Two Effective Strategies for Increasing Agent Motivation and Revenue

Real estate is an industry where human capital is a brokerage's most valuable asset, with agents working as independent contractors holding the power to drive a firm's success--or failure.

Since success sits squarely on agents' motivation, a key question becomes how to inspire them to perform optimally in volatile and fiercely competitive real estate markets. By understanding the underlying reasons that drive performance, brokerages can harness new opportunities and reach their revenue potential.

Building and maintaining a team of agents committed to continuously slam-dunking the deal presents a tough challenge that brokers have generally addressed with traditional extrinsic motivational initiatives.

Yet, time and again, research worldwide has proven that these extrinsic motivators do not work. Rewards, contests, prizes, and recognition programs amount to nothing more than carrot and stick strategies. While they may produce short term results, they fail to be sustainable, as agents lose their sense of creativity, vitality, and inherent self-value. The result is suboptimal sales performance and higher agent turnover.

Try Aligned or Integrated Motivation

The good news is that there are proven and effective alternatives: aligned motivation and integrated motivation. With aligned motivation, agents are empowered to link their work to something of significant personal value such as financial goals, self-worth, or even just an intense interest, which inherently improves productivity and dedication.

In order to develop a shared vision, however, brokers need to understand their agents' internal drivers and integrate them into the larger strategy and culture of the firm. This creates ownership of the firm's success by the agent, catalyzing increasingly higher sales achievements.

Florida based Watson Realty uses personality surveys when hiring agents to see if they have an aptitude for real estate sales, but also to understand these motivating factors. They leverage these profiles in coaching and motivating.

Integrated motivation similarly focuses on the underlying reasons that agents pursue their sales goals. When agents don't receive the opportunity to engage in work that has deeper meaning than just turning sales, they become compelled to find ways of avoiding the subsequent feelings of pressure, anger, disappointment and even shame—resulting in lowered performance.

However, when facilitating a sale is connected to a deeper sense of purpose and belonging, like helping neighbors in their community achieve home ownership, they are more likely to take on even the most menial tasks required to close the deal.

Approaching a real estate transaction with an integrated motivation framework meets agents' deeper psychological needs by incorporating their work into their self-identity, creating increased engagement and retention. Real estate is more than just selling homes, it's helping people.

Supporting aligned and integrated motivation is a process of building and sustaining an environment where employees can actually motivate themselves. This process requires brokerages to step outside the traditional focus on extrinsic motivational programs and instead pause to develop an understanding of why their agent is motivated.

This should be the key driver of communications between office managers and agents. Through this understanding, managers have the opportunity to align agents' internal motivators with company objectives.

Facilitating the necessary organizational shift toward an individualized, achievement-oriented brokerage culture can lead to an intrinsically motivated team that is hungry to meet any challenge. Only when agents are optimally motivated can a brokerage achieve maximal long term growth and profitability.

One industry leader deploying these types of motivations is Gino Blefari, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services. Check out his blog at RethinkReport.com to see this strategy in action.