Agent Accountability

Agent Accountability and Structure

What is going to make a successful brokerage?  It is a strong broker who is willing to dedicate some of their time to the success of their agents.  Brokers need to provide their agents with a plan of success and then hold them accountable for the work that was done.  The brokers need to inspect what they expect and the agents need to plan their work and then work their plan.

To illustrate this, lets look at a study that was done some time ago that led to what is known as the Hawthorne Effect.  This is a study that was done on an assembly line to see what can be done to increase the production of workers.  The test began with researchers monitoring the workers behavior.   The researchers then increased the amount of light on the assembly line and then discovered that as they increased the light, the workers increased their production.  The researchers then increased the workers break time.  As the break time increased, so did their production.  This was done in other areas of the job, and as they changed the environment for the better, production continued to increase.

The researchers then slowly took all the changes away and continued to monitor their production.  They noticed that after slowly taking away the break time, lowering the lights to previous levels, and taking away all the improvements to the work environment, production levels never went back down.  This puzzled the researchers until they realized the true reason for the increase in production.  It wasn’t the change in the work environment, but the fact that the workers were just being monitored. 

How does this break down to real estate.  If brokers made their agents accountable for the work that needs to be done, the agent’s chances of success go up.  If a broker spends time with their agents and reviewed their plans for the week, but does not inspect their work to see if it was done, the broker did not complete the job.  They need to actually see if the work was done.  If the agents know that their work is being monitored, aka the Hawthorne Effect, their production levels will go up. 

In order to provide agents with the structure they require, a broker needs to provide them with systems and tools they can use to build their business.  A Realty World franchise provides these types of systems and tools to give real estate agents the advantage they need.  If you are considering a franchise, please give me a call for more information.  You can reach me, Brad Cooper, at 800 685-4984.  I will be glad to spend some time with you to discuss the Realty World advantage.