How The Best Real Estate Teams Use CRMs To Set Goals And Succeed

August 2, 2016

Esther Lee

In the past, small mom-and-pop real estate teams were able to keep up with the general pace of their markets and the industry. But today, consumer needs and demands have shifted and require far more.

Hence the widespread popularity of growing a real estate team. We have seen that as the size of the team grows, so does the need for defined processes under a unifying system.

The best real estate teams are managed by good leaders who create and regulate the systems necessary for teams to thrive, and set strategic goals that unite team members under a shared vision of success. A great team isn’t simply born into existence. It takes a great leader willing to invest in and develop his people and systems in order to manage a successful team.

Why Should I Set Goals?

Would you embark on a long road trip without first mapping out your route? You would probably get lost. Trying to run a business without clearly defined goals is like driving aimlessly without a clear sense of direction. Having just a “general idea” will either get you lost, or take you an unnecessarily long time to reach your destination.

To avoid the headache, lost opportunities, and wasted money, start off every year by “mapping out” your goals to determine where your business is headed.

road trip

How To Set Tactical Goals

BoomTown client Reed Moore has become one of the nation’s top real estate professionals by setting smart goals for himself and his team. When he sets out to define goals, he starts by asking himself three important questions:

1. What do I want?
What is the overall goal that I want to achieve as a business owner?

2. What can I do?
Take into consideration what is actually possible. You want your goals to be reasonable and realistic. If you can’t take actionable steps toward achieving your big goal, then it is not strategic to your business growth.

3. What do the people want?
What are the agents’ personal goals? Make sure their goals align with your overarching business goals. Because if they don’t…”you may need to make new hires,” advises Reed.

Wondering how to determine what your annual production number should be? A place to start is by setting a reasonable minimum number for each individual agent’s goal, and basing the team goal on the presumption that all your agents will hit their minimum.

Track, Measure, And Stay Accountable To Your Goals

Many of our clients will sit down with their team at the beginning of every year to complete a goal setting exercise. This transparency makes it easy to see how individual goals work to support the larger business goal.

But setting goals means nothing if there is not a system in place to track progress and keep everyone accountable. The key is to monitor your numbers regularly — daily, weekly, and monthly — and then adjusting as needed.

Craig Reger monitors his team’s progress and tracks their results with BoomTown’s accountability dashboard. These reports give him a top down overview of his team’s numbers, so he can adjust as needed to reach his overarching company goal.

“Our goals drive our activities. If we are off-target for our goals, we course-correct our activities until we are back on track.”

Another way to monitor your team’s goals is through the use of a Daily Activity Report. Agents can use this report while prospecting to track their activities throughout the day, such as the number of dials made, appointments set, contracts written, etc.

Along with the reports in the CRM, these Daily Activity Reports can also be a good tool for your one-on-one meetings with each agent, acting as a guide to help navigate through their struggles and areas for improvements

Watch: Maximizing Your Accountability Tools

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Great Leaders Motivate Great Agents

It is the responsibility of the team leader to develop the people on their team and keep them working together smoothly. A good leader can greatly benefit agents by giving them training, helping them overcome obstacles, and providing accountability on proper lead follow-up in a competitive industry.

BoomTown and Real Trends recently released a study compiling interviews with several real estate professionals, to determine what makes real estate teams successful. One factor was the effect of good leaders who manage their agents well. One survey participant responded, “The strength and success of a team are strongly dependent on the directions, goals, and leadership of the leader.”

[ Download the full study: Real Estate Teams Playbook ]

Good leaders provide support through accountability and pushing team members to reach their professional and personal goals. When team goals are met on the Duncan Duo team of RE/MAX Dynamic in Tampa, Florida, Andrew Duncan rewards his entire 40-person team with an all-inclusive trip to destination cities across the United States. The whole team is motivated to reach their goals because everyone benefits from the rewards. Last year, the Duncan Duo team averaged 28 transactions per sales associate and earned an all-inclusive trip to Los Angeles.

This type of incentive is a form of actionable accountability that motivates team members to not only achieve the goals they set, but also reach their full potential.

Manage Your Entire Team With One System

The Real Estate Teams Playbook mentions that lead management goes hand-in-hand with lead generation. Therefore, when starting a team, it is worth investing the time and energy into developing a solid system for lead management.

Many technology platforms available today, such as BoomTown, are geared toward team use, and are great for teams to streamline their lead management.

Real Estate CRM

Reed Moore agrees that having a central CRM is essential to manage a team of successful agents. “When your team is just two people, you can support each other and fill in where it’s needed. But as your team get bigger, it becomes imperative to create processes, infrastructure, and an organized system.”

Running everything through one system helps in managing a growing number of people. “I believe in using only one system so that everyone is speaking the same language,” says Reed. “If we all speak the same language, when one person encounters an obstacle, we can collectively help them overcome it.” Clear communication is the best tool to cultivate team culture because it keeps team members connected, focused and accountable to one another.

[ Increase Your Real Estate Team’s Efficiency With Reed Moore’s Leadership Approach ]

If you’re using more than one system, tracking can become inefficient. “The more systems you have in place to track, the more room you have for error. As your business grows, you’re going to have more moving parts with more people handling those parts. Tracking numbers in different places and increasing human interaction widens the margin of error and miscommunication.”

Reed’s solution? Build with the future in mind to avoid having to “stop-and-go” to deal with these problems as they pop up. When making big decisions regarding technology, reporting, or processes, develop a plan and incorporate the systems that will work for you whether you’re doing 20 transactions a year or 500 transactions a year.

Keep Agents Accountable And Successful

No matter how fancy or advanced the technology you choose to implement is, people are what make a system like BoomTown truly effective. So hiring the right people, and managing them successfully, are important to growing your business.

BoomTown can help your team achieve your goals as long as you build a culture around accountability and set clear expectations. Our Accountability Dashboards give team leaders a bird’s-eye view as well as a macro-level view of who is following up with their leads and who is not.

By providing quality leads and the tools to manage them, as well as comprehensive reporting to keep agents accountable to their goals, systems like BoomTown are the juggernaut behind maintaining a successful and productive real estate team while continually growing your business.