Generating and Protecting the Assets of Your Brokerage
Do you keep your money stuffed under your mattress? No, you distribute your personal wealth various places to generate more opportunity to earn more income and to keep it safe. There are many options: stocks, bonds, bank accounts, CD’s, treasury bills, money market accounts, real estate, etc. By distributing your money into different places, you assume various risks that can reap substantial rewards. Paying attention to what we do with our money gives us an active role in growing our net worth and assets.
As a business owner, why wouldn’t we seek various potential sources of revenue for our company? We don’t want all of our eggs in one basket. By solely depending on our agents to bring in all of our business, we are essentially ‘banking’ on one source of revenue.
Most brokerages have some sort of affiliation with escrow, title and mortgage that may directly or indirectly benefit them financially and through service enhancement. But what about other lines of real estate business? Corporate relocation, local affinity rewards programs, rental assistance, senior services, broker to broker referrals and internet leads are just some sources of referrals that can put the broker in charge of company generated business. Consider it an asset to add to your portfolio of business offerings. There are also ancillary services such as moving services, concierge programs and partnerships with utility hook up services to amp up your service offerings and generate revenue.
By generating our own business, we become the one to distribute leads to our agents. It shifts the power from agent to broker. Agents are critical to effectively handle the company generated business, and it creates a partnership that stands on equal footing. They want the business and you need them to service it. Agents are a company asset. Company generated business protects, retains and nurtures that asset. While agents may be considered a company asset, we don’t own them and they can walk out of the door at any moment, so any way we can create a stronger bond to retain that asset is a win.
Brokers have the infrastructure to handle accounts that deliver a volume of referrals and can oversee the service delivery to ensure the quality of the account management is consistent. Sources that can deliver a large quantity of referrals such as a relocation management company, corporation or referral fee based lead aggregator, crave consistency. They want to make one phone call or send one email to one company to deliver a high volume of referrals. They don’t have time to seek out the perfect agent hundreds of times a week, that’s our job. They appreciate a one stop shop.
Having a dependable company generated service center for large quantities of leads gives a broker an opportunity to create a service delivery that is unmatched by other companies. There are tried and true processes that have been learned from successes and failures and repetitive practices that lead to conversion. When something works, it stays in the ‘keep’ column, if it doesn’t, out it goes. Having a service center staffed with people who work on incentive to manage the leads and experienced agent teams create expertise among the staff and agents that doesn’t reflect ego. It’s about whether it works or it doesn’t. They are motivated for success and that equals sales.
So as a broker owner, when looking to the future of where your personal and professional wealth and company growth will come from, think about the opportunity to create a high volume of new opportunities that will generate consistent revenue and be a new source of leads for you and your agents.
“People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.” ~Mary Kay Ash
