Stacey Onnen and Dave Conord are absolutely obsessed with agent success. Onnen is President, U.S. Brokerage Operations and Conord is President, Growth at eXp Realty, so they complement each other’s positions perfectly. And that’s a good thing.
“We are helping agents grow their business, find new ways to succeed, and hit their goals for the year,” they shared at Inman Connect this past January. Onnen and Conord put together their top three tips for agents to set themselves up for growth.
1. Mastermind with your peers
“You need to hear from people outside of your own market,” Conord advised. “You’ll see something that maybe is a little bit different that others aren’t doing locally. And those are the nuggets — those are the things that you bring back and add into your business.”
Onnen agreed. “We need to surround ourselves with people that are doing better than us! It’s going to help raise us up. I think every agent should figure out how to start a mastermind with people that are doing it as well if not better than you are.”
2. Give feedback to your broker
Onnen recommends brokerages become intensely familiar with their Net Promoter Score (NPS). “Even if your company doesn’t do a formal NPS survey for their agents, the agents need to have a voice,” she said. “We as brokers need to know what’s working and what’s not. You want to make sure that you’re giving them that feedback because brokerages only know what the next agent wants. The more we pay attention to what the agent needs, what they’re asking for, and what they’re saying they need to make their business grow, then we can continue to roll out new things to the agents to make their lives better.”
“We feel it and see it in our company,” said Conord. “You learn new ways to innovate and then you turn around and help the person behind you. That’s what drives that continued collaboration and makes everybody stronger. We really believe very strongly that, in our industry, we should be doing what we can to help each other. We all win when we’re all better at this.”
3. Look for opportunities to learn more
“One of the things that I’ve always loved to do was teach continuing education classes,” shared Onnen. “I really do encourage agents to continue to go to them. Let’s say you spend three hours in a CE class. You will walk out with three or four items that you weren’t already doing in your business that you can put into action the next day.”
The importance of continuing education is emphasized by the way agents evolve and adapt in a crisis. For example, agents that stayed in business through the housing crisis in 2008-2009 did so by pivoting into new streams, adding skill sets, and adapting to the times.
“At the end of the day, we don’t know when there’s going to be a shift in the market,” Onnen said. “For example, we’ve got our commercial brokerage going (eXp Commercial). We’ve brought on relocation services and foreclosure services for agents across the country. I think this is one of those years when you’re really going to want to make sure that you’re sharp on those skills, so get back out and get into those classes.”
Conord agreed and emphasized the need to seize every opportunity. “Look for the other opportunities that exist within an opportunity. You’ve already put the effort in. You’ve done the work to get the business. Seek the other ways to get more business from your business.”