Solving the Biggest Problems that Stunt Real Estate Team Growth
dotloop
June 17, 2021 | comments
Two Industry Veterans Share Strategies On How Real Estate Teams Can Leverage Tech to Accelerate and Simplify Growth
As a real estate team lead, transaction coordinator or broker, what problems are you trying to solve?
Are you finding the systems and tools you started your business with maybe aren’t managing the new challenges now that your organization is growing? Are you still struggling with getting your agents to fully embrace and adopt your technology?
On a recent episode of the Team Building Podcast, Jeff Cohn, Team Leader and owner of Elite Real Estate Systems and dotloop Senior Director of Enterprise Accounts Orlando Ramirez identify a few of the biggest challenges confronting real estate teams today and how to navigate them to win in a competitive market.
Having helped launch 175 Keller Williams Market Centers prior to dotloop, Ramirez is an expert at implementing systems and using those processes to streamline a business.
For Jeff Cohn, dotloop was a “huge solution” to the problem he first faced when scaling his real estate team from 70 to 700 sides in six years. Realizing he needed a solid transaction management software to cover that volume, Cohn found his “game changer” in dotloop. Today, as the fastest growing residential real estate team across brands, Cohn’s team expects to run about 3,000 transactions through his dotloop for Teams platform this year.
Here, the two teams experts share their top tips for ways real estate organizations can overcome these common industry challenges and scale for success.
Plan Your Team’s Scalability
Maybe your admins were assigned to a specific group of agents or each presided over a specific phase of the transaction when you first organized. Will those structures continue to serve your team over the long term?
Having the right systems and tools in place can help. Whether the team is using an assembly line approach or assigning admins to a group of agents, a scalable, customizable transaction management system can help any team process their transactions with greater speed and accuracy.
Before Cohn’s team started using dotloop in 2015, he says there were always a handful of agents who weren’t submitting their paperwork on time. Now that he has his entire organization on the teams platform, he has access to all of his agents’ transactions and can gain real-time visibility into his organization through dotloop.
Part of a Real Estate Team?
Dotloop for Teams empowers over 2,000 teams with custom transaction templates, automated compliance, reporting and more. No more sharing login information.
Secure a Solid Contract-to-Close System
All team leads know that agents who don’t have a solid contract-to-close process in place end up spending more time on the transaction process than building relationships and gaining business. Whether your team’s admin is working one-on-one with an agent or serving a team of 15 agents, a great way to help admins and transaction coordinators help their agents and clients is by providing them with the tools and systems that will streamline their business on one contract-to-close system.
As Ramirez notes, your transaction management software should give you ways to increase the overall efficiency of your team with features that empower transaction coordinators to automate compliance, create complete transaction templates that include documents, tasks and people and even a way for admins to support agents throughout the deal by acting on their behalf.
Cohn agrees. “From a control standpoint, one thing that I’ve found so awesome with the dotloop product is that one can create expectations as to what has to be turned in on the file before they can submit for final review and before they can be paid a commission. Examples include affiliated business arrangement disclosure or an estimated cost sheet or any type of addendum that you want to make sure your agents turn in, it’s literally a step-by-step process,” he says. “So even if you’re a new team and have five agents and they’re doing their own paperwork, you are in control of that process.”
Add Value to Staff and Client Transaction Experience
When transaction coordinators and agents find the one transaction software that can save them time, improve collaboration and increase productivity, they hang onto it for life!
Dotloop brokers and team leads often find the transaction management platform as an asset that not only helps them attract new agent and transaction coordinator recruits but also retains them for the long run.
For new recruits, team leads can use dotloop to onboard agents by providing a place to process and store their 1099s, agency agreements and other paperwork. By familiarizing agents with the platform from Day One, the system improves agent adoption for the life of their tenure with the team.
Invest in Systems and Models
At the end of the day, you can have a great tech stack, but if your agents and staff are not fully trained on any of your systems, they won’t use it to its maximum potential.
As Ramirez points out, real estate professionals who are performing at the highest level take the time to invest in coaching and training on their organization’s tools.
“Hold yourself and your team accountable to actually use what you’re paying for. Whatever systems and processes you choose, make sure it’s scalable, reputable, the consumer experience is positive and that it is mobile-friendly,” he says. “Also, look at the retention rate. How quickly is the company you’re working with growing with you?”
Stay One Step Outside the Comfort Zone
Lastly, Cohn recommends team leads always keep pushing and staying one step outside of the “comfort zone.”
“We are going to go 10 times beyond where we think we are going to go, often finding what we built isn’t big enough. So,” he says, “be willing to flex and grow.”
