Building a well-structured EBU can not only help you grow your Gross Commission Income or GCI, revenue and profile but once set up can also help you recruit the right salespeople to feed and grow your agency!
If the vision for your business is for expansion building an Effective Business Unit or EBU is the perfect starting point. In my coaching business, helping my clients build, restructure and grow their EBU’s and agencies is one of my most sought after skills sets.
In the latest episode of the Build Your Best Life Podcast, I spoke to one of my coaching clients, Selling Principal, Craig Lea from McGrath Wilston. Craig was one of my original coaching clients from when I transitioned full time into coaching two years ago. We spoke all about what we implemented into his business and where it has gotten him to today.
Clarity is key.
Clarity in where you want to take your business, what you want to focus on and what is important to you is one of the most important foundations of your business. This is not an area to skim over or completely ignore as it helps you find your direction.
Figuring out where Craig was positioned in his business, in the marketplace and in his team first enabled us to re-adjust, remove and rebuild anything that was not aligned with the vision of his business.
Resetting your mindset.
Craig and I spoke about matching his mindset to the business that he wanted to grow. We spoke about how important it was to walk into a listing presentation or any form of engagement in business with a mindset that I'm here to win and I am the best. Being confident when it’s ‘game time’ for your business is extremely important, because if you don't believe it, how is your seller going to believe that you are genuinely the best person for the job?
One of the things that Craig truly embraced was being himself 100%. We all fall into the trap of what a real estate agent ‘should’ look like. However, being yourself is actually exactly what a real estate agent should look like.
Craig, along with his new mindset, changed his outlook. He went into his meetings with a renewed positive energy, geared toward winning and taking the business out.
When Craig started to really believe it in himself, that’s when we really started to see everything starting to kick into place.
Building great relationships.
One of the things that Craig has focused on is building great relationships with his buyers and sellers. Relationships that mean that he is now being championed by past clients out in the marketplace. “I think when you can sit down with a client afterwards and they've moved into another property in the area and they're almost like friends. I think that to me is the reward for what we do is building genuinely great relationships with people or sellers and buyers and you can see them at the supermarket and that will happen every week. They remember your name; you remember theirs and you can say hi and you're all good.”
Implementation of systems and structures
Craig is an exceptional case study to observe and learn from in building his personal business and agency. By gaining clarity in his and backing himself by believing in himself, both businesses have experienced astronomical growth over the past two years.
Craig is proof that it’s possible if you tackle it in the right way. Break down what you wish to achieve into small bite-sized pieces and implement something new each and every month. Craig has spent the time restructuring, implementing new processes and procedures and now that we look back, we can see how all the hard work has paved the road to get him to where he is now.
Building a team
Craig today has three permanent employees in his team – Craig, his Co-Agent and a PA. He also has additional administration support such as a virtual assistant to help them work through phases of critical mass with their workload.
When restructuring his EBU, one of the main points of focus was in getting extremely clear with the team on roles and responsibilities. This enabled the team to remain accountable to each other and work cohesively as a single unit.
Craig’s team members have been with him for many years now and as we see with a mature EBU that has been set up correctly, his team members are able to move through the EBU and feed into expanded roles within the agency. Case in example, Craig’s co-agent has worked with him for two years has gained experience and knowledge in working in the EBU for this period of time. In the near future, he will be able to go out and be his own agent as part of the agency. As part of his strategy, Craig has invested in his teams’ journey by providing them, among other things, with additional support when they are at capacity and through career growth and expansion.
Craig and I deep dive even further into how he grew his business and built his best life in our podcast interview. It was a massive episode full of learning from Craig! If you’d like to listen to the full chat, you can tune into episode 10, ‘How to increase your revenue, build a profile and put money in the bank with Craig Lea’, on your preferred platform of choice:
Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/BuildYourBestLife_ApplePodcasts
Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/BuildYourBestLife_GooglePodcasts