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Gino Blefari knows a thing or two about growing a successful real estate company.
Blefari, now CEO of HSF Affiliates, began his career, which has been based largely in Silicon Valley, in 1985 as a sales agent. He eventually moved into management, then became co-owner of Contempo Realty Group, which was sold in 1997 to Realogy. He stayed with Realogy for five years before founding Intero Real Estate Services in 2002, which became the seventh largest real estate company in the country based on volume before he sold it to HomeServices in 2014.
With the wealth of knowledge Blefari has amassed over his 30-year career, he says The 4 Disciplines of Execution (Free Press, 2012) by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling, most closely aligns with his methods for running a brokerage.
Discipline 1: Focus on your wildly important goals.
Don’t spread yourself too thin. “One day at a time, one goal at a time” should be your mantra as a broker. The fewer goals you have, the more time, energy, and dedication you’ll put in to accomplishing those goals.
Discipline 2: Act on your lead measure.
A goal is only a dream if you don’t know how you’re going to get there. A lead measure is the activity or task you plan to do to get closer to achieving a goal. For example, if one of your agents wants to grow their business by one additional sale per month, the lead measure might be prospecting for two more hours per day or knocking on a specific number of doors per week, Blefari says.
Discipline 3: Keep a compelling scoreboard.
Blefari says brokers should create a system to “keep score” and openly track sales in your office. This motivates healthy competition and helps the team celebrate accomplishments, he says.
“It has always been my philosophy that any salesperson or any manager needs to know exactly where they stand at any time,” Blefari says. “Let’s face it; when you keep score, people do a better job.”
Discipline 4: Create a cadence of accountability.
To foster accountability, Blefari prefers setting up a “wildly important goal,” or WIG, call for your agents at the same time every week. Consistently sharing your WIG and lead measure will help a team stay motivated and on track.
