Three Hard Truths About Building Your Brokerage

Real estate is hyper competitive; everyone knows that. According to the 2012 Economic Census, there are 86,004 real estate brokerage firms operating in the United States. This means you have competitors around every corner vying to overtake your market and your business.

However, one of the biggest mistakes you can make is focusing on your competition. Successful brokers focus on determining their own strengths and figuring out how to build a solid foundation for their agents and clients.

Forward-thinking brokerages are moving in the right direction because they're aware of these key facts:

Dinosaurs get left in the dust

If you don't embrace change and innovation, you can kiss growth goodbye. Real estate brokerages have adapted to a changing industry by necessity. This shift is engendered by new technology and the online access of buyers and sellers to more information than ever before. An infrastructure open to innovation and change is a key element for success.

Do you have the technology in place to optimize every step of the sales process? From lead generation and IDX optimized websites to smart CRM, you need tools that will capture more leads and convert them. Top brokerages definitely have systems in place to seamlessly manage lead generation, distribution and performance.

Don't fly blind: Know your numbers

Knowing where to spend your marketing dollars produces the best results. You want to see what is working, where best practices are happening, and what can improve.

You need systems that allow you to make quick and accurate business decisions based on historical data. The inability to see end-to-end performance data is one of the biggest challenges for brokers; it seriously limits your ability to make smart decisions when it comes to business growth.

There are only two metrics that matter

Recruitment and retention: there is nothing more important in the real estate business. You must have a system to consistently recruit productive agents and a clear retention plan. Your responsibility on a daily basis is to transfer value to agents by facilitating the production and growth they desire. Make sure that true coaching and leadership is wrapped around the training you deliver. Create systems that put you in touch with your agents on regular basis so you can provide them with guidance or assistance as needed.

By now you might be thinking "Okay, I know where we can improve, but how can we move forward?" A lot of brokerages have been operating with disjointed solutions and frankensteined systems in order to address the very shortcomings we've identified here. Unfortunately these "solutions" just aren't scalable and actually end up inhibiting a brokerage from taking the next step toward market domination. Free up your teams and offices to market independently inside a single platform, and gain transparency at every level.

To view the original article, visit the Inside Real Estate blog.