A real estate listing business owner explains how they stepped back from daily operations by building systems and delegating to their team. They share the processes they created to reduce their own involvement in sales and operations while keeping the business running.
So the next step for me, you know Keely, she actually was friends with Keith and Keith is still with with me today. He came on the team December 2011. He was my first listing listening specialist. My thought was that he was hired. I was out of the listing side. I made a critical mistake. I didn't train Keith properly in sort of the process of how we did listings and really how to handle high volume listing, a high volume listing environment. And so I, I literally let him. I think it was 105 appointments in a three to four month period and the results weren't good. So I had to regroup with Keith and luckily he was loyal and stayed with me. And it was a weird time for us because I basically took him off appointments. I jumped back in, I built the process out where it was more repeatable. The same process that I taught you on already. So now we had the repeatable process, put Keith back into the process. And then I hired my second listing specialist in the middle of 2012. Finished out that year with 248 size. We went from 178 to 248. It wasn't bad considering the roller coaster ride with you know, pulling Keith out and trying to, you know, figure out that, that part of it. And at that point I think I have one listing go over into January of 2013. It was my highest price point, closing at 1.2 million which in our market is a big deal, that price point. And then I would not work with a client again. So it's really, really cool to look back and achieve that. The last sort of step here is, you know, at that point I was really the sales and operations manager. I was obviously the owner, general manager. But two roles, two basic functions I served in the company was sales and operations. And so true to my vision of building a truly built out in real business, a sustainable business, it was time to find more talent. I really didn't realize, I sort of forgot that Keely had a background. She managed a bunch of new home, new home developers. I think she had 60 people under her. You know, we redesigned her role to handle part time sales manager duties and to continue on as our inside sales agent. And to this day she still takes all of our incoming seller calls and books listing appointments. For our team we added buyer isa. Here's another thing, super critical. I think I may have covered this already, but it was in 2012 at some point late in the process after we already did a bunch of sides, 250 sides. That's when we hired a buyer ISA. My first buyer ISA. So there's this push now where everyone I know is bringing ISAs into their business. And there's nothing wrong with it because it definitely works. But usually what I see is that agents are abdicating the responsibility of lead generation or lead conversion or whatnot, instead of being a true master at it and having agents that can do their own lead conversion and then bringing in an inside salesperson as a value add for agents. So we already had a fully productive team when we brought in an inside salesperson. So that's something to really consider. I brought in a few raw talent buyer agents who fit perfectly into our plug and play system. Two agents came in in like March, April, time frame in 2013 between the two of them. One was on a team for a year and didn't sell a single property. And one was new to general brokerage sales but had her license. They sold 60 properties between the two of them. So it was literally plug and play. The leads and the process and the training was already in place. I really needed an office manager and that's what I set out to get, kind of just somewhat to handle. So the inner workings of the office. Got a bunch of resumes, interviewed a dozen people and I found Cherie. So Cherie, she started out as an office manager less than six months. You know, she really is not just top talent, but really gets, you know, I've. I've been blessed to find people that truly buy into the vision that we're creating and they see the opportunity as I do less in the company. There's no animosity about that. They see it as an opportunity for them to do more and then to truly have an impact on a substantial business. So really hit the jackpot with that higher. You know, she is in the process of becoming our bic. So to handle all of our issues. You know, she gets involved in a lot of client issues now as operations manager, it's a really, really true blessing to find Cherie and to redesign Keely rolls. So that was gave me the ability to replace myself. And that's when sometime in 2013. I forget when was when. I went down to two days and then one day a week. And now if I'm in town, I go to the office on Tuesdays. So I ended 2013 with about 320 sides, approximately 75 million of volume. Really, really great year. We, I think Our goal was 82 million. 80. 82 million of volume, 340 sides or something. So we missed our goal, but still a really good year, considering that I. I removed myself from the business and I did no production.
