Growth Initiative
In 2011, Operating Principal Ron Wexler of the Orland Park market center adopted the Keller Williams Growth Initiative without hesitation. The previous year, he had seen first-hand in another market center that the activity and focus-driven back-to-basics system for fueling growth worked.
“I knew it was time to listen to the people who had been there before. The biggest curse being in real estate is we all think we know and can figure out everything. There’s just a point where we have to surrender,” Wexler says about wholeheartedly adopting a new way of doing business.
A Remarkable Turnaround
At the time the Growth Initiative was introduced to the Orland Park market center, Wexler’s team had nothing to lose in adopting it. In 2010, the Illinois-based market center suffered a loss of $59,000 and times seemed bleak. However, after implementing the Growth Initiative the following year, the leadership team was able to turn around the losses and net $8,000 profit. It was the start to remarkable growth and recovery. In 2012, the system really took root and profits jumped to $204,000. In 2016, the team had a 60 percent profit increase over 2015.
It’s a remarkable turnaround, but not a unique one. Since its company-wide introduction in 2011, the Growth Initiative has led to historic gains, including doubling the associate count, making Keller Williams the world’s number one real estate franchise by agent count, while cumulative profit share has surpassed $850 million, including $154 million in 2016.
Back to Basics
Each week, Keller Williams Co-CEO John Davis hosts separate conference calls with operating principals (OPs), team leaders (TLs), and market center administrators (MCAs) to discuss company performance and focus on activities that are working to drive that success.
For Karen Saut, Orland Park’s MCA, these calls and activities were a wakeup call. She began to better understand what her TL was handling and where she could help her be more effective in her job. It created leadership team awareness and got everyone on the same page.
“It helps us understand what is expected of us and our TL’s systems,” Saut says. “Everyone knows what their role is and what they need to do to be successful and how others can help.”
Team Leader Colleen Basinski says that the Growth Initiative gave her a set of standards she was expected to uphold and a system to teach her team to help them succeed. Initially, there was some resistance among the team with regard to more reporting and greater accountability. But Basinski says that when the leadership team began to show how rolling out their reports could lead to better systems and greater overall success and transparency, the team all got on board.
Building Careers
And while the Growth Initiative is primarily targeted toward the growth of the market center, in July 2016, KWRI rolled out the Career Growth Initiative for associates. This program uses similar goals, accountability and reporting to help individual Keller Williams agents achieve their own success and move forward in their careers.
Having experienced such great success with the GI, the leadership seamlessly rolled out the CGI, which was designed to be used in tandem with the GI language and tools already established.
Dave Auffarth, member of the Orland Park market center’s Associate Leadership Council (ALC), says he’s not really a “numbers guy,” but the Career Growth Initiative has changed that. By focusing on four key areas – listing appointments, listings secured, closings and profit – agents can see where their strengths lie and where they may need additional focus, training or coaching to improve.
“What this does is it allows agents to focus on running a business, because without these four conversations, you’re just running around for a paycheck. You’re not really focusing on being a businessperson and owning a business, which means watching the numbers, which is a lot more numbers than these four. But if you can get them focused on these four, it expands from there,” he says.
The Payoff
The market center’s turnaround is a testament to what the Growth Initiative can accomplish, but the team members say that it’s been more than that. Better systemshave allowed the team to grow from 46 agents in 2010 to 425 today. The team is in the process of growing I've more leaders over the next two years – a goal that Wexler has made a priority
But it’s also personal. Everyone in the market center is earning more money as a result of the increased success and profit.
Auffarth says that the overall success of the market center has been inspiring to him and is helping him realize his own career goals.
Meanwhile, Basinski has helped agents grow their income to levels they never thought possible – and seen her own personal income more than quadruple during her six years with the team. “And that allowed for things like sending my son to college. Being able to write a check so he can go to any college and I don’t have to worry about it at all,” she says. “And our associates are earning more than ever before. They are going on vacations with their families and paying cash.”
For Wexler, building his market center has been both professionally and personally rewarding. After seeing some agents lose everything in the recession because they “were only as good as their next sale,” he takes the commitment to build a thriving market center personally.
The associates are also experiencing tremendous benefits from utilizing the CGI. “We have agents capping now who never capped before,” says Basinski. “The CGI breaks up activities into monthly, weekly and even daily activities so everyone can achieve their individual goals.”
“Just based on my production, these companies all wanted me. None of them had anything to offer except, ‘Come work at our company. We’ll give you money upfront.’ They were going to offer me a bounty to come join them. Ultimately, I wanted the personal growth. That’s what attracted me to this world. Now that’s what I want to share with the people here. I by no means think we’ve arrived. I think we’re on a really great track, though,” Auffarth says.
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