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Tips for Building an Effective Business Unit: Nick Boyd

In this exclusive interview from our event 'How to Lead a Winning Team in 2018', Azal Khan talks to Nick Boyd from High Performance Sales Academy about building an effective business unit (EBU) within the real estate industry.

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Azal Khan: Hi, this is Azal Khan from Elite Agent Magazine and I’m here today at our event How to Lead a Winning Team in 2018. I’m lucky enough to be joined by Nick Boyd who’s from the High Performance Sales Academy and he spoke to us today on how to build an effective business unit. Nick, you said in your speech that building a team means that you must change too, so what exactly did you mean by that?

Nick Boyd: What we do is we focus so much on the individual coming into the team but we forget that with that they’re finding us time. So, that means our days are going to change. We are no longer real estate agents when we’re in a EBU, we actually change ourselves into leaders.

So, are you finding yourself more time to do more things of what is dollar product, like prospecting, like negotiating, like listing presentations? Are you giving yourself a re-structure, a re-health check on your own business, as well as the individual that you brought into your team?

Azal Khan: What would you say are the biggest tips or strategies you would give someone in building an effective business unit?

Nick Boyd: There’s been a notion that you’ve got to build momentum first, but I actually think that’s a bit of a fallacy because if you build too much momentum and then we hear the “oh, I need support to try and fix that momentum” or “try to patch up the missed opportunities that I’m having”, you actually are never starting effectively what an effective business unit should be.

I believe timing and planning is everything. What I mean by that is if you’re starting to show two to three listings secured, like listed every month for three months, that shows to me that your business is capable of doing that for ten months. We got to let our business tell us when we’re ready because we as individuals – say, I’m ready to put on a team member – for most people that’s never going to happen.

That’s why in this industry still, there is a small percentage that have team members as opposed to the actual greater population of real estate agents out there who are still doing everything on their own. Let your business start to signify the right time, so timing involves planning for your business two to three listings for three months.

Second to that, do you have set KPIs? Do you have a set pipeline over 12 months that’s actually showing you where your listings are coming in? That allows you to forecast. These are like sort of integral moments when you can start ticking those boxes, it’s saying, hey, you know what? You’re ready. Start to get that person onto the team.

Azal Khan: Nick, you mentor and train a number of high performing people from a variety of industries, so elite athletes as well. How are real estate agents different, and what are the skillsets that they have that’s really unique to them that makes them special?

Nick Boyd: Real estate is my bread and butter. I love it and I love the people in it, and the one thing that I think separates real estate agents and great people in real estate from other industries is their creativity. What I mean by that is their need for variety is kind of really insatiable. They have to continually be evolving.

Whereas if I go and work in say some of the other industries that I’ve worked in, pharmaceuticals or fitness, it’s actually very, very regimented in terms of their habits and behaviours. Whereas I actually really get a lot of excitement when you get to work with real estate agents because I understand that they need that variety and that’s actually the secret to success for a lot of great real estate agents out there.

Azal Khan: Yeah, that was really interesting. Thanks for the chat, Nick. Really appreciate it.

Nick Boyd: Awesome. Thank you.

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