You can have all the resources in the world, but if you don’t serve your agents and staff and improve your organizational health, your growth will be hindered.
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, says, “Clients do not come first. Employees and your team come first. If you take care of them, they will take care of your clients.”
Derek Linsell, CEO of Apricot Consulting, a well-known organizational health consultancy, says “Culture eats strategy for lunch. An organization can have the finest strategy, complete with action plans, timelines, and metrics but if it’s not supported by their culture, it will likely fizzle out along the way.”
I am reminded of the importance of this in listening to numerous brokerage firm CEOs, whether local, regional or national, and in looking at brokerage performance over the past one, three, five and 10 years. When I look at this data and consider what else we know about these firms, it becomes clear that something other than brand, technology, is at work. Some of the least well-known brokerage firms are among the fastest growing, and they’re not all low-cost brokerage platforms.
Gaining market share
The RealTrends 500 has gained more market share in 2020 than in any of the last 25 years that we have been measur-ing performance. And, it’s not just by a little but 10 times as much market share growth than ever before. When we look at 2020 and the practices and conduct of leading brokerage firms, we see that one of the only major changes that leaders made was to increase outreach to their staff and agents. This was done virtually for many months, of course, but it was done far more frequently with far higher levels of participation than had ever been seen before.
Building relationships with agents and staff, therefore, has now reappeared as an absolute key to growing your business. It’s actually based on evidence; it always has been. Organizational health is key. As Branson points out, taking care of your people is the best way to take care of your clients and customers. What are you doing today to strengthen your culture?