Teamwork makes the dream work!

Here’s my next instalment of my newsletter, plotting my particular journey. I hope this and past newsletters help to give you insight and inspiration as it’s an honest and real account of what I’ve done, so far!?

I had been managing the Kings Norton office for a few weeks now and felt I had got to know all of my team relatively well.

I had made an effort to get to know all of them and found out what made them tick.

I now had to put the next part of my plan into place if I wanted to make the Kings Norton office the success I wanted it to be.

Now, just like any job, as well as planning, I still had to carry out all of my jobs and duties as a branch manager.?

This involved, carrying out valuations for homeowners that were thinking of selling, looking after existing sellers, negotiating offers and also progressing sales through to exchange and completion which was pretty time consuming, liaising with solicitors, mortgage brokers, buyers, sellers, other estate agents, it was pretty intense. Alongside all of this, I needed to manage my team and their activities as well.

It was pretty clear to me that the office had been operating in quite a disjointed way, there wasn’t much organisation and the office systems were not really being followed.

So the first thing I did was to get everybody together and explain to them as a group, how we were now going to operate. I explained that I was going to make things easier for them, save them time and allow them to focus on the things that were going to make them more money. Of course, they loved the sound of this and were all ears.?

The reality was, I was going to ask them to work smarter, probably harder than they had been working previously, but I was going to be just as involved, lead from the front, do some of the not so great tasks as well, and together we were going to work as one team and get it done and in my head, this would lead to overall success.

This collective approach seemed to go down well and it felt like we were starting to built the beginnings of a TEAM. I might have been the manager and was ultimately responsible for the office results, but I wanted the rest of my team to see I was there for them, right by their sides and working alongside them.

I also made a point of demonstrating this by ensuring I was first in the office in the morning and last to leave at night. You see I firmly believe words are only ever believed if the are followed up by actions.

The next part of my plan was to now work 1-1 with my sales team, which essentially consisted of two sales negotiators.

My two negotiators were average at best, they were performing ok, but were not superstars and the office wasn’t hitting its targets.

Firstly, I spent a few hours with Janice, she was from Kings Norton, knew the area really well and had some useful connections. She was very knowledgable, hardworking and was very happy in her role. She had no real ambitions to become a manager or a superstar salesperson. There’s a big lesson I learnt from this time I spent with Janice and I will come onto it a bit later.

My second negotiator, was Stuart, he was a nice guy, not from the local area and had been at the office for about 6 months. His performance had been steady so far. When I asked him about his goals and where he wanted to get to, I was surprised by his answer.

“I want your job he confidently said!”

And that was music to my ears!?

You see I knew at that point I had a sales team I could work with.

That lesson I talked about.?I initially thought Janice was not what I was looking for, I thought I wanted two hungry go getting sales people that would smash targets and drive each other on. How wrong I was in my thinking.

And here’s the lesson. I worked out very quickly as a young manager that it’s the “blend” of personalities, goals and motivations that are important because that’s what’s going to make a successful team.

If I had two hungry go getters, fighting tooth and nail over everything, I reckoned I would be spending more time sorting out disputes over sales, squabbles and general in-fighting, rather than achieving anything meaningful with my time and energy.

The two remaining members of my team were my administrator, she was responsible for making sure everything worked, the real backbone of the office. Linda had been working at the office for a number of years, loved the job and the office and was just keen to see the Kings Norton office be successful. She bought into my philosophy and thinking and was only to happy to give me her support.

Finally, my mortgage advisor, Gail. She was new to the job and to the office. An ambitious person who wanted to achieve and climb the corporate ladder. Her success would be inextricably linked to how the office performed, so she was onboard as well once I had highlighted the importance of being one team and working together. I had experienced in the office at Maypole where I started my career how damaging it was to have a divide in the team, so I used this experience to highlight the importance of working together. She was switched on and totally got it.

So there it was, in my view, I’d got my dream sales team, one that I believed would work beautifully together.?I now had to just get the sales machine firing and the rest of the office to achieve what I wanted it too!!

Easy !!!?

Richard