It’s easy to get caught up in the lead rat race. After all, more leads = more revenue. However, that equation only holds true if your operations and processes can scale to meet the demand. And if those very processes that deliver your brokerage from lead to close don’t eat into your revenue with unseen, redundant technologies, inefficient processes and bulky workflows.
On the other hand, when you purposefully design your processes and introduce the right technology systems, you can not only handle more demand, you can accelerate the growth of your business.
Don’t just give your agents more leads. Give them more time.
The core focus of your brokerage operations is to maximize your agent productivity. And productivity is not just a measure of how many leads an agent can covert, but a culmination of factors over the course of their time at a brokerage.
How long does it take to hire and get an agent on-boarded?
How efficiently can they push a transaction to close?
How quickly are they compensated for their sales?
The time these processes take is valuable time — and money in your brokerage’s pocket and your agents’. To fully optimize each agent’s productivity, you need to examine and ultimately optimize your office processes. Here’s how
Perform a process audit and map your current workflow.
- List all the documents, contracts, addendums, etc. that need to be completed over the course of the transaction.
- Identify everyone who is involved in each step of the process, even for one moment
- Interview these people and understand how long each step takes and why it takes that much time.
Once you have gathered all the necessary information, you’ll be able to identify bottlenecks in your workflow. You’ll see where time can be saved and efficiencies can be found. Then, you can move on to designing a more streamlined process.
- Determine if a step in the process is required or nice-to-have. For example, a required process would be when a brokerage is mandated by law. A nice-to-have process is more a step that offers peace of mind or where the level of effort to do it is more burdensome than the benefit of doing the step.
- Uncover ways to decrease the time it takes to complete a step.For example, you might consider steps where data needs to be re-entered by an agent or transaction coordinator and build an integration to pull or push data between systemsLook for forms with commonly completed sections and create digital templates so the same document doesn’t need to be re-created in every transaction.
- Create standard digital task lists so agents will get more efficient with every transaction, and you can reduce your own need to follow up as your business grows.
- Explore technologies that can automate steps in the agent’s workflow and explore how to connect those technologies to reduce re-work.
Gather feedback from those involved in the each step and modify if necessary.
Lastly, once you have re-designed your office processes, you’ll need to begin implementing your new processes and introducing any technology you’ve selected.
- Hold a fun launch event to help everyone in the office understand the changes.
- Solicit feedback every two to four weeks to understand how people are adjusting.
- Make adjustments to the process or technologies based on the feedback and continue to communicate those changes to the entire office.
To find out more about how your brokerage can optimize their office processes and increase sales productivity, read DocuSign’s new white paper written by Geoffrey Moore – author of Crossing the Chasm here.