Written by Peter Tran

High-fee production is a must-have ingredient for all real estate salespeople, but it is not the only ingredient.

If your aim is to build a winning real estate sales team, those within must also demonstrate:

• A dedication to training

• A culture of: Client First, Team Second and Individual Third

• Support of the agency’s leadership and direction

• Be coachable

• A willingness to prospect

• An understanding that the leads belong to the company and not the individual

Many high performers can unwittingly develop into problematic salespeople. Due to their results, they believe this gives them the authority to place unreasonable demands on you, the principal or begin to alter their commission splits and allocation of support team members. Eventually they become a Hostile High-Performer.

If you have a salesperson who writes the figures, but who is no longer aligned with your team’s culture, a person who is demanding and intimidates other team members, you have a decision to make:

1. Tolerate the bad behaviour.

2. Lead, manage and steer the hostile high-performer back to your culture, or

3. Move the salesperson on. Take back control of your agency and continue to build a winning team.

Don’t Tolerate Bad Behaviour

As scary as this might be, you must understand that this hostile high-performer is holding your company back and keeping good team members down. No amount of fee production is worth tolerating this selfish behaviour. Their behaviour will permeate through the business and do immeasurable damage to other employees and your business. If you fail to act, that will diminish your own leadership and make yourself look weak and you in-turn, lose respect from all other team members.

I once had two of these agents (employed at the same time) bringing in a combined GCI of $1,500,000 which I tolerated for far too long. Once I eventually removed them from my team, the feeling within the agency, the spirit of comradery and the focus back toward the client lifted almost immediately. The remaining salespeople all stepped up and excelled. It was as if a heavy weight of toxic energy had been removed from the entire business and we have never looked back.

Sure, we want high performance, but if it is at the expense of your good people, and your own mental health, it is just not worth it in the long-term.

The moment you drive into your office and ask yourself “Oh, do I have to deal with this salesperson again?” that should be a sign that the salesperson’s time with you may be coming to a close.

It takes character to dismiss somebody who writes the figures, yet doesn’t embody the culture of your agency.

Set your standards high, and keep everybody to account, even your high producing salespeople. The right ones will thrive and the wrong ones will move on. In the long-term, you will end up with a better performing team surrounded by people you like and trust. A team focused on working for the clients.

May you have the courage to build the team you deserve.