How Do You Average 24 Transactions Per Agent With 1400+ Agents?

Brokerage Insider

What does it take to average 24 transactions per agent? How about being up by double digits during the pandemic? How do you create a culture of success in your real estate brokerage? How important is your real estate brokerage CRM?

Listen in as Brenda Tushaus joins our VP of Product to discuss these questions and more!

TRANSCRIPT

Katie Ragusa: Welcome. Hi, Brenda. So for the whole group, just a little bit of background on Brenda and what we're going to be talking about today, she is the CEO of Minnesota based Re/max Results. They have 42 offices and over 1200 throughout Minnesota and western Wisconsin. She became the CEO of the company in twenty eighteen and has been in real estate for twenty four years. So she's got a huge background based on the 2020 Real Trends, 500 report, Re/max results of the country's largest Re/max franchise and the 13th largest brokerage for total transactions. So lots of big stats there. Hopefully I got everything right, Brenda. Anything I missed. All right. OK. Quite a profile. So you represent a major company. So what we're going to talk about today is getting into growing a company, recruiting good people and not just bringing them on, but keeping them around. So thanks for being with us today and sharing what you know now.

Brenda Tushaus: Thanks for having me!

Katie Ragusa: So let's kind of go backwards in time a little bit. And you guys are forty two offices. Yeah, we just we just grew to about forty two and we'll talk more about that from forty one to forty two. But so when you started with the company it was three offices I think. So looking back, what are the foundational pieces that makes Re/max results who you are that have stayed the course through all of those years.

Brenda Tushaus: So we yeah. When I started I've been at the company now 19 years. We had one hundred and fifty agents or so and three offices. And I've obviously held a variety of roles through the years. And I was just looking at our stats just recently and in the last 19 years we've done 15 acquisitions. So that's been a part, a major part of our growth. Obviously recruiting is just as important, but the acquisitions, that chunky growth, that that helps as well.

So as far as I will tell you, one thing that I discovered when I was looking at some of this recently is most of the acquisitions we had one big one when I was about two or three years into the role that doubled the size of the brokerage. It brought on about three hundred associates. But since then, our acquisitions have been really small, chunky growth. They've been anywhere from 20 to 50 associates that we that we add each time. So very small, small acquisitions and is not more intentional.

Katie Ragusa: Like what would your advice be to those who want to get big, fast and double in size? Triple in size, really?

Brenda Tushaus: Well, it depends on what you can afford. So it just depends on what, what you're looking to acquire and how much you can pay. And so the small the smaller ones through the years have worked for us. We did have a year. It was I think it was twenty seventeen where we added we did about six or seven acquisitions that year and those were a bunch of small ones than we did one in twenty, eighteen, twenty nineteen.

We had to just kind of catch our breath and now we're back in twenty in full on growth mode again. Right. So yet another broker and market that's booming in these times. So that's really great to see.

Katie Ragusa: And inspiring. So you just had the 15th acquisition literally just it earlier this week or last week of that. What was that like? Can you tell us more about that process?

Brenda Tushaus: Yeah. So that we acquired another Re/max franchise was Re/max first choice in the La Crosse, Wisconsin market. They have three offices and thirty two associates that we acquired with that recent transaction. And and I'll tell you one thing, and we announced this when we did the all company meeting and we did the the acquisition on Tuesday is we told everyone in the room they are the highest per agent productivity acquisition we've ever done. They average about thirty five sides per agent. So I was small but very, very productive company. And, you know, our history and that productivity number is really important to us. So that just helps make us, you know, I mean, we're we're we're known for that now. We just added an acquisition that that improved upon that. So it went well. The meeting, it's always a surprise to everyone in the room. And but we've done this, the dog and pony show, I guess you could call it so many times that were those of us on my team are pretty comfortable with it.

And nobody got up and walked out of the room in tears and and there were some applause. And they were happy that they know us. And they knew that their former broker owners were looking to retire in coming years. And so everyone it was we were really welcomed in. And I'll tell you the other thing is we kept on the staff. We kept on the broker owners. And that's really important in every acquisition is that we we don't change a lot.

We don't change economics. We don't change traditions or office culture or whatever is important. And we always try to keep on those those former broker owners and some sort of a capacity in this case, one up them staying on as a managing broker for us.

Katie Ragusa: So they've built trust with that company and you're not going to shake everything up. And RACT recruited them or acquired them for a reason. That's something good going. So everybody left that. Thirty five sides for Agent Sinkin. So that brings me to the question of you can't do that part time. So tell me about on whether it's an acquisition or recruiting a specific person and sales executive. What kind of time are they putting into their real estate career for you to even consider?

Brenda Tushaus: Well, definitely full time. You know, we always say we don't we don't hire part time. We don't hire part time sales executives. Now, I will have a few Re/max results associates that come to me and say I only work X number of hours a week. Yet somehow they're still killing it in real estate sales. But we don't when you come to work at Re/max results, you don't have another job full time or part time job.

You come to work at our company and you are a full time real estate agent. That's really important. And we do have minimum expectations as far as our sales executives performance. Do people fall below those minimum expectations? Of course they do. Do we fire them if they fall below those? Not typically. We work with them and get them into coaching or accountability groups. We're never going to say, hey, it's time for you to move on.

If we don't see them trying, we don't see them working to get their production up.

Katie Ragusa: So I would imagine that those metrics aren't secret, that you're just standing by and watching them like they're recruited for a reason. They were in a player, top producer. They know what they're expected to come in and do it, right?

Brenda Tushaus: Yeah. And it's it's funny, you know, we have several people at the company that do our recruiting. And sometimes they do encounter conversations when they're talking to sales executives at other brokerages. There's that perception like, well, am I good enough to join Re/max result? I secretly I love that. But I also don't want people to think like, well, I could never go work there because I don't sell enough real estate. Really, it's we have to prove to them, like, no, you can't work for Re/max results and you will sell more real estate and we'll show you how so and just that environment of being around other people with the same philosophy.

Katie Ragusa: It's not like you're carrying the brokerage for sales volume and all the rankings that you get. Everybody is contributing towards that goal. So, I mean, as an agent, I can only imagine what that's like to work in that environment. So you've got a lot of acquisitions under your belt on, a lot of recruiting going on. You guys are a large brokerage. So how do you manage this? Who on your staff handles recruiting? Who handles and sources acquisitions? can you describe those different pieces and who's managing what?

Brenda Tushaus: So our executive team at Re/max Results is it's myself. I have a CEO, a CFO and a general manager. That's the four of us. And then the general manager oversees a team of six regional managers or managing brokers. And the regional managers are managing brokers then are the ones that oversee three to four offices in their wing, depending on how many agents are in those offices. And it's the managing brokers slash regional managers. We have two different titles that are the ones that are responsible for well, all of us are responsible for retention, but recruiting and retention and of course, sales while transactional support.

So a typical regional manager would say they have three or four offices as their territory. They might have three or four offices and anywhere from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty agents. And 80 percent of their time is expected to be spent on recruiting and retention, kind of split 50/50. So 40 percent of their time recruiting, 40 percent retention relationships, customer service. So that 80 percent on that and then 20 percent on just general support, sales support, answering questions, helping with transactions, coaching, training.

Katie Ragusa: You've got a great team that you trust and everybody knows their role. So a lot of this, you said 40 percent or so out of 80 percent of their time, about 40, 40, half and half recruiting retention is it is one harder than the other?

Brenda Tushaus: About recruiting is really hard. It's really hard. And I used to be I don't know how many years ago, but I was once director of recruiting at Re/max Results and in and a really good year for me. I recruited about forty, forty five agents. That's really hard. We like to see our regional managers recruit about twenty four or more. That's kind of a goal. We say if you can recruit two people a month, sometimes it's more than that, sometimes it's less. But recruiting is hard and it's getting harder.

It's getting harder, I would say within the last oh probably within the last three years. Just there's just always new competition, new business models and retention is just as hard.

Katie Ragusa: So you have to it's difficult to invest the time both places. It sounds like that number twenty four to a month might be like your sweet spot, your number, because I think that's also where your typical agent follows in transactions, right? Yep.

Look, easy metrics or so, and that's where you guys keep these rankings is everybody has those metrics in mind. You're hitting those monthly, you know, are you behind are you on track or are you ahead? So you mentioned you're not going to fire somebody if they're a little bit behind, you're going to coach them up and intervene. So when do you intervene? Like, what is that time? Is it after the year closes and you're looking back on their previous year? Is it midway through?

Brenda Tushaus: We you know, I wish I would I wish honestly, I could say that we had like this end of quarter review. We try to do these quarterly reviews of production. It doesn't happen calendar quarter. It's not an exact science. But we do pull reports for we do the we meaning executive team and people in our sales accounting department pull reports and produce those for the regional managers. We actually don't make the regional managers do that, although most regional managers already have a pulse in their offices is might be struggling, but we pull those reports and we say, hey, you've got a couple of people here that it looks like their performance is down in the last 12 months or in the last X amount of time. So work with them, reach out to them, see what you can do to help them. And so, yeah, and again, it's there's so many factors that go into it. There's so many, you know, twenty, twenty alone. It's just been a crazy year, you know. So, you know, that was, that's one thing. But, you know, you never know what's going on in someone's life. So they're sensitive when Approach and sometimes we offer to put them into a coaching program. We're pretty coach neutral. We like all coaching programs and we'll do that on our dime. We'll even offer to pay for because let's say we have someone that's worked for us for 10, 15 years and they've been a solid producer for years, but they're just having an off year for whatever reason. We just we reinvest in them. So we do that. So I don't know.

Does that answer the question?

Katie Ragusa: Yeah, for sure. I'm just hearing firsthand how you're managing all of this and keeping everybody on top. I know you personally have face time or maybe some time these days, not with many of your recruits and agents and office visits and you're all over the place. So with twelve hundred people and growing, how do you manage that time and keep everybody feeling connected?

Brenda Tushaus: Well, I do I'm coming to you from my desk in Eden Prairie, that's our headquarters, and I'm lucky if I'm here once a week. I'm everywhere. I work from all of our offices as far as our outer markets. So we've got three offices in the Duluth Superior Market and we've got two down in Rochester Market. Now we've got the cross market, St. Cloud and so besides all the offices that are here in the Minneapolis St Paul in the Twin Cities area, I try to get to the other markets once a month and I'm pretty good at it. So I whether I have appointments with sales executives or whether I just go and I spend a couple of days and the Duluth superior market and I just make my way through the three offices, I'll camp out in a conference room, I'll walk around the offices.

I talk to everyone. I know them all. When someone new joins the company, I reach out with a private with just a personal BombBomb, welcoming them, introducing myself. It's not prerecorded. I do a custom video sometimes I'm doing a lot of videos and just say, hey, welcome aboard.

I circle in with their regional manager before I reach out to them and I ask some questions like if there's anything I need to know about them. And I might mention that on a video just to say, hey, I heard you joined this team or, you know, I heard something unique about you. And so I try to connect with them in that video and I generally get responses. And so I'm creating connections that way. But I I used to say I mean, years ago, I would say I, I knew 90 percent of our agents, but that's because I was I was once director of I.T. and then I was director of recruiting.

I've held so many roles that I've worked so closely with sort of all of our agents. I know it's kind of a weird combination. And now that I'm in the CEO role, as I have been for a couple of years, it's a little bit harder to connect and I feel like fewer reach out to me because they are scared of being the CEO.

Yeah, I'm super approachable, but I feel like I'm you know, when I give out my cell phone number at a company meeting, they're like, what are you nuts? But people don't abuse that. They respect your time. So got it.

Katie Ragusa: Yeah. And I think that culture or that precedent figure setting a baseline and personalization and setting up on the person, get to know them, send them a custom bomb message that probably shines through to your agents and their communication with their customers because they're getting it straight from the top, right?

Brenda Tushaus: Yeah.

Katie Ragusa: So what about you have a lot of long term sales executives that have been with your company and you have a lot of staff that's been around for a while, too, including yourself.

So how do you keep good people once you find them?

Brenda Tushaus: Well, as far as staff goes, that's one of the things at this recent acquisition, for example, we have a lot of our key employees that will travel down and we'll all attend the this all company meeting where we announce the acquisition and we go around the room and we introduce ourselves and we say what we do and how long we've been at the company. And everyone is.

We introduce ourselves and we say what we do and how long we've been at the company and everyone is always like, wow, 11 years, 17 years, twenty two years. So we just you know, we I think we hire. Right. First of all, we hire happy people. We hire team players. We look for that kind of that, if that makes sense, that customer service mentality. Have you ever been in a restaurant and you get a waiter or waitress that's just like amazing and you want to take away employee? My life is with Chick fil A. Yes, yes. Yes. So we hire people that just get it. You know the difference. You know, when there's someone who's negative that just doesn't get that customer service mentality.

So I'm here to collect a paycheck rather than care about you. And so those people are generally also just happier people. You know, all we also run. We allow our employees have just autonomy in their roles, they know what their job duty is, but they have just freedom to just do their job and we leave them alone. We don't micromanage.

Katie Ragusa: So not a lot of approvals needed. You trust their judgment because you picked them for a reason? Yeah. Taking away that barrier and allowing people to just shine can really help. And for the customer or the agent on the other side of that who's waiting for that approval, it makes a big difference to them to you know, we've had staff and sales executives who have left the company and a large majority of them return.

Brenda Tushaus: So, you know, when it comes to sales executives, if a sales executive leaves, we make it as as peaceful as an exit as we possibly can. Of course, we don't want them to leave, but we never want to burn any bridges because a lot of times I'm talking within six to 12 months they come back. And sometimes it isn't always greener, so you need to realize that, you know, on their own.

Katie Ragusa: so and that is a less comfortable part to talk about. Running a business is people leaving. So how do you keep that relationship from souring? Do you hand them their data? Like, what is it about you guys that makes that easy?

Brenda Tushaus: Or pay for your pain. How do we make a painless if they leave? Yeah, well, we don't. We don't. If someone's leaving, we don't hold. We don't hold on to their listings. We let them technically, the listings belong to the broker, but we don't think they have those those files because those customers want to work with them. And so we don't we allow them to cancel listings and take listings with them, that sort of thing. That's always been a policy of ours. If they had any pending...