As long as I’ve been in sales management, the most elusive challenge I continue to face is building a successful team. Let’s face it, it’s a difficult dynamic in the best of times and one that is really difficult when times are tough and incomes are down. I’ve tried them all. Site Manager with Site Associate (affectionately known as the “backup” agent), co-Site Managers, and sole Site Managers with paid hosts/hostesses. Then there’s the group sales approach with the famous “walk wheel”. Oh, let’s battle over the next up! They all have their merits and downfalls. Sales management is tough most of the time as you are always serving two masters: proper site coverage (which invariably calls for more people) with adequate compensation for the players (which invariably calls for less). No matter which you choose, at some point you are probably wrong. All you need is a big traffic week with low sales and you have a coverage problem. But if you load the site up with commissioned salespeople hoping to address the coverage issue, at some point someone starves and change is thrust upon you anyway. And even if you get it mostly right (usually “mostly” is as close as you can get), you still have to deal – in a team environment – with the dynamic of personalities, selling styles and administrative capabilities. It seems that those who often sell the best are the worst with their paperwork, and vice versa. And you know us builders – we want it all, and we want it all right (and usually right now as well!).

I’m not sure I’m the one to give advice since I’ve had more failures than successes. But perhaps that qualifies me a bit, so I’ll try to share what I’ve learned. First, unless the “team” (and in this case I’m referring to a co-managed site by two equally-compensated professionals) had successfully worked together before they got to your site and had already ironed out all the kinks – this is rarely a great way to structure a site. Usually one of the two is the stronger salesperson and eventually starts feeling like they are carrying the load yet splitting the income. I’m becoming more and more convinced that there needs to be an alpha dog (excuse me, ladies, but I think you get my point – someone in charge). This fact would seem to then speak clearly to structuring the site with a Site Manager and a licensed backup. We seem to feel more comfortable if the person covering the site two days a week (and one always-critical weekend per month) is licensed in case that potential buyer stumbles in on a Thursday or Friday. But we builders are a paranoid group to begin with. Did we spend money to generate traffic to the site only to have the backup agent set an appointment with them to show them property off-site that weekend? Is that backup’s goal to eventually move into full time new home sales as a Site Manager themselves? If so, invariably they get frustrated serving the Site Manager and start clamoring for their own site.

Maybe all of these challenges are why we sales managers still have jobs. Someone’s got to deal with this. But a lot of quiet-time thinking on this subject continues to lead me to many of the same thoughts I’ve shared with my peers over the years. First, I think we have to deal more effectively at some point with how we compensate the people who represent us in new home sales. It’s past time that these folks earned a fair living in the form of a base salary with some benefits. Enough to pay the bills and be able to focus on the task at hand and not worry if the next commission will be coming in soon so the kids can get new clothes. Then put a spiff for each closing on top of that. If you’re a really strong agent with great sales and closing skills, you ought to be able to outperform your peers. Yes, we have to temper some of the really high incomes that can come with a boom economy and seek balance by providing a decent living even in the difficult times. My guess is, though, that the real chargers will never want to see a top-end limit, which is why this conversation is generally a non-starter for most agents, even though they are tempted during the lean years. Secondly, I think we need to bring a whole new level of creative thinking to the topic of coverage. There are great administrative people out there who could be paid to manage the site and learn the business while doing so. Among them I think we’d continue to find great people who would then be willing and interested to step into sales. And through this experience, the Site Manager would have the opportunity to gauge how this person could fit into the team and benefit it. A erstwhile paid training ground where we could find the gems out there, without the revolving door of semi-committed people who may or may not work out long-term. And every bad staffing decision we make only keeps a talented Site Manager off-balance and less than focused on the tasks at hand while they are forced to deal with the daily drama.

As I said when I opened, it’s a challenging task – welcome to sales management! I’d love to hear from others who have labored with these same challenges and have perhaps reached some epiphanies they’d be willing to share. For me, that would be magic.