Matt Clements

By Matt Clements

Brokers are the leaders—like a team captain or an association president—they are responsible for your team’s growth by helping each individual player perform their best. Agents are the players, and creating a winning team takes involvement from everyone.

Each team has its all-stars, rookies, seasoned veterans, salty dogs, award winners, and players in a slump. I love baseball; I’m a total nut when it comes to my passion for the game. So, let’s talk about it from a coach’s standpoint. A coach wants the best team possible, and everyone will succeed when each individual contributes—meaning, like a baseball team, all players are involved in the team’s successes and failures.

My previous YPN team, the California YPN team, won the National Association of REALTORS®’ most significant YPN award: State Network of the Year in 2016. We did this largely by understanding the strengths, weaknesses, personalities, and specific talents of our team members. When meeting with my players, I asked them each: “What do you love?” and “What are you really good at?”And we had every player understand and utilize their strengths all year long. Literally, everyone on my team brought a different skill or passion to the table that made us great as a whole.

My grandfather owned his own brokerage in Anaheim, Calif., and he was also a baseball nut. He was a great leader, a past president, and he was his brokerage’s coach.

If you’re a broker, manager, or team leader, here’s how to get started:

Identify the strengths and weaknesses of each player.

Play to their strengths. Most players (agents) love to do two to four activities every day, so help them discover which ones are money-generating activities for them and start there.

©The Good Brigade – DigitalVision/Getty Images

Each player should write down their goals for the year.

A good challenge is to ask each player (agent) to write a one-page letter to themself, dated a year ahead (e.g. June 2023) explaining, in the first person, exactly what they accomplished in the year. Tell your players to GO BIG!!! Squeeze it into a single page of blank white paper with a blue pen.

Have your players tell themselves how much volume they sold, how much they earned, how much of those earnings they put into their long-term savings, where they vacationed, what their family and personal relationships are like, and, most importantly, how all that makes them feel.

If your players cry while writing it, they’re doing it correctly.

Next, have them laminate the paper, and read it aloud to themselves both in the morning when they rise and also right before going to bed, and watch what happens at year’s end. This is powerful.

I also recommend modifying the letter every three to six months in the event a new idea or life change happens. Continue making these “vision statements” year after year.

Learn how your players operate.

Get a heritage profile—my coach at Buffini and Co. does one for all the players. This will help identify what and how each player operates. This is a valuable long-term insight into one’s self, which helps each person build and maintain relationships in their world, and understand where their drive comes from and how to make that happen.

Next, get everyone to read the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill. This is my “business bible” and will help the reader understand what they are truly passionate about. When they finish the first read through, tell them to close the back cover, turn it over to the front cover again, and read it a second time, this time they should mark it up with underlines, side notes, highlights, and even in the front inside cover. Have them reference the page number(s) that made an impact, and write a short line about what it meant to them. This is powerful.

Recommend your players keep a journal.

Everyone needs a journal of good ideas! Prospecting ideas, scripts ideas, daily action checklist ideas, investments ideas, best books to read ideas, and again, have your players use a blue pen and go deep into their journal (daily) and read their book, daily; even if it’s just three to five pages, they’ll nail it in just two or three months time. And they’ll see how they grow…richer.

Develop a schedule with your players.

I understand people are different, that’s why understanding each player’s desires, strengths, and energy levels will help every “coach” best manage their team. The best coaches meet with their players on a consistent schedule every single week for 20 minutes to review. What do you review? EASY: Their numbers and how they feel. Find out the number of calls they made, number of notes written, number of current listings active, number of current escrows, and number of appointments they had during the past seven days.

This game is called “Moneyball” for a reason, and like the baseball film with Brad Pitt, the main two things every coach (Billy Bean’s character) should want to see are “measurable” actions: prospects and appointments. That’s it.

Here’s another exercise you can share with your players: In my business, every day I carry with me what I refer to as my “Line-Up Card.” It’s a large cut-out yellow poster board that goes where I go and sleeps in my calendar book. I look at it multiple times a day. It’s folded like a book.

Inside are boxes where I list my clients; current clients that I’ll be working with for the current quarter, including active listings and active buyers. On the front of the line-up card is my vision statement, and on the back is a list of my next 50 to 100 buyer and seller prospects.

I believe what you see is what you’ll get, what you read is how you’ll grow, and who you spend time with is who you’ll become. So be around the best players only.

Make the most of the “off-season.”

Whether you’re a broker, team leader, or agent reading this, building a winning team or winning business is simple: Have your goals in front of you and always give your 100% best. Also, when you hit your goals, reward yourself by taking a well-earned vacation—and don’t bring work with you. There is an off-season too, it’s called a “holiday.” To understand the power of momentum and energy, both players and coaches need to read the book, The Power of Full Engagement by Jim Loerhr and Tony Schwartz, to understand the ability to charge and recharge. By the way, I vacation four times a year, exactly for that purpose.

Make these discoveries and you will win every year, and your players will love you for helping them be their very best.

Matt Clements is the immediate past president of the Orange County Association of REALTORS® and CEO of the Clements Group at The Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif. Matt is the author of the YPN Playbook and was chair of the California Association of REALTORS® in 2016 when the group won the YPN State Network of the Year. Matt is on the board of directors for C.A.R. and NAR, and previously sat on NAR’s YPN Advisory Board. Connect with Matt: text/call 949-842-8797 or at MattClements.com.