How to Communicate Your Value So Clearly They Can’t Ignore You

Sherri Johnson (00:00)

We do this a lot with top agents. We just tell the agents, you're so great. And what they really want, I mean, they want the atta boys, the atta girls. They want the recognition.

But they also want value. They want us to say, hey, you're spending a lot of money. Let's sit down and talk about an ROI on some of the things you're spending money on that we already have as a company. I remember sitting with an agent and in 15 minutes, he went from saying, I hate sales meetings and I don't go to them. I said, okay. I said, you'll love to come to mine, but okay. And he said, I do what I do here. And the manager doesn't leave me alone.

managers have always left me alone. said, okay. And I'm listening to him, right? And within 20 minutes of that conversation, I had cut his expenses by 20 % because he didn't realize all of the duplication of systems and tools. had a team and he was off on an island as so many of our agents do, and they're so independent, right? They're running their operation, which is great, but we have to guide them and help them. We literally cut his expenses at 20 minutes by 20%.

And he was like, this is unbelievable. And he started coming to my sales meetings and then he was at my sales meetings every week because they had value. So when we look at our agents and we think about the ways we communicate to them, we all love new agents because they do what we tell them to do. We can say, hey, this is how you do the business. And we lay it out and we say, do this and it'll be successful. And our job, our number one job is to get them a new listing in the first two weeks or

30 days that they're with us and get them a sale in the first two weeks or 30 days that they're with you. That's your job, right? We're supposed to be telling them, hey, let's get your first 10 listings and not act like that's some crazy concept. I I did three and a half million dollars my first year and that was in like 1996 and that was a lot then and I mean, it still kind of is.

I laugh because I remember my manager telling me, you might only make 20 grand a year. And I said, well, that's not happening. So we have people that really want to do the business. And we have to them up and running quickly. We love new people because we can talk to them and basically direct them a little bit better than some of our other agents. Our seasoned agents, we have to be careful with because a lot of them are set in their ways. They are the heart and soul of the office. They've been there forever.

there and there sometimes they were there before you as the leader. What I always do with seasoned agents is I just I say here, we've got a buffet. Someone told me this, one of my seasoned agents said the greatest thing about Sherry's coaching and training is that it's like a huge buffet. Take what you want and leave the rushes and try to change how you do business. And I really don't. I'm just going to give you a lot of tools today as a sales manager and leader to help you ⁓ perform at a higher level. But our seasoned agents, you know, a lot of them

could increase by five to 10 units a year. And a lot of them would like to. And maybe if you said to them, I'd like to put you on a coaching plan or a business plan and let's get you 12 more units next year. And that comes out to about $86,000. Would that be nice? And they're like, yeah, of course it is without having to work much harder. And then our top agents, again, they need recognition. They need support.

but we need to add value to them or they will see us as not valuable and they will go somewhere else, right? That's the problem with, I think, and when I look at the management of our industry, ⁓ no one was taught, it's not like we get taught ⁓ how to become a sales manager and that we need to drive sales, right? If you were gonna go back into sales, I always ask this question, it's probably on a slide, ⁓ would you be a top agent?

If the answer is yes, then you're a sales driven sales leader. The speed of the leader determines the rate of the pack. So the speed of the leader, you, determines the rate of the pack, your team. And so it's so important to be that front runner. You're out there. Everyone is following you, or they're not, or they're not. And in offices where I see no growth or I see hard

time recruiting or a lot of breakage, maybe with loss of agents leaving because they're just not getting the value that they're looking for. ⁓ And so an office is a direct reflection of its leader. The office personality takes on literally the personality of the leader. If you've read Good to Great, which most of you probably have, ⁓ talks about, Collins talks about the flywheel. When you put this flywheel concept into place,

You will have thriving, high performing teams. You'll be able to recruit and attract more people to your office, new agents and offices down the street, agents from across the street. And you'll be able to keep your agents because they love the environment that they're in. So again, you are setting the tone. We set the tone with everything.

I'm going talk about recruiting first and then talk about sales meetings and coaching your agents and adding value. So in our adding value in recruiting, most of us, we get either told or we set our own goals for how many people we're going to recruit each month, each quarter or for the year. And if you don't have a focus on recruiting, it's not a top priority.

in some offices that may not be your job, but in most, feel the sales leader and the sales manager's job is to attract and bring in new talent. And so when you look at hiring new agents and hiring co-broke agents from other companies, we call them co-broke ⁓ experience agents. You have to have a plan, right? And when you monetize the value of those 20 people that you're going to hire and you look at what's the

What's the company dollar that would hit my bottom line, right? I want you to think about it that way. Like if you were to take a look at your roster right now and go down the roster, this is a great exercise for you to do. And I do this with companies all over the place that I help and I help with consulting and coaching their management teams. If you look at just the rate of attrition, sometimes there's an office that

the attrition rate is really high, right? And you might go down your roster and say, who's not gonna be here in three years? Who is on the retirement track, right? Their production is going down, they're traveling more, they might have a second house somewhere. They are going from eight million to six to four, right? And that's okay because that's their life and their choice.

But what we have to do as the sales manager leader is to replace that volume. And so I want you to look at your list and say, do I have enough recruits coming in? Growth for future sustainability starts by looking at how many of these folks are going to be here in five years, three years, and even a year. And then that'll tell you too where you have to look at how many people I should be recruiting. I don't think one a month is

I don't care what size office you have, I just think one a month is kind of low. That's just my opinion. But again, it comes with, do I have a plan? Do I have a strategy? Do I know how I'm going to go after these new agents and how I'm going to add value and how I'm going to really radically differentiate the way that I recruit when I'm speaking to experienced agents that are 3 million or 20 million.

or a $50 million agent that you want to recruit. So ⁓ the benefits we know with recruiting, recruiting solves everything, but I believe top line revenue solves everything. ⁓ And we can get top line revenue from two ways, right? We get it from recruiting new and experienced agents into our offices. And then we also can grow top line revenue by coaching the agents you already have, increasing their production.

increasing their company dollar. Okay. And I have this whole concept called build the middle. I'll share with you in a few minutes. So we know that all of this recruiting drives more listings, more sales, obviously more revenue, mortgage, title, ⁓ orders, market share, a strong retention. And we have a very strong culture at that, right? The office has a really amazing culture and people want to be there. People want to be there. ⁓ It's interesting when you're recruiting a lot of people,

either new or experienced people, the messaging that comes with that, and I don't think we capitalize on that enough to share who's joined us, right? When we say, look at all the people who have joined us, and we make a big deal of that at the sales meeting, we talk about it and put information out or a testimonial. Why did you join? $15 million agent joins your office. That's a big deal. Every office in the area, if your company should know that someone did that, right?

Because what the message that it's sending is that everyone's coming here, right? Everyone's joining us because we're the winning team. And that's just how you build a winning culture and a winning team. ⁓ When you can recruit, you when you look at recruiting, like listing appointments, OK, I mean, it really is. You're selling our brand. You're selling your value, right? You're actually sharing with people ⁓ why they should choose you, why it's in their best financial interests.

to work with you and we have to be able to articulate that, right?

So once you can create that value and demonstrate it and solve their problem, right? They have a pain point, you solve their problem. And now they're thinking, I don't have this at my company. Why do I stay here? It's not just about, I like the broker or I like the people here. It's costing me money. And so when you use words and phrases on purpose, like

better strategies to recruit people. Like how many leads do get at your current company? Do you have to pay a referral fee on those? How much income did your manager help you increase in the last year? Here's what we do. We grow people. We actually do business planning. We do coaching. We have an intensive coaching program. We bring in coaches. have speakers, whatever you do in your offices. But what do you do, right?

I work with you individually, I add value and I increase your business year after year. That's what I'm gonna do with you. You start a team, I'll help you. You wanna just get an assistant, I'll help you. You just wanna double your business, I'll help you. We have the systems, the solutions and I will personally do that with you.