Agent Academy: How to Structure Admin Compensation
The topic of compensation comes up and how you can structure it, so I wanted to base this week’s educational video around this topic and a specific framework to think about and some key take away to consider when compensating these kinds of people within your team.
Whether it’s Compensation for admin staff, ea., operations people, listing mangers, and anyone on your team that is a W2 administrative professional…
What I find is that as an entrepreneurial sales people that we are, we tend to build compensation planes for our people that we would appreciate, that we would want, however, we miss the fact that these people are very different creatures then us. They’re wired differently, which means the environment, compensation, and structure that they would prefer isn’t necessarily what would make you tick.
So you need to keep in mind empathy when you’re building these structures within your business, and how those decisions as a leader, a CEO, a boss can be detrimental for your company if you’re not considering the different kinds of people within your team, and the kind of culture and environment they would thrive in, rather than suffocate which would result in them leaving.
- Personality
What they’re looking for is a place that they can come in and contribute and add massive value but they want steady. They want to know what they’re going to be making month in and month out and when we try to package up these comp structures where they get the lowest possible base but they get the upside on all the sales we do.
What happens?
Now, you have someone coming into the office every single day worried about income and stressing because now money has become the number one issue, rather than them being able to focus on their career, goals, success, and most importantly, building up your business in the most proactive way, rather than the most stressful.
- Money off the Table
If you take money off of the table, they can just simply show up, contribute and be the rock stars at what they do, and most importantly – money doesn’t just stop becoming an issue for them, it stop becoming an issue for you.
Of course, I’m not saying you need to pay a tremendous salary, however, it’s pivotal you take care of your people and recognize the rock stars on your team – and give that recognition to allow you, your team, your culture, and your business to grow together, both personally and professionally in the most uplifting, inspiring, motivating, and healthy way possible.
- Incentivize desired outcome
- Service
- Profit
What is your desired outcome for your administrative staff? They aren’t sales people so you can’t continue to incentivize sales. However, my suggestion is that you incentivize service and profit.
Service because our staff needs to build a world class service platform so you have clients who are consistently happy and enjoy working with you and your team. Again, everything comes back to more revenue, and the way we do that is through our post survey scores.
This is where we grade them 1-10 and pay out bonuses with 10, 9, and 8’s because that is how you can measure client satisfaction which is something that everyone should have a system for. If it’s the one we use here at Agent Academy, or a different kind within your own business. It’s important to understand how your clients are feeling throughout their buyer journey, and it’s important to give that recognition to your team when they truly, and genuinely deserve it.
It’s incredible when both sales and administrative are both benefiting from the profit your company is generating, it makes for a strong culture and a tight knit group all working towards the same goal.
Through this frame work here if you really understand you’re dealing with different people and different personalities, you can now take money off of the table, and begin incentivizing service and profit, guess what?
You’re going to have happy employees, you’re going to have retention that’s far better than what you’d normally see in the Real Estate Industry and most importantly, you’re going to have a cohesive team that is going to be able to focus day in and day out, and knock it out of the park because their motivated, they’re in an environment that they can thrive, progress, and better themselves in.