Section 3: Building Your Team & Defining Roles
So we’ve talked about defining your goals, core values, creating processes and tools to help you keep things organized, now we’re going to transition into how to actually build a team; from how to recruit, selecting the right team members, defining roles, and creating a company culture.
Having a process documented from start to finish will help you determine your staffing needs from acquisitions, marketing, dispositions, administrative work, transactions and so on.
I can’t express enough how it important it is to have your process documented before adding on new team members. It simply makes the transition much smoother for everyone involved.
How to Build Your Team
If you want to know if an individual is the right fit for your company, give them a personality test.
There’s two personality tests that we here at Simple Wholesaling use during the selection process.
The first personality test we use is called the Kolbe Test, which essentially tells us what that specific individual’s strengths are.
We also use the DISC Personality Test which helps you understand the candidates work style and how to build more effective relationships by using the DISC factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance.
When I took the DISC personality test, I learned that I’m a quick starter. I get into things very quickly without really thinking about it but I’m not very detailed oriented and I’m not very good at research.
So essentially, I’m a quick starter and bad at everything else! But guys, that’s totally okay because thanks to the DISC test, my team knows that we need to hire someone who is detailed oriented since I lack that personality trait.
How to Find People
When recruiting new team members, I would recommend starting with your network first. Look at your inner circle and ask people you know personally for references.
Just about every person from my team has come from a personal reference. I’ve hired my friends. I’ve hired my team’s family members. Even my business coach came from a reference.
So don’t over think it by spending money ton of money on ads early on. Start with your inner network first to find your strongest candidates.
Now if you can’t find anyone in your inner circle, invest money into an advertisement prospecting the type of candidate you are seeking for your company.
Now once I’ve found a potential candidate, I ask them to send me a video submission because I personally don’t care for resumes and I want to get a feel of who they truly are through their video submission.
Who Do I Add First?
When I first got started, there were tasks I enjoyed and there were tasks I did not enjoy and that comes with every business.
Here’s a quick story…
I sat down with a guy who is a golf pro the other day and he mentioned that he was starting to get into real estate because he didn’t have much work to do during the winter.
He explained how he enjoys going out and teaching others how to golf plus he enjoys being able golf himself while giving out lessons.
But there was a part of the job he didn’t enjoy…
He didn’t enjoy sitting behind the desk at the golf clubhouse taking orders and processing transactions.
So in summary, in every job and business, there will be tasks you enjoy and tasks you do not enjoy.
So when I began to expand my team, I honestly looked for people to fill the jobs or the duties that I don’t enjoy which was answering the phone and handwriting letters for direct mail campaigns.
One of the other tasks I don’t like is putting lock boxes on properties, taking pictures and cleaning out properties so hiring a property manager was top priority for me.
When you guys are looking to build a team, I would consider filling the positions you don’t like doing first.
Some people aren’t very detailed oriented, hate talking to people, hate negotiating, some people don’t like dealing with all of the paperwork…
So it depends on whatever you don’t like.
Begin to build your team by hiring people who are good at fulfilling a task you don’t enjoy doing.
Hiring Virtual Assistants
I went through most of my business (nine and a half years) with no virtual assistants because I felt like I didn’t know how to utilize them. I just didn’t know where to start and how to communicate with VA’s.
At the time, I felt like it was more work than what it was worth but I was very wrong.
We’ve hired a few VA’s and I personally feel that VA’s are a huge extension of yourself. Our VA, Roxanne handles our administrative work and she has been with us for about 6 months and she is awesome!
We have 11 people total on the team and she is by the far most detailed oriented person I’ve ever met which is really amazing because I’ve never met her face-to-face and she lives in the Philippines.
Outside of hiring a virtual assistant to work directly for you, Pat Live is an amazing phone answering resource that answers motivated sellers live.
This, my friends, is a game changer and I strongly believe this will help set you apart from other wholesalers out there.
So people may disagree and say to let the call go to voicemail and then call them back, but guys you must remember, competition is extremely fierce so you have to answer the phone live or you risk that motivated seller calling another investor instead since you didn’t pick up the phone.
Here at Simple Wholesaling we have an acquisitions team member answer the phone live during his work hours, but what about the weekends and the hours between 6 pm and 8 am the next day?
Are you just going to let those calls go to voicemail?
What if your acquisitions guy is talking to someone else on the other line?
You can’t talk to multiple people at once so there’s an answering service called Pat Live and you can actually structure this through Call Rail to where if you’re talking on the other line, after 5 seconds of not answering, the call will be transferred to Pat Live where a trained representative will take the phone call on your behalf and capture all of the information needed.
We used to miss about 50 percent of our phone calls because we received a lot of calls either on the weekends, after hours or while we’re on the other line. Now thanks to Pat Live, we miss 2 percent of our phone calls.
I believe it is worth checking into a call service if you want to answer above 40 percent of your calls.
Defining Roles
When defining roles, keep it simple and play on each other’s strengths.
In a wholesale business, the most important role that could make or break your business is in the acquisitions role because you make money when you buy the deal, it’s not when you sell the deal.
When finding someone to fulfill your acquisitions role, you must have someone who is good with people, good at negotiating, someone who is humble and hungry, someone who is going to go out on a Saturday to meet someone when it’s 30 degrees.
That’s the type of person you need in the acquisitions role, and those traits aren’t going to fit everybody but that’s the most important role within your wholesaling company so choose wisely.
When we were looking for someone to fulfill the acquisitions role, we were looking for someone who was a little more aggressive and could influence and persuade others.
When we were looking for a transactions coordinator, we were searching for an individual who was more conscientious, steady, detailed oriented and had no problem doing the same thing over and over again.
I remember when our team member Gary was our closing coordinator and our property manager. He was just overwhelmed because he couldn’t get it all done. We were increasing volume and closing on a lot of properties he just couldn’t keep up. So we took the property management role away and gave it to someone else and played into his strength of being our closing coordinator instead.
So if you have a team member who is wearing too many hats and is feeling overwhelmed, give them hope that help is on the way and work on trying to find someone who can help assist some of the duties.
Here’s another great example on how to play on your team member’s strengths…
Alex works for our team and he started off answering calls on our acquisitions teams, now if you meet Alex, he’s a great guy but that isn’t his gift. He didn’t enjoy answering calls but I felt like he did it because he wanted to be a part of the team and wanted to pay his dues. Alex is more detailed, so now he makes sure the purchase agreements are accurate and photos of properties are taken care of. He’s also really good at systems and he’s already created an entire direct mail campaign for 2018.
Building Team Morale
I read this book called The Dream Manager and this book was about a janitorial service who was having trouble retaining their employees. There janitors only lasted less than a year, so they started to wonder why their turnover was so high.
Now it’s easy to think that it was due to the nature of the business because nobody wants to be a janitor and clean up after people their entire life. After hiring a Dream Manager, they found out they were totally wrong.
The dream manager sat down with the janitorial service’s management team and ask what was it that the janitors really wanted.
Was it more money?
More benefits?
What do they want?
They conducted a survey with all of the janitors to pinpoint their wants and their dreams.
The Dream Manager then met with each janitor individually and asked each of them to write down their goals and dreams and what would help them achieve their goals.
Most of the time it wasn’t about having more money, it was things along the lines of sending their kid to college, home ownership, buying a new car, having a nice Christmas or buying their daughter their first bike.
That book reminded me that everyone has goals and dreams, and it influenced me to set individual appointments with my team members to allow me the chance to get to know them outside of work.
Now I try to have a lunch with a different team member every Friday to learn about their personal life and any goals and dreams they may have because it’s really about building rapport and showing my team that I truly care about them. I want them to success in their personal lives as well.
So guys, remember that not only do you work with your team members but you do life with them as well.
Conclusion
Well there you have it guys!
I hope you found this Simple Guide useful as you began to grow and develop your team.
Just remember, keep it simple!
Next week, I’m going to share insight on how to make a name for yourself and build a reputable wholesaling company through marketing and branding.