CGI
Just five months after launching the Career Growth Initiative (CGI), an ambitious companywide initiative to help associates offset seasonal declines and build momentum for the new year, Keller Williams Realty reported monthly profits that shattered the company’s all-time records for November.
Profits for local franchise owners were up 55 percent year over year. Moreover, because Keller Williams is a profit-sharing company, profit share distributions to associates also set an all-time monthly record – up 63 percent over November 2015 to more than $10 million.
“With our Career Growth Initiative, we’re helping our agents focus on their most leveraged business activities during a time of year when many competitors abandon the field,” Keller Williams President John Davis said. “We’re helping our people grow their businesses, which is helping them fund their lives and create opportunities for their families!”
The Activities that Work – A Look at the Seven CGI Tools
The first of the Career Growth Initiative tools, the CGI Calculator, empowers Keller Williams associates to work backward from a profit goal that will fund their life to the activities needed to complete each month to achieve that goal. In the calculator, they manage listings and see what they are earning and how close they are to completing their goal.
Once their goals are set up, the Listing Management, Listings (Monthly), Pipeline, Agent Trend and Agent LORE (Language of Real Estate) tools help associates track their performance and activities for a real-time look at how close they are to achieving their goals.
Creating their story is just the first part. The Local Expert tool is a professionally created storyboard which is fully customizable for each associate and designed to help them share their story and show why they are the local expert of choice in their area.
Defying Seasonality and Breaking Records
Real estate agents typically work with fewer buyers and sellers in the fall and winter months following the peak selling seasons in the spring and summer. Because of this expected seasonal cycle, many agents reduce their prospecting activities in the fourth and first quarters and then ramp up their activities in the spring. Keller Williams sought to counter this “traditional” real estate mindset by focusing intently on Q4. The company launched the CGI training and accountability program in July to help agents focus on the lead generation and conversion activities that generate results 90 days down the line. And the results are showing up!
These results are not the first time this year that KW associates have broken production records. In fact, KW associates have broken records every month in 2016. In the Q3 Performance Report, KW announced that associates’ Q3 performance drastically outpaced the industry, but they’re crushing their OWN all-time records. Closed transactions, sales volume, owner profit and profit share were all up year over year.
“Through our commitment to training and technology, we’re empowering our agents to have goal-setting conversations with their local leaders and then easily track their daily activities and outcomes,” CEO Chris Heller said. “They’re improving their skills – becoming more efficient and effective – and it’s showing up in the bottom line. Our local offices are more profitable, which means we get to share more profits with the agents who are helping us grow. And we’re delivering a better customer experience to the hundreds of thousands of consumers who want to buy or sell a property this time of year.”
\As the activities and CGI momentum continue throughout the company, KW associates are setting up their businesses for a profitable start to the new year and proving that seasonality is a mindset that can be offset with the right activities.
