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Carey Murcin, associate broker at Meservier & Associates in Auburn, Maine, sees a lot of agents moving from company to company.
“I can only guess they are looking for something that they feel is not being provided at their current brokerage,” she says. “Expectations, of course, come into play. Agents need to know and align with what is expected of them, and what they can expect from their agency.”
Brokers are responsible for setting and relaying clear expectations for their agents. When this is done effectively, agents understand exactly how they need to perform to meet those expectations. Once an agent is on board with what’s expected of them, they can communicate better with their clients. Clear expectations from the top trickle down to the customer.
It’s when communication from the broker to the agent is murky that things go amiss, which can cause issues both internally and with clients. In an industry that centers around helping customers make a major purchase—oftentimes the largest purchase of their lives—crystal-clear expectations, communicated effectively, are a necessity.
“From beginning to end, regardless if you are working with a buyer or a seller, they need to know what is expected of them, what they can expect of their agent, and what to expect from the process in general,” she says.
Setting Your Office Up for Success
A 2023 Gallup poll shows that nearly half of all U.S. employees don’t know what’s expected of them at work. This applies whether an employee is remote, hybrid or in the office.
Lynsey Engels, CRS, AHWD, president of the Mel Foster Co. in Bettendorf, Iowa, says she makes sure her company—from leadership and management to staffers and agents—is communicating expectations on every level. Leadership communicates to management, management to staff members, and staffers to agents. And when it’s done right internally, it trickles down to the clients as well.
Part of communicating effectively and making sure expectations match the needs of the business is keeping everyone up-to-date on changes. Engels takes this seriously and makes it a point to “educate everyone on significant changes,” she says. She has more than 150 agents and 20 managers in locations across Iowa and Illinois.
She also focuses on providing training and inviting experts to speak to her office, ensuring her agents and staff are updated on industry or industry-adjacent best practices. The experts include a host of attorneys they work with, who often speak to the various liabilities agents might face in the field.
The goal, she says, is to make sure her agents have what they need to do their jobs well, which then makes the customer feel comfortable with the agent representing them in the transaction.
Make Sure Everyone Is on the Same Page
Murcin believes there are certain steps to ensuring agents have a clear understanding of a broker or owner’s expectations for them and their businesses. Likewise, it’s important that brokers understand the expectations and goals of their agents.
Make Sure Agent Expectations Align With Yours
As a broker, it’s important to ensure your agents’ business goals align with what you envision for your brokerage. Not all agents have the same goals for their business, and that’s OK, says Engels. But it’s useless to set expectations and then find out your agents’ goals don’t align with your own at all. That’s essentially setting yourself and your agent up for failure.
Have a conversation with your agent first, to make sure you can help them reach their goals and that they can help your business reach its milestones as well.
Communicate Effectively
- Keep it simple. It all comes down to how information is communicated. Simple, clear communication goes a long way. “Be direct with expectations even if you are worried there will be resistance,” Murcin says.
- Give context. “Explain why the expectations are what they are and what benefit it has to the overall structure of the company and how it will, in the end, help everyone succeed.”
- Be flexible. “Always be open to reevaluation of the expectations and keep an open dialogue with your people. Do they still make sense? Are they still serving the purpose intended? If not, be open to change.”
- Come up with a plan for unmet expectations. The reality is that even if goals are clearly set and articulated, sometimes someone misses the mark. “Missed expectations can be very disappointing, especially when you take pride in your profession,” Murcin says. Build in space for error and a plan to help agents get back on track.
Help Agents Set Expectations for Customers
Expectations aren’t just for the broker-agent relationship, though. It’s also important for an agent to have reasonable and realistic expecations for their customers. Murcin says they should keep in mind that buying or selling a home is not an everyday occurrence for a customer, and agents would do well to keep that in mind. As such, the customer’s knowledge of the intricacies of the transaction is limited.
“Setting realistic expectations from the start is helpful to avoid the emotional roller coaster that can be buying or selling a home,” she says. Brokers can help agents by helping explain what they can and cannot expect a customer to understand about the process. This can then help agents serve their customers in a way that instills trust and conveys value.
Setting clear expectations is an important part of ensuring success for the brokerage at all levels. It is one of the best ways to make sure everyone is held accountable for their responsibilities.
