Up your weekly communication and leadership, and watch your team’s results soar!

As a leader of your team, region or brokerage, your agents need direction, guidance and leadership now more than ever. Many of them are used to seeing you every day in the office, while most are used to seeing you a few times a week. If you are used to having sales meetings twice a month and you’re no longer seeing your agents weekly or daily, it is extremely vital that you launch a full-on virtual sales and learning platform for your agents to rely on for support, information, training and coaching. This will keep your camaraderie, culture and spirit of teamwork and connection strong during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The benefits of upping your leadership and communication will produce unbelievable results both for sales production and for maintaining culture and agent retention.

Here is the blueprint for launching and implementing your office’s Virtual Sales and Learning Platform, directed and led by you, their fearless leader:

1. Overcommunicate. That’s right, overcommunicate. I always say that information must be repeated multiple times for agents to hear it, retain it, remember it and then implement it. Having the lead role, your job is to communicate and overcommunicate information to your agents to help them succeed every day. Adoption rates for corporate initiatives don’t stick typically because the leadership team does not over communicate the information, which is needed for agents to understand it, learn it, apply it and then use it daily as a new habit.

Your role is to keep the information in front of them. If you feel like a broken record, you are hitting it out of the park! Keep sending the messaging and change up the way you deliver it, so they are getting it in different formats as well. All of this helps to solidify the message, the learning and the adoption of integrating it into their daily business lives.

2. Hold a weekly virtual sales meeting. Now it is even more important that you hold weekly sales meetings with your team. They need to hear market updates, what is selling, announcement of new listings, good news from you, training and coaching from you, and how they can continue to forge ahead into their successful sales week. Hold the meetings and facilitate a lively, positive conversation that continues to drive their listing and sales activity. Ask for their Big Wins at the beginning of the meeting and ask them what they need to succeed this week. Send out the agenda and include helpful information they can share with their clients, family, friends and sphere.

3. Conduct a daily hour of power coaching sessions on video conference. With agents working from home in an already-undisciplined industry, they need you to get their day started. Conduct a daily hour of power coaching session every day at the same time. This will create a daily routine for your agents that they come to count on and look forward to. This daily contact will keep them positive and wanting to stay connected to you, the company and their teammates. You can offer a great new skills topic for training or have an agent share something that they had great success doing with the team, or talk about buyer needs and upcoming listings not yet on the market. This meeting will be a daily check-in for all, and they will appreciate your leadership in keeping everyone connected.

4. Host a breakfast or “Happy Hour” call every week. Schedule the time for your agents to make their calls. They aren’t going to do it themselves. Set up a breakfast or happy hour call event where you can go over types of new business generating calls (expireds, FSBOs, sphere, past clients, micro-farming neighborhoods, etc.) or have the calls and then host a happy hour after to discuss the outcomes and new clients your agents generated from making the calls. It makes prospecting fun and a “group event.” Your agents will thank you for carving out the time for them, and everyone will love the results.

5. Meet with your new agents twice per week. This group needs your time and attention now more than ever, so schedule your new agent meetings twice a week for one hour. All will share what they are working on, offer inspiration and share challenges, and you will have the ability to talk to all of them at once which is great for your time management. Keep these agents engaged and actively working on new business for themselves.

6. Have a national speaker or leader from your company host a webinar. Schedule an outside, qualified speaker or coach to host a webinar for your team. Even members of your senior leadership team would be great speakers for a webinar. Giving your agents an outside perspective is always helpful so they hear another voice and gain knowledge of other markets or what is happening nationally.

7. Launch a weekly technology training session. Your agents need to learn how to conduct a Zoom meeting and you need to show them how to do it immediately. Don’t just send them the website—actually show them how to use the technology so they will actually use it themselves. Besides video conferencing, many leaders are now getting agents who won’t get up to speed with online contracts.

8. Hold a monthly listing or sales contest. It is always a good time for a listing or sales contest, and right now this might really motivate some agents to get appointments and do the activities that will result in new, future business—which they will need in the coming weeks and months. Make teams and offer fun prizes weekly for calls made, appointments booked, properties listed or sales made, and track their results. All this activity will pay off 30, 60 and 90 days from now.

9. Use your office’s private Facebook group and post several times a day. This is such a fantastic way to communicate and keep your agents engaged with you and each other. Post positive messages and ask them to post what successes they are having (a virtual open house, virtual listing appointments or showings, new listings, sales, etc.) You can use your private Facebook group to post the schedule of weekly events, training sessions and important information they need to know. Post video messages of hope and positive direction. Your Facebook group is a place they can all comment, share successes and keep momentum going for everyone. It will help inspire and keep others motivated, which creates more activity from the group.

10. Mostly, I will reiterate, be their leader. Be an exceptional leader. Your leadership and communication you employ right now during this pandemic will drive more activity, which will drive more listings, sales and revenue this month and in future months. Everyone on your team will mirror your attitude and tone. Provide your team with solid confidence, good news about the market and positive vibes, and keep them focused on filling their pipelines with new buyer and seller leads and appointments. Your Virutal Sales and Learning Platform will make you the most effective, top-performing leader in the market today, and your results will speak for themselves—you will emerge successful in the months to come.

Click here to request Sherri’s FREE copy of the Goldmine Pipeline™ Strategy to drive listings and sales.

Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour and the Official Real Estate Coach for McKissock Learning and Real Estate Express. She is also an RISMedia 2020 Real Estate Newsmaker as an industry Influencer. Sign up for a free 30-minute coaching strategy session or visit www.sherrijohnson.com for more information.