Go "Beyond" the Basics

Use these techniques to help your people learn the basics - then excel far beyond them.

Every few years in real estate, we hear people say, “It’s time to get back to the basics.” While the basics never go out of style, great sales organizations never get away from them, either. They get beyond them.

Here’s how. 👇

The Leadership Club™ meets on Mondays at 9 am PST 12 pm EST for a weekly Coaching Call. Take your leadership to the next level by joining the club and upgrading your TLC monthly subscription today.

Why Go Beyond the Basics

Any sales organization can do the basics; that’s the ante for being in the business and getting deals done. And yet it’s easy for firms to get distracted from the fundamental practices that lead to a consistently full pipeline and sustainable growth. Markets cycle. Technology disrupts. Competition distracts. And from time to time, leaders find themselves thinking:

I think we should reaffirm the “basics” of what it means to do our jobs.

Which isn’t bad, by any means. But it’s merely sufficient. And you don’t want a sufficient sales organization.

You want an excellent one. This means you need to help your people go beyond the basics, not back to them.

Turn the Basics into Essentials

The “basics” are a poor word choice for things that are vital to success. Top performers crave something more than a “job description.” That’s why I prefer the term essentials. Basics make me think of tasks; essentials focus on people’s essence. Basics make your people roll their eyes and think, Why are we going backward? Essentials get people’s attention on what they are manifesting through their careers. Basics sound like things that an algorithm can do.

But your people know they are essential to the success of their clients and colleagues.

Which Essentials Matter Most

Leaders can help their people move only a higher performance field by defining the essentials that consistently drive great performance. In my experience, these typically fall into the following three categories.

Mindset:

• Leaders help their people define a strong belief in their potential for success. They reaffirm their value to the marketplace and their unlimited capacity to do good things for themselves and others.

• Leaders nurture their people’s mindsets by modeling a stable, even-keeled optimism even when conditions are choppy. They check in with their team’s mindset during coaching calls and meetings, going beyond the “memos and updates” to support the (natural) elevator of emotions, confidence and determination that people travel as their performance progresses.

Skillset

• Leaders define the critical skills that must be learned, sharpened and performed every day in their industry. Keep this list short - it should be three to five things that a salesperson or staff member can recall easily. For example, for salespeople, the five critical skills are:

  • Data: Analyzing market trends and data, including consumer behaviors

  • Prospecting: reaching current and future clients, including the “trigger” activity for creating a sale (usually making a presentation to a prospect)

  • Relationships: Developing and nurturing relationships in a limited sphere of influence

  • Learning: Keeping up with the operational, financial and legal guidelines

  • Participating: In company, client and industry initiatives that support a healthy marketplace and social connection

  Within each of these skill sets, there are tasks someone must acquire and apply. But leaders don’t focus on that list, just as an editor doesn’t tell a writer how to type, spellcheck or edit a draft. She tells her author, Develop three drafts a week, and you’ll consistently produce desirable pieces of writing. Similarly, leaders keep their people focused on the objectives and let them decide whether to do prospecting by knocking on doors in the neighborhood or making social media videos.

Influence

• Leaders know that high performers use their influence to drive growth. For example, a top-producing salesperson influences consumers to become clients (ie. to enter the market) through marketing, prospecting and social engagement. They influence colleagues and competitors by participating in industry events and public situations (such as political or legal affairs).

• Influence plays on a broad field, but it has a targeted objective: Promote the values and messages that drive a healthy marketplace in which high performers excel.

  When high performers have to go beyond the basics of merely being present at events, they take the lead and become influential in their fields — and their futures.

  Influence is developed through leadership activities that exceed the basic job functions, and get them involved such as:

  • Teaching rather than attending training.

  • Leading meetings rather than sitting in the audience.

  • Participating in critical venues, such as industry trade events, public affairs or taking the local business community.

  • Spending time with clients outside of opportunities to pitch a deal or close a sale.

Excellence Happens Beyond the Basics

As I write this week in my other newsletter, there’s a big opportunity in the real estate industry to create competitive advantages through a renewed commitment to excellence.

While the last decade has been spent burning capital, chasing technology and unsustainable attempts to corner markets on price or lead generation, the present moment creates a rare opportunity to use skills and wills to set ourselves apart from everyone else.

Once the dust settles from the industry lawsuits, and every one of our competitors catches up with the required changes, we’ll all be back to the basics again. That’s not the position leaders want to be in — a level playing field. It runs the risk of signaling consumers to focus on price rather than outcomes. Those leaders who take the summer to go beyond the basics, not merely back to the basics have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance their organizations above the level of ordinary performance.

Leadership means creating performance, and an edge, in every market. It means creating more gains from the same winds that blow into every competitor’s sails. Those leaders who work today on developing a beyond-the-basics culture will position their people beyond the ordinary ups and downs of market cycles, as well.

The Four C’s of a “Beyond the Basics” Culture

Rather than a “return” to the basics, leaders can foster a “beyond” culture by reconnecting people with the core components of high performance which their mission, vision and values embody. I call these the Four C’s of a company’s culture, which includes: