Brokerage Design: Implementing Your Vision Requires Automating Your Team’s Accountability

By Jeremy Conaway, real estate brokerage consultant

There is a glow on the horizon and it is growing brighter every month, but only for those whose eyes are focused on opportunity.  As our industry draws closer and closer to the sustaining market, the competencies that will define the success of its brokerages are becoming clearer:

• The industry's top priorities must include market level profitability and consumer centricity
• Successful firms will create a new and collaborative environment in which the performance of managers and agents becomes a primary benchmark
• The successful brokerage's economic formula must be centered on premium services for premium fees
• Successful brokerages will communicate clear and concise value propositions comprised of those matters that are of value to today's consumer
• Brokerages and agents will collaborate to deliver the firm's value proposition through a dynamic consumer experience
• Standardized service protocols that support the firm's value proposition and consumer experience will be institutionalized at each step of the transaction

Quality control and monitoring processes will be incorporated into all phases of the management in a system that will include service rating, ranking and comment content generated by the firm's customers.

Together, these elements will almost create a brokerage that will meet the expectations of the consumer, the demands of the marketplace and the critical return on investment needs of the contemporary investor.

However, there is one more element necessary to facilitate the final integration of these diverse elements into a productive system that can function as the service and financial foundation of our industry moving forward.

The critical element missing from the above list is accountability. Moving forward, all of the players in the brokerage cast must be accountable for their role in the creation, operation and management of the new brokerage configuration. All of the business opportunities in the world, and they are endless in this new environment, will not coalesce without accountability.  Identified by industry visionary Steve Murray in his 2007 book, People Still Matter, accountability may be what has been missing in the past for firms that have tried, and failed, to reach appropriate levels of profitability, service responsiveness and consumer centricity.

Accountability is defined as the state of being accountable, liable, or answerable.  For much of the past two decades the broker has been the sole accountable party.  Service providers, operating under the banner of the independent contractor, have generally declined to be accountable to either the brokerage team or consumer expectations. 

The factor that allowed this situation to exist was the traditional consumer's relative lack of knowledge and sophistication.  Consumer's simply didn't know who to hold accountable or what to expect.  They got what they got and if the result of their experience was a closed transaction, then they were deemed to be "satisfied;" the traditional test of industry success.

This approach is unlikely to work in the sustaining markets that will define the industry in 2010 and after.  It has been an accepted industry fact that the American real estate consumer is becoming more sophisticated every year.  In 2009 that sophistication is being accelerated by both increased Internet exposure and a steady diet of mass media influence regarding what may have happened during the recent real estate market chaos.  Tens of millions of American families have either experienced a personal real estate disaster or know someone who has.  These experiences will forever change the real estate experience.

Successful firms will meet this challenge by establishing and enforcing base levels of accountability and responsibility across the entire range of their value propositions.  They will not create and enforce accountability through good faith and personal assurances, but rather using a whole new generation of automated management software. 

Effective brokerage executives and managers will not put themselves in the position of having to become the "parents" of accountability.[B1]   Both will fall back to that classic cliché, "you can't expect what you cannot inspect."  Successful firms will use automation to allow accountability to speak for itself in the metrics and benchmarks of their business experience.

What will automation look like and how will it monitor accountability?  Several approaches currently exist, each focused on a single niche within the brokerage operations spectrum.  However, the only acceptable solution must organize and create accountability throughout the entire brokerage.  When you reach the decision making phase relative to automation software demand the following functionality.

Activity Management

• Activity organization across the entire transaction and client relationship
• Full range contact management
• Paperless operating data submission, sharing and reuse
• Paperless document management
• Multiple business unit process integrated management
• Shared, web-based workflow management
• Showings management

Service Transparency

• Standardized listing presentation generation
• Client login to online activity and status reports
• Printable listing presentations activity reports

Management Reporting

• CEO instrument panel tracking system
• Critical information dashboard display for all levels of management
• Real Time financial reporting with data and benchmark analysis
• Real time management reporting with data and metrics analysis

System Integration

• Agency website integration through a single data point
• Agent website integration through a single data point
• Marketing points tracked through a single data point

Each of these functionalities will be essential in order to ensure the brokerage's success at all levels of accountability.  Taken together they will provide CEO's and field managers with the information that is necessary to ensure the accountability that will be the basis of profitability in the new market environment.

Oh, by the way, there is one more thing that will probably have to happen.  Few firms will, over the next year, have the resources to purchase this type of automation system.  This means that in addition to meeting all of these program specifications, the successful vendor will have to have the resources and stability necessary to offer the program on a "pay as you close" transaction basis.

Who will rise to the occasion?  Speaking of opportunities.

 [B1]Not sure what you mean by this?