to the right people is the key.

More than three decades ago, Leslie McDonnell hired a part-time person to help her with an overload of work.

“It was really scary to let go. I realized if I didn’t delegate, I wouldn’t grow. That’s the biggest thing with delegation. You need to [have] trust,” says McDonnell, EPRO, team leader and associate broker at RE/MAX Suburban in Libertyville, Ill.

Though she initially struggled with loosening her grip on the reins, McDonnell found that delegating to others allowed her the time and space to grow her business and have time for her family.

Delegating is a layered endeavor, as she found out. Ten years after she’d started delegating, a pivotal moment made her realize that, once again, she needed to offload more work to achieve the work-life balance she desired. She was driving her boat with her then-10-year-old son and a friend in tow. The kids were tubing behind the boat, but she had to stop the fun to take a work call. Her son became impatient because she was on the phone so long. He jumped out of the tube and swam back to the boat.

“I knew at that moment this operation needs to change. I was making all this money but [had] no time to enjoy it. It was crystal clear. I hired two full-time people,” she says. “I wasn’t working at my business, because I was busy working in it.”

Why Delegate

In order to capitalize on their strengths, leaders first need to know what those strengths are, and then they need to figure out if how they use their time aligns with what they excel at. If they find that they are focused on tasks that do not maximize their skill set, it’s time to delegate.

“Every day, especially in the real estate industry, there are time challenges, deadlines, due dates, and ever-happening ‘shock collar situations’ that come up,” says Terri Murphy, president and master level coach of Terri Murphy Communications. “So having a resource in place helps keep the operational excellence of efficiency and profitability on track.”

Murphy has written several books, including Terri Murphy’s Listing & Selling Secrets and the forthcoming Smart Women/Smarter Choices – 10 Tips to Work Smarter and Not Harder.

Trust the Process

Many brokers and managers are used to getting the job done on their own. Though they may have mentors or coaches to help them build their businesses, most of the time brokers are focused on maintaining their businesses without much help. Still, delegation can help a broker scale or manage stress. Murphy notes that despite the benefits of delegation, many leaders struggle to trust its outcome, and “in the case of real estate, the broker or manager is ultimately responsible for the outcome or shortcoming,” making it difficult to let go.

Murphy maintains, though, that if a broker can overcome the fear and trust issues, “delegation is one of the most underutilized options many brokers make, especially women.”

What to Delegate

Now that you’re ready to trust the process, it’s time to figure out what to delegate. So you know what can be handed off and to whom, Murphy suggests, first break down tasks into the following categories:

Licensed or unlicensed tasks: By dividing tasks that require a license and those that don’t, you minimize risk. “The Code of Ethics is clear on what can be delegated for unlicensed activities,” she says. Any real estate leader delegating certain tasks should check the National Association of REALTORS® website, which offers a list of State Statutes and Regulations for Unlicensed Assistants in many states across the country. Tasks that generally require a license include hosting open houses, showing properties, interpreting information on listings, titles, contracts and the like, and any task regarding negotiation.

Administrative tasks: These are mostly straightforward, standard tasks, like giving general information on properties. These tasks could also include scheduling meetings, setting up spaces for in-person training sessions or meetings, sending out event reminders, making copies or printing documents, etc.

Marketing: If you’re a brokerage that does not have an in-house marketing team to create graphics, sales sheets, signs and social media posts, outsourcing this kind of work can free a large chunk of time.

As-needed outsourcing: Sometimes, you don’t need extra help all the time, but welcome it on an as-needed basis. Certain busy times or situations call for extra hands. If you’re delivering holiday gifts or have a staffer out on vacation or medical leave, the extra help can come in handy. In many cases, hiring an college student who needs an internship or a contractor for a limited project can make the difference.

Whom to Delegate To, How to Handle Mishaps

When McDonnell first began hiring people to delegate her tasks to, she focused on whether or not she liked their personalities, choosing people who were similar to her. She’s a fan of the DiSC assessment and was trying to find people who matched her characteristic profile. The personality test uses four behavioral characteristics to help people understand how they operate in the world and the workplace: dominance (D), influence (i), steadiness (S), and conscientiousness (C).

“On the DiSC profile, I’m like a dominant social influencer. I’m a really good time,” she says. Though she likes to socialize and have fun and thought having people around her who liked to do the same would make it easy to get along, she realized that finding people with the same personality type wasn’t quite working for delegation, because still nothing was getting done.

Coming to understand that she needed somebody very detail-oriented who could follow instructions, McDonnell hired someone who had a “C” personality. That person has been working alongside her for 20 years now. At first, she was worried about personality clashes, but she quickly learned that her new hire was teachable and helped her stay accountable.

Many tasks can be done without a presence in the office, too. Marketing, accounting and scheduling can all be done remotely in most cases, and a virtual assistant could be the answer.

There are times, of course, when things don’t always go as planned, and leaders need to be open and ready to rectify the issue so it doesn’t happen again. For the times when the delegating goes wrong somehow, that’s when McDonnell chooses open communication to address the issue. “You try not to blame. I take responsibility myself for stuff,” she says. “I blame the situation. My discussion is about where did the disconnect happen.”

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission

As the industry closes in on changes resulting from the Sitzer-Burnett case, agents are looking for guidance, and brokers should be prepared to help.

Real estate is an evolving industry, and it is natural to have questions about how practice changes may impact you and your business. “While the industry adapts to the practice changes following the National Association of REALTORS®’ settlement, it is a wonderful time for brokers to bond with their agents,” says Adorna Carroll, president of Dynamic Directions Inc. and Referrals Only CT LLC. “Agents need the direction, strength and confidence of their brokers.”

Here are some tips to support your team during this transition.

Identify and Share Successful Case Studies

Many states have long required written buyer agreements. In the commercial sector, many practitioners are familiar with offers of compensation not being communicated through an MLS. The point is that for many in the industry, these practices are not new, and they are not scary, because they’ve been a part of the fabric of their businesses for a long time. The industry can look to agents and brokers in those states and markets as guides to help others adjust.

“Those of us who’ve been [using written agreements] for decades feel it’s a non-issue,” says Carroll. “It does not need to create issues for agents, if they have the right skill set and are properly trained.”

Emphasize Adaptability

“Life is filled with choices,” says Lynn Madison, owner of Lynn Madison Seminars “and change is inevitable. You can either wait until the sky falls or change, evolve, and prosper.” Remind agents that the industry has navigated many transitions, including the advent of the internet. “Back then, everyone said we were doomed, would never survive and would go the way of travel agents,” she says.

To highlight agents’ own resilience and skill, point out they’ve likely adapted to other changes throughout their careers. Just like they did in those situations, they’ll be able to pivot as needed in a changing industry, so long as they’re open to it.

Establish Clear Processes

To make the upcoming industry changes easier to navigate, brokerages should set up a process for agents to follow, Carroll advises. Specifically, they should apply the same standards they’ve created on the seller side—detailed presentations, written agreements, representation specifics and compensation specifics—to the buyer side. “Agents like a familiar context in which to do business, so they can free-flow,” she says. “If they don’t have that system to give them context, they’re in unfamiliar territory.”

To standardize the signing process, Carroll provides the following advice when a prospect asks to see a property. First, agents should ask for 20 minutes of the prospect’s time to answer questions and explain their services. During this meeting, the agent should review the process of buying a property and explain the written buyer agreement before asking for a signature. If buyers express concerns, agents can explain how signing is in the buyers’ interest, and a written agreement is required for any MLS participant.

Train Agents to Discuss Their Value

“As with any business, professionals seeking business have to differentiate themselves from the competition,” Carroll says. “There have always been and there will always be different brokerage models and brokerage compensation programs,” Madison adds. “We have dealt with them all these years and will deal with them again.”

All REALTORS® should be able to communicate the value of their experience and expertise to consumers. When agents talk to consumers, they should focus on the big themes that matter to them most, such as a REALTOR®’s ability to reduce stress in a highly complicated, high-stakes transaction; demystify the home buying or selling process; and use their experience to navigate difficult negotiations, write the best offer possible, set the right price for a listing, and help consumers avoid common mistakes—all ultimately saving consumers money and time.

Start Early

To further ease the transition, suggest agents start securing written agreements now, Carroll recommends. Doing so now rather than waiting until the settlement goes into effect is good for the consumer as well, as it sets their transaction up for success. The use of a written buyer agreement ensures that the real estate professional and the buyer have a clear understanding about the value that is being provided and what that equates to in terms of compensation.

Encourage your team to begin with people they know, including current and past clients, friends and family, business vendors, and community members, she adds. “When they’re successful [in getting people to sign], they’ll be less nervous to ask strangers.” Then, celebrate those signings.

Provide the Right Tools

In addition to complying with the mandatory provisions for written buyer agreements, brokerages should make the language in their written buyer agreement simple and understandable, Madison stresses. The document should provide options for the consumer and give both the real estate professional and the consumer the ability to efficiently define the relationship based on the transparent and clear conversation they have when deciding to work together. Ensure that agents are able to explain the options available to buyers and how to communicate the value of an agent.

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission

In most service-oriented industries, professionals typically have to prove themselves before customers sign on. Brokers can help agents explain their value so that it is understood by the customer.

In most service-oriented industries, customers want to work with professionals who can prove they’re up to the task, whatever it may be. Customers want to understand what they’re paying for, and professionals must be able to articulate their expertise. This is—and has always been—true in real estate, but it is especially important now as the industry changes.

Lynn Madison, real estate industry trainer and educator and head of Madison Seminars, notes that consumers seek out agents who can clearly articulate their value. The truth is that articulating value is the norm in service-oriented professions, notes Adorna Carroll, President, Dynamic Directions, Inc. and Referrals Only CT, LLC. Securing written agreements for services rendered is also the norm, she says.

It’s time to regroup and prepare agents so that they can clearly explain their services, expertise and commitment to their customers.

Prep Agents to Highlight What Matters to Consumers

With practice changes on the way, there’s a lot of information for consumers to sift through and agents who are REALTORSâ can serve as a resource.  During sales meetings, trainings and the like, brokers can provide up-to-date information on industry changes, which can always be found on facts.realtor. Likewise, a host of data about local markets and national trends can be found at the local and state associations and from the National Association of REALTORS®, respectively.

National reports might note stagnating markets or falling prices nationwide, but it is more important that an agent understand their local market, because this is what will relate directly to their consumer, and this is the information they should be relaying to the consumer.

Brokers can also set up a system that makes local, real-time data easy to access. Each time an agent sells a home, they use their customer relationship management (CRM) system, an online form they’ve created or a shared spreadsheet to keep track of key details on the sale, suggests Madison. They should record multiple offers (whether they occurred and, if so, the number of offers) and the number of showings. Then, each month, summarize this information in a report. Agents can send these analyses to their buyers, sharing statements like, “of the last 50 transactions our office handled, 42 were multiple offers and 40 of these had more than five offers.”

The stakes are high: Buyers sometimes underestimate the difficulty of finding and securing the right homes—and the value of a buyer’s agent. When agents are armed with the statistics and data that relate directly to their market and they are retrieving facts from the sources, they can help educate their clients.

Give Them Talking Points

Since many buyers may not be aware of the full scope of an agents’ responsibilities before, during and after the transaction, agents need to take a “feature—benefit—sell,” approach during the buyer counseling session or presentation, reminds Madison. This simply means they convey to the customer what they do, how they do it and why it benefits their clients. To help them figure out what that should look like, resources abound.

Brokers can start by providing agents with these core points of value that should be relayed to consumers:

• Agents help reduce stress in a highly complicated and high stakes transaction, likely one of the biggest of a consumer’s life.
• Agents serve as a trusted advisor through the transaction and demystifying the home buying or selling process.
• Agents use their extensive experience to navigate difficult negotiations, write the best offer possible, set the right price for a listing and help consumers avoid common mistakes—all to ultimately help successfully close a transaction, saving consumers money and time.

Brokerages can also evaluate the myriad reasons why agents who are REALTORS® are worth their compensation, provide a monetary value to each of those reasons based on the services offered and provide agents with bulleted lists to reference, advises Carroll.

Maintain Focus on the Buyer

As an exercise in fully understanding their value, agents should write down everything they do for their next three to five buyers, suggests Madison. They should record all tasks, “from the moment they say ‘hello’ to the closing table.” Madison says they should also record how much time each task takes. After all, “how can they tell the buyer how much they’re worth if they don’t know?” she asks.

Another strategy is to flip the script. Most brokerages and agents work on a listing presentation, and now it’s time to prepare a buyer presentation of similar caliber. Madison suggests taking the information given during recent listing presentations and tailoring it for a buyer.

If agents are worried about sounding like they’re bragging, they can focus on how their efforts are of service to the buyer, counsels Madison. “They can say, ‘my job is to find you the right home at the right price and the right terms and get you to the closing table with the least inconvenience possible.’”

Carroll notes that agents should work with the client to determine what they want, need and wish for in a property, and once that’s clear, they should articulate how their services will deliver on those expectations. This helps an agent set the stage for how their services equate to value.

The needs of first-time buyers, investment buyers or experienced buyers vary, and agents would do well to determine how they’ll respond to varying needs. Encourage agents to emphasize different points with first-time versus repeat buyers, explains Madison. With first-time buyers, agents might need to spend more time correcting misinformation and highlighting their negotiating skills. They might also need to bring up strategies for securing a property that doesn’t include additional financial burden.

Meanwhile, repeat buyers often worry about selling their current home before they buy a new one. In those cases, agents can share experiences with coordinating simultaneous closings. To bring that point home, they might mention the reverse contingency clause, which gives sellers enough time to find a suitable replacement home before they move out of their current residence.

Help Agents Rehearse

Agents need to believe in their value, since “no one wants to spend $500,000 with someone who doesn’t have confidence,” says Madison. To help them broadcast self-assurance, encourage them to rehearse their presentation with you or their colleagues. Confidence comes from repetition as much as it comes from belief in oneself. If an agent is confident in their presentation skills, that will translate to the customer.

The loss of a top producer is always a blow, but it’s also an opportunity to learn more about your business and make changes if needed.

If a top-performing agent tells you they’re leaving, don’t panic. The agent who closes 40% of your company’s sales just walked into your office to tell you they’re leaving so they can start their own brokerage. Don’t panic. “Attrition is a natural and unavoidable part of the business,” says Ben G. Schachter, GRI, broker and president of The Signature Real Estate Companies in Boca Raton, Fla., and co-founder and head of sales of TotalBrokerage Software, a sales and management platform for brokers. “If you have no attrition, you’re not doing enough business.”

So, when the inevitable happens, try to navigate the situation with equanimity. If you do, you could possibly make lemonade out of lemons, convincing the agent to stay, gaining insights into your business, solidifying relationships with your agents and maybe even upping your earnings. Here’s how.

Do the Math

“If you lost a $3 billion agent, that would be catastrophic,” acknowledges Steve Snider, managing broker for One Sotheby’s Realty in Aventura, Sunny Isles, and Bay Harbor, Fla. But perspective is important, and logic and a little math go a long way. Most of the time, after you factor in splits, losing one agent doesn’t result in that much of a financial loss, he says.

Stay Positive

Do your best to take the loss in stride without showing excessive emotion. “A leader must always show optimism,” Schachter says. Make sure to model the behavior you want to see in your agents. Refrain from saying anything negative to or about the departing agent, Snider and Schachter agree. “There are plenty of stories of agents leaving and coming back because the bridge was never burned,” Snider adds.

Schedule an Exit Interview

Always aim for an exit interview, Schachter says. That’s a chance for you to understand the agent’s motivation and possibly even convince the agent to stay. Ask why they’re leaving, and really listen to their answer, he says. “Maybe you can offer them an opportunity to develop in their career or the chance to open an office,” Snider says. When one of his top agents told him she was leaving to work with her husband at his brokerage, he suggested One Sotheby’s Realty buy their business. Ultimately, that’s what happened. The decision proved wise for both parties: This agent recently won a $40 million penthouse listing in South Beach.

Even if there’s no opportunity to keep the agent on your team, a well-run exit interview helps you remain on good terms. Chances are, you’ll do deals with them soon, Snider says. Offer to talk through the new opportunity with them and support them if they still decide to leave, he adds. Even if they head to a different brokerage, you can still provide support and mentorship, should they want it.

Finally, if their move is lateral, ask yourself whether it reveals any issues with your business, says Schachter. “Learn as much as you can from them. Their leaving could be a sign of things to come, with other top producers lured away by similar features or offerings.” Maybe it’s a sign you should make some changes.

Consider How to Tell Agents

On an informal one-on-one basis, Snider offers top agents advance notice of significant changes, including departures. It helps alleviate anxiety and gossip. “I’ll say, they’re leaving and here’s why. We spoke about it, and she really wants to be on a new development project, which we don’t have, and that other brokerage has a project in Coconut Grove, where she lives. She is taking the best next step for her business.”

Schachter is always prepared to address the issue with anyone who asks. When you explain the situation to those who inquire, remain confident and focus on your brokerage’s strengths, he says.

Evaluate Expenses

“Part of making money is saving money,” Schachter says. A routine evaluation of your expenditures and whether or not you’re maximizing your use of the resources is always a good idea. You can always monitor your fixed versus variable expenses and shed some variable expenses, he adds.

Take the time to evaluate the resources and amenities you’re providing to your staff and agents, and make sure your team is using them in a way that justifies their expense. If you find that they’re not, consider cutting some things. Maybe you signed a 10-year lease but can cancel some of your technology subscriptions or cut down on mailers and marketing events.

Plan to Make Up Lost Revenue

You need to know what kind of deficit the loss of a top agent creates. Start by evaluating where that agent’s business was coming from. Were you giving them leads? If they were doing relocations or referrals, can you tap into those sources of business? Put a plan in writing that spells out how you’ll recoup that amount over the course of the business year. Again, it’s important to maintain optimism and stay open-minded to the possibilities.

If too much of your bottom line has been wrapped up in a single agent, for example, it might be time to look for new revenue streams. You could return to selling properties yourself, Schachter says, or explore adding ancillary businesses, like title insurance, property auctions or broker price opinions.

“The agent’s departure could create opportunity and conversation,” Snider says. Think about recruiting a new agent or taking stock of your current team to determine who could rise to the occasion. Sometimes, agents who have the potential for stardom are overshadowed by already-established top performers. How can you provide mentorship and resources—marketing dollars, confidence building opportunities and administrative support? What kind of mentorship does the agent need to help them absorb the departing agent’s market area?  

“Maybe,” Snider says, “it’s time to elevate number two.”

National Association of REALTORS®
Reprinted with permission