Subscriber-Only Bonus: Why To Stay in Sales Production

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Here's your host, Ethan Butte. If you've watched or listened to three or six or 12 or even more episodes of Real Estate Team OS, two things. First and foremost, thank you. Your time and attention are so valuable and it's greatly appreciated. It's an honor to bring you something that you'd find helpful and, and practical enough that you would invest that kind of time into these conversations. And of course, I'm so appreciative to all the folks who spend time in conversation to create these episodes, sharing their best practices, their successes, their failures, and so much more. So first is, thank you. Second is you may have observed that some of the same themes and topics come up in many or even most of these conversations. And one of those is sales production. Whether, when and how to leave sales production. Of course, on a team building journey, most folks start as full time sales professionals and then they're still selling, typically managing listings and bringing staff and agents alongside them. It may just be one or two people, it could be several people. And at some point on that journey, the divide between being of high service and value to clients and being of high service and value to your staff and your agents creates a lot of demands on you, such that you opt to leave sales production and go into leading, managing, building the organization on a full time basis. Now, that's not the right decision for everybody. So what you're going to get in this episode, first is a clip on the idea that there is no merit badge for leaving sales production. It is a perfectly viable decision for you and your business and your clients and your staff and your agents and your family to stay in sales production. Then you're going to hear from four folks who've opted to continue selling while they're building their team and building an organization. So that's what you're gonna get in this episode. I want you to pay attention to three themes in particular reasons to stay in sales production. The first is your own personal income. The second is the profitability of the organization, of the team, of the company. The third is to stay in touch with exactly what's going on in the market so you can coach and guide and manage and lead your agents more productively. Being directly in touch with what's going on in the market. This is a decision that every team leader faces. It's when you face more than once, you may make a decision. I'm going to stay in sales production. But at some point things change and you say, gosh, maybe I should actually leave and be a full time leader, manager, organization builder, visionary, et cetera. Or you might have left production and because of circumstances decided maybe I should return. So I hope that a roundup episode like this, by the way, I'm doing one on how to leave sales production successfully featuring seven people who have left sales production and tips that they provide about that. But again, here you're going to get a kickoff with Sunit Aggarwal on the idea that there is no merit badge for leaving sales production. And the key thing to look for is profitability.

What a team leader has to really realize is especially if they want to be out of production, which I think people do and they always have. Always for the wrong reason, right? I just want to get out of a production. It's like a merit badge. And the reason I can talk shit about it is because that, because that was me two and a half years into being a realtor. Oh, I need to get out.

I'm out.

You should really work in the team until. And take splits like an agent on your team until that money is until you don't have to do that, right? Like, that's how you stay really profitable. What's your profit margin? What's your cost of goods sold? And you know, many teams out there don't know their cost of goods sold because they, you know, like, and I, I had a traditional bookkeeper forever. And not to toot my own horn, but our bookkeeper at Reside really opened the light about a lot of this stuff because you know, you just get the checks, checks from the brokerage. They're not counting cost of goods sold, but ours do. And like what, where's your profit margin? Like, have you thought about that? No, I just don't want to sell any more houses.

So no, you do not have to leave sales production to be a successful and accomplished team leader and company builder. It's not a necessary part. There's no merit badge for doing so. In addition, it's not a safe thing to do until you have a really good handle on your profit margin. And so in order to create or preserve profitability, you may choose to stay in sales production. In addition, though it may be something you really enjoy and it might be a strength of yours. That's what we're going to hear from Phil Gerdes who left sales production and then returned to it based on self Awareness, his own productivity and profitability, as well as the productivity and education of his team members.

For me, it was a test, like, can I leave production? And ultimately I could. But what I found was I left production for the wrong reasons. I left production because it seemed. It seemed cool. It seemed like what everyone was doing, right? If you're a team leader, if you're a broker, leave production. Count on your team. But again, that wasn't where my strength lied. My strengths lied in, like, I was just speaking on conversion. It was with working with the clients and helping people to achieve their goals and their dreams. So why, why did I leave production in the first place? Right? And then it was funny because as soon as I got back in production, not only was I back in production, but what I noticed is I got out of production way too early. Not for me, but for my agents. Because once I got back into production, guess what they did? They got back into production, right? It was like speed of the leader and follow the leader. So I found that me focusing my attention on how do I convince them? Or I say convince, but other people say train them, right? But ultimately it's how do I convince them to do the thing. I found that if I stopped trying to convince them and I just did it and I showed them by doing it, they would want to do it. And when they wanted to do it, that's when I circled back around and said, okay, let me support you. Since you want it, let me support you in doing it and achieving what you're looking for.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. Self awareness and of course, the power of modeling. We can teach, coach, train as much as we want, but modeling it is a critical part of being successful in any of those efforts. Agreed. I left sales production for the wrong reason. I did it too early. And when I got back into production, my agents got back into production. Great take from Phil Gerdes. And by the way, that full episode with Phil Gerdes as well as the one with Melissa Sofia, who you're about to hear from, are both fubcon sessions. We recorded them live in person, sat down in the same room together at fubcon in Los Angeles. And you'll see those marked in your podcast player as fubcon session at the end of the episode title. There's a dedicated YouTube playlist to all of the Fubcon sessions. I think there are 20 plus of them in total, so be sure to go check those out. Next up, as I mentioned, is Melissa Sophia. And you're going to get this. I want to stay in touch with what's going on in the market so that I can be of higher value to my agents. In addition though, she shares what types of listings she holds onto and no, she doesn't just cherry pick the two million dollar listings. So here's Melissa.

You know, it's my job to be the visionary. It's my job to understand the pulse of the market and to teach that to my agents to prepare them for the future, to help them shift their communications. You know, are we focusing on buyers now? Are we focusing on sellers now? What's going to happen next? What do I need to learn and understand so that I can help my clients and do the, you know, be the best of what I, what I can be. But at the same time, I'm still in active production and I think a lot of people in my position typically step very quickly out of active production. But there's kind of a need that I feel is very important because if I can stay in active production and still talk to buyers and sellers, I can better guide my, my agents to understand what they need to do. How to shift your conversations, what's the temperature of the market, what do people need to hear to feel secure right now. And I think, you know, when, when as leaders we start to separate ourselves from understanding that it can hurt our agen because, you know, we can't guide them as closely. You know, you, you better have somebody who is very, very good, as good as you are, to guide your agents in that, in that area if you're not going to be the one to do it.

First of all, I'm hearing I like to stay in production so that I can stay in touch.

Yes.

For my own benefit and for the benefit of the people that I've, you know, brought into this, into this team. So I appreciate that. How do you decide who to work with and who not to like? If we're where I am as far as clients. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, you have a lot of different responsibilities. You have a lot of people who need your time and attention. You have a very high level of service. I'm sure you don't want to too much overstretch yourself. How do you maintain.

It's funny because the question you're really asking is like, do you take the 2 million and over listings or not?

I'm not. Well, I guess, yeah, that's what a.

Lot of leaders in my position would do. We would take the highest, the highest listings. But to be honest, like I, I was on, I was, I was first agent on A mobile home sale last summer. You know, I was. I'm on a listing right now that's at 500, when my median price point in my neighborhood's 1.2. So I am very loyal to my past clients. Like if my past client is.

Yeah.

If it's a past client of mine. If it's an investor of min mine and they're used to my level of service, I want them to know and understand that I'm here. At least I'm watching it, you know, at least I'm watching their text messages, I'm watching what homes they're seeing, and I'm in it. When we're negotiating, I'm calling that agent or I'm making sure that my agent who's working on it with me is asking all the questions, giving the right information.

So it's.

It's less about how to choose and it's more about like, who needs me? Who needs me the most.

I hope you found that three minutes with Melissa Sophia helpful. I especially appreciated not just which listings she continues to take, but also how she stays involved in deals that are important to her because she knows the client really well or she wants to be of help to the agent. Next up, you're going to hear from Ben Bloomley, another gentleman who has opted to stay in sales production in building Seaport Real Estate. And he shares a couple of similar themes with his own twist, including which geographies or how he decides which listings to take. In addition, how this helps agents. But he's talking about it here in the context of a recruiting conversation. Here's Ben Bloomly. Are you still listing properties yourself?

Still do. And that's a great question because a lot of agents that come over always ask me like, hey, because they don't want to go to a firm that has a competing broker. Right. They don't want to ever be competing with me and this and that, which I will never be. But I will promise you I will always be active in some capacity. I think every year I've delegated a lot more different price points, maybe different areas. I don't want to be traveling so much more outside, and I kind of stay focused maybe in certain markets, certain price points, so to speak. But I think it's important for any team owner broker that you really take note of this. I think it's really important that you always stay active in some format. And I say this because it became more apparent during COVID During COVID the entire selling market showings, selling properties interactions, especially for us in Savannah first time ever in Savannah's old, old history, we have been, we were exposed to the masses. We were officially exposed to everywhere in the world. And that was bringing a lot of northerners, west coast peoples, foreigners all over the world were coming here and how you interact and how you negotiate. And so for me, a lot of the implications, a lot of the changes that I bring to light to the agents come from me dealing and constantly being in the know. And I think it's hard. I think it's agents, when you go to look, making sure that your broker is active. And maybe I'm, you know, maybe I'm wrong or not. But I'm telling you, that's the number one thing for me that keeps me on my toes, keeps me in the know, keeps me focused. And so I tell agents, right, because there are agents that ask me that question in the interview process. I look right at him, I said 100%. And you should appreciate that I still sell.

Staying in sales production helps you stay in the know. It helps you stay in touch. This is a theme we've heard throughout. You're actually going to hear it next up with Renee Funk as well. But I appreciate so much how direct Ben is about the value that he can bring agents by staying in production himself. As I mentioned, Renee Funk is up next. She and her husband Jeff have built the Funk collection and they've gone back and forth over the years about whether or not to stay in sales production. She actually puts air quotes on it and redefines it. You're going to love this closing take from Renee Funk to wrap up some thoughts on why you might opt to stay in sales production as a team leader.

So fast forward to being co team leaders of the Funk collection for a number of years being in production. The fund collection was much like a model that you see in many cases where the team leaders were the lion's share of the production in order to keep things moving in a positive direction and remain sustainable. For several years, Jeff and I as co team leaders shared a conversation of what it could look like if we came. Now I put in air quotes out of production. I'm going to get to why I'm air quoting that phrase. We as husband, wife and business partners talked about it for about three years and yet you've mentioned fear. There was hesitancy to what could that mean? What would that look like not only from a financial sustainability standpoint, but also for who we are, what roles we hold, what that could mean. Next for next chapters, who does Jeff want to show up as, as a team leader, who do I want to show up as? And then of course the financial piece. After three years of truly getting intentional at our core about the lanes we wanted to stay in for each of us as we moved into the next chapter, he and I made the decision to conscientiously come out of production. Now why I put air quotes around out of production. I like to define what things mean and I like to get really clear when we use phrases over and over again. And the phrase out of production has been sitting a little bit uncomfortable with me in the two years that he and I have been out of production. Because the reality is we're not really out of production. Our definition as co team leaders has been to redefine what out of production can mean. I'll give you an example. When an amazing fellow follow up boss friend that we have here at fubcon says, Renee, there's a listing in Windermere, Florida that's in Keene's Point, which is our bread and butter neighborhood that we love. And this particular seller wants to work directly with the listing agent. I'm going to serve that customer opportunity. And there are times we still actually are in production. Twofold benefit is number one. We keep our toes in the pond. We're relative. We can walk the walk and understand what it takes from the agent hat being on as compared to the team leader hat on. And the other benefit is, well, sometimes we understand the consumer does want to work with the team leader. How we've redefined out of production though is that at large, every incoming opportunity for business goes to the team. With the exception over the last two years of about 5ish transactions a year. Keeping our relevancy, being able to serve when dear friends and agent to agent referrals pop up, which they do. We're very blessed in that department and making sure the team knows that our goal and our model is to acquire as many business opportunities and help those agents into their next level of greatness. Help them to lift as we climb. Our goal is not to be in production and we measure that by the fact that the team does not need our production to be sustainable. Our team is financially viable and financially sustainable to continue to grow whether Jeff and I do any transactions or not. So it's by choice.

This is your choice. You can run your business, you can build your business however you like. There is no one right way to do it. If someone hands you a playbook and says this is how it's done, it is a gross oversimplification waiting for nuance and detail and circumstance that works for you. Our goal in rounding these clips up and rounding up all these episodes in full is to help you make the next right decision. To help help you make the next right step for you and all of the folks who you've brought around you in your real estate business. I really appreciate the thought and care that Jeff and Renee put into their own decision and redefinition. I appreciate their eye to financial sustainability and the idea that they're doing this because they want to, because it's a benefit to their clients and their relationships and their agents rather than something that they have to do. That may be your circumstance as well. And you may also choose to leave sales production. In fact, I'm doing a parallel episode where I feature seven folks who have opted to leave sales production and what they learned in the process. And in fact some of those were very messy and unsuccessful on the first go, so I hope you enjoy that one as well. And all five folks who you heard in this episode are featured in a standalone fuller length conversation. You can find those in your podcast app. You can find those in YouTube. You can find those@realestateteamos.com you can subscribe to weekly emails with some email exclusive content and some exclusive guest preview so you know what's coming ahead on the show. You can also of course, follow Real Estate team OS on TikTok and Instagram for shorter stuff. I hope you enjoyed this. I appreciate you giving this episode time and attention and I hope that you find these episodes valuable. Take care.

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