Red Oak Realty Case Study: Reconsider Your Office Manager Strategy

Office manager strategy is very diverse in real estate. Some firms do not have offices or office managers, others have office managers who are selling agents, or office managers that do not sell. Somewhere between these three primary pillars of office manager strategies is a plethora of variances. Getting your office manager strategy is so important to your success.

Whatever your strategy, a great office manager is among the top ingredients for success in your brokerage. They drive agent recruiting, retention, and performance. They can also be a huge risk. How many times have you witnessed an office manager going to a different company and taking a pile of agents with them?

Matching a manager to an office is also very difficult. Relationships with agents are personal. Sometimes you have a group of agents in an office that love the manager, and another group that do not. Some firms have solved this challenge with a rotating manager strategy. This involves moving managers to different offices on different days of the week. This works pretty well, but agents can sometimes get frustrated by the inconsistency.

Broker Resource Network subscriber Vanessa Bergmark of Red Oak Realty in the East Bay of San Francisco is operating an innovative sales manager strategy with great success. By way of background, Bergmark was licensed in her late twenties and was a Keller Williams team leader until having her first child. After her maternity leave, she was asked to run Red Oak Realty for four owners whom she bought out. In 2019, Bergmark acquired Marvin Gardens, a comparable firm in the same area. Today, the company has 180 highly productive agents. The firm had seven offices, but is targeting an office count of three.

Red Oak Realty does not have any office managers. They have a CEO (Vanessa), a president, a broker, and a sales manager with four associate sales managers. The president is focused on business building — operations, recruiting, training, marketing, etc. Everyone else is focused on deal doctoring and working directly with agents.

This structure has been highly effective at delivering excellent services to the agents. There is always someone available to help them, wherever the agent needs help. The company aims at high touch with each agent, and it is working. Agents are never assigned to just one, specific person.

The president is focused on recruiting, but her bonus is paid on production and not on headcount.

If you are rethinking your office manager strategy, you might want to reach out to Vanessa.