When I tell people that the office sales meeting is one of my most valuable tools, I get incredulous looks from brokers, managers and agents alike. Most agents find sales meetings boring and pointless. That feeling is shared by many managers and brokers as well.
I find that the OSM, when run properly, is highly effective for training, retention, and streamlining processes. Consider what can be accomplished at an OSM:
- Educate the agents on sales technique.
- Promote cooperation and teamwork in the office.
- Share market data with your agents so they can share it with their clients.
- Inspire the agents to greater production.
- Stroke the egos of the agents who need stroking.
- Assist in recruiting new and experienced agents.
- Promote your office’s new listings.
- Help secure a listing that the seller hasn’t yet committed to your agent.
- Learn things about your agents that would be difficult to learn otherwise.
- Show a more relaxed and personable side of yourself not often seen in the day-to-day operation.
- Protect yourself from legal pitfalls.
- Share good (and bad) experiences with mortgage companies, inspectors, attorneys and others.
Here’s a guide that will put your OSM on the fast track to success.
Figure Out Your Why
You know why you’re in the business and why you chose to run a brokerage. You teach your agents to figure out their whys as well. Now it’s time to figure out why you have sales meetings in the first place. The bottom line for your sales meetings should be a better bottom line. You accomplish this by using sales meetings to maximize the productivity of your agents and minimize expenses due to turnover, mistakes that could have been avoided and missed opportunities.
Create a System
Now that you know why you want to hold as sales meeting in the first place, it’s time to set up your routine. Meetings involve a little planning, and having a system in place can help streamline the process.
Give yourself enough time to plan. A one-hour meeting takes about 2–3 hours of planning. Yes, that’s quite the chunk of time for a broker or manager who is already busy, but if you commit the time, the effort will pay off.
Keep a file folder on your desk marked “Next Meeting.” As you work through the week, make a note of particular challenges your agents are having, interesting news articles, and other thoughts that will be useful to your team. This way, when it’s time to plan the meeting, you’ll have much of the content already in that file folder.
Hold your meetings at the same place, day and time. Get your agents accustomed to, for example, the first Wednesday of the month at 10 a.m. being ‘meeting time.’ A recurring meeting at the same time and place makes planning easier for all.
Use an agenda template for your meetings. A template simplifies things for you and provides consistency for your agents. Send out a brief from the agenda two days before the meeting. Keep it short and a little mysterious. For example, you might note something like, “I’ll be sharing a visual that earned one of your colleagues a 5-figure commission this month.”
Add in some visuals. Agents will retain more if they see as well as hear what you are communicating with them. A PowerPoint presentation is great for this.
Play up the meeting space. Make sure the energy level in the office is high so the agents know as soon as they walk in this is not a typical day. Uptempo music and a dozen helium balloons are great for this.
Start the meeting exactly on time. Not only are you modeling punctuality, you are showing respect to your agents who arrive on time.
Set Up Your Agenda
An agenda helps you plan, and it also gives your agents an idea of what they can expect from the OSM. Here’s an example of what to include and how to structure your meetings.
Begin with an icebreaker. I start with a question such as “Where were you born?” or “What was your first car?” This gets everyone into the flow of the meeting. It also affords the opportunity to learn something personal about their colleagues.
Make it positive. Start the content section of the meeting with “Great News.” An example might be highlighting an agent or company milestone or welcoming a new agent. This is also a great time to read excerpts from raving fan letters.
Share some tools. You want the agents listening to you, not checking email or texting, so highlighting some tool available to them they may not be using is a great way to focus them on you. I call this section “Tools to Use So You Don’t Lose.’ These tools don’t need to be new; they just need to be effective.
Share the most current market information. I make a point of not only showing the monthly and year-to-date average sales price, but the average days on market, inventory level and mortgage rates as well.
Add in bite-sized updates. The “Administrator’s Minute” provides your administrator the chance to speak to the group about the things they need the agents to do. Likewise, the “Mortgage Minute” is a great opportunity to bring in a mortgage partner to speak for a moment on the state of the industry. I have a marketing services agreement with a local mortgage rep. This minute is when he presents to our office and gets to know the agents.
Introduce your main topic. This is the focus of the meeting and where you spend the most time. While every other section of the meeting should be under 5 minutes, in this section you can go 10 to 15 minutes. If you have a guest speaker, this is where they do their presentation.
A note about guest speakers: Nothing turns agents off faster than a guest speaker trying to sell them something. Before I agree to allow any guest to present at my meetings, I set the ground rule that they are to “teach, don’t sell” in the meetings. They have to provide information that my agents can use in their businesses. I instruct the guest to use the presentation time to make the agents feel good about them, then offer to stay and answer questions after the meeting. That’s how guests leverage meetings into new relationships.
With the meeting drawing to a close, I offer everyone the opportunity to briefly share details about a new or upcoming listing or a buyer whose needs have not been met. Several times, my agents were able to help one another. I then review upcoming events like educational or social events, and of course, the next OSM.
Finally, I conclude the meeting with a bullet point recap of the important points I want them to retain. I also email the slides to all of my agents, whether or not they attended the meeting. For those who did attend, the slides serve to remind them of what they heard and saw at the meeting. For the agents that were not there, it serve to show them what they missed.
If you dedicate yourself to putting on uplifting, vibrant meetings with relevant content, you will quickly see the time you spend on your OSM well worth the effort.
