A smarter way to grow your commercial real estate firm.

CRE Success Principle: Training without follow-through is often just a sugar hit, whereas intentional goal setting, consistent accountability and ongoing coaching can truly shift results.

Commercial real estate principals wear many hats. They’re managing operations, driving business development, supporting the team, and often still doing deals themselves.

If that’s you, with all that on your plate, it’s little wonder that holding your agents accountable and coaching them consistently can feel near impossible.

That’s why I created Sales Management as a Service™ (SMaaS).

Why Most Firms Don’t Have a Sales Manager

The reality is that hiring a credible sales manager costs around $150,000 a year, which only makes sense for big firms. But small to medium-sized firms still need the structure and accountability that the sales management function provides.

How SMaaS Works

SMaaS plugs directly into your business as a program that delivers:

•  Weekly live performance tracking sessions
•  Monthly masterclasses and prospecting power hours
•  A library of 52 training modules
•  Ongoing mindset coaching and peer accountability

We onboard your agents, help them set clear goals to grow their production and develop themselves, and track their progress toward increasing their GCI by $100,000 in 12 months.

The Outcome

SMaaS is more than training or coaching. It’s a system that creates the environment for better performance without adding more headcount.

For you, it means less stress and more visibility into what your agents are doing. For your team, it means consistent support and accountability.

I break it all down in episode 239 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. Listen now to see how SMaaS can transform your business.

And if you’d like to register your interest in Sales Management as a Service™, or just to receive more information, visit cresuccess.co/sales now.

Episode transcript:

Have you heard of sales management?

Sometimes it's called sales enablement.

It's been around in the big commercial real estate firms for probably about a decade, and what it involves is employing somebody or a team of people who are there to help commercial real estate agents to improve their performance by providing greater access to tools, training, and accountability that helps them level up their performance.

Now, if you're a commercial real estate principal inside a boutique, independent, or franchised commercial real estate firm, you might want to provide this service, but ultimately it would need to be provided by you because you just don't have enough revenue, you don't have the scale to justify the hiring of a credible person to become your sales manager.

You need someone good to perform this role because you want to be able to trust them to do a good job, and also, you want your team to respect them.

So, that's the problem, and I was speaking to a new client recently, and I mentioned to them this idea of Sales Management as a Service.

He was very enthusiastic about it.

In fact, he used language which I can't repeat here, but he thought it was a good idea, and when I offered him the service, he signed up for his agents for it.

So, I realized then that there is some value in this, and I want to explain to you exactly how Sales Management as a Service works, as it might be something that would be a good solution to improve the performance of your sales and leasing agents.

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name's Darren Krakowiak. This is episode 239.

I help commercial real estate principals lead their people to better performance, to grow revenue in their business faster, and have less stress in their lives.

In today's episode, I want to introduce you to an idea that I've been developing, one that I think could make a huge difference to boutique, independent, and franchised commercial real estate firms that want to help their commercial real estate agents produce better results without taking on another full-time hire or putting more burden on the principal's shoulders to help those agents get that result.

It's called Sales Management as a Service™ (SMaaS).

If you're leading a commercial real estate firm, chances are you're wearing a lot of hats. You're managing operations, you're trying to support your team, you want to find some space for strategy and for growing the business, you're managing client relationships, and you're likely also producing yourself, right?

You might be spending some of your time (when you've got time) wondering why some of your agents aren't hitting their numbers.

Maybe their pipeline's inconsistent, maybe there's not enough follow-up happening, maybe they don't have the structure or support they need, and you just realize that, “You know what? I know that they can do better if they had the right support.”

So, it might not be totally their fault. Yes, they know what to do, but without them adopting the standards, getting the coaching, and having real accountability, their performance isn't just where it could be.

That is the problem, and sales management, I believe, is the potential solution.

But most small and medium-sized commercial real estate firms can't justify the hiring of a full-time sales manager.

It's probably a base salary of $100,000–$150,000 for a credible person. So, it's just not feasible unless you've got a team of maybe 10 or more agents in your business.

But just because you can't afford it or because you don't have the scale that would justify the hiring of a full-time sales manager or someone in sales enablement, that doesn't mean that the need doesn't exist.

So, the question then becomes, how can you get the benefits of strong sales leadership of sales management as a function without the cost and commitment of putting someone on the payroll?

That's where Sales Management as a Service comes in. It's a structured 12-month program where we essentially plug into your business and manage the performance layer on your behalf.

Now I have to say here, we don't promise performance—we create the environment for people to perform at a higher level. People are ultimately responsible for their own performance.

But what I will say is that what we're offering is something that's better than just training or an offsite.

Because they're often a one-time sugar hit that leaves people feeling motivated and excited, but then they get back into their day-to-day routine and slip back into their normal habits. That doesn't help them really follow through.

So, Sales Management as a Service is built on the same foundations as the Agent Accelerator program, which I've been sharing some information about in recent episodes.

But instead of an agent signing up for themselves, we deliver it to your team. So, commercial real estate business owners, principals, sponsor members of their team to be in the program.

You're outsourcing the sales management to CRE Success.

So, what does this mean in terms of deliverables?

We have weekly Zoom sessions that cover performance tracking. We provide a monthly masterclass. We have mindset coaching. And also, a prospecting power hour. Every single month we have those sessions happening—one session each week.

We also have 52 modules of training, a library that covers everything from generating leads to negotiation to systemizing to conversion and closing deals. So, every single week, there's new content for your team to explore, consume, and implement.

We also offer a private online community for support, feedback, momentum, and peer accountability.

As part of Sales Management as a Service, if you include at least three of your team members in the program, we'll onboard them personally as well, and we'll take them through a process which helps them set up their PDF plan.

They'll set a production goal, a development goal, and also a freedom goal. That will be the basis on which we help keep them accountable and track their progress.

We're working towards a very clear outcome in this program. We want everyone in the program to have a plan that will help them increase their GCI, their production, the amount of revenue against their name by $100,000 within 12 months.

Sales Management as a Service is designed for leaders of boutique, franchise, or independent commercial real estate firms who know their team have potential, but also know that hoping their people will get there isn't a strategy.

If you don't have the scale or the budget to hire a full-time sales manager, this gives you very similar structure and creates the environment where people can hit those results without you having to take on an additional headcount.

I think this is going to work because it's not just training, it's not just coaching, and it's definitely not just "ra ra motivation". It's a proven system created for commercial real estate agents with the accountability and support to actually implement what they learn.

Agents will get clarity on what they need to do and how they're going to get there. We'll help them get focused and become more consistent with the inputs required to get the outputs—the results they want for themselves, and that you want to see in your business.

As a business owner, you get the results. You get more visibility into what it is that they're doing. We'll be ensuring that they're attending the weekly sessions.

If they're not, we will be checking in with them, asking them where they've been, and inviting them to come back.

Ultimately, it helps fulfill that promise of having less stress in your life as a commercial real estate principal, because instead of all the responsibility for driving performance being on your shoulders, we support you with that with Sales Management as a Service.

And the agents themselves will see that you, as a business owner, are committing to them, committing to their performance, have belief in their ability over a 12-month period and hopefully longer if you believe it's something you want them to continue to have access to.

Because the growth will continue to compound. That's why I think this is better than just a one-time training session or a series of training modules delivered live or via Zoom, because it's continuous accountability, support, and growth.

If this sounds like something your team could benefit from, here's what you can do.

You can go to cresuccess.co/sales and register your interest.

We're going to be providing some special founding member offers for the first commercial real estate firms that come on board for Sales Management as a Service.

As I mentioned at the top, we've already onboarded one client and four of his staff into this program.

If you want to know exactly what it will look like, go to cresuccess.co/sales. We'll send you all of the information, and if you want to have a chat about what it looks like inside your business, we can arrange that as well.

I'm really excited to be offering this. I came up with this concept in a mastermind I'm involved in. It just shows the benefit of investing in yourself.

This is something that's been under my nose in terms of infrastructure—we had everything to provide this service, but I hadn't come up with the actual idea to offer it to commercial real estate principals.

I've had business owners sponsor their team members to be individual participants in Top Performer, and also now CRE Success Agent Accelerator.

And this is just putting more of a package together which I think reflects the needs of commercial real estate principals and business owners.

I think it's going to do a lot to bridge the gap between the good intentions of you and your team members and the adoption of higher standards that's going to drive greater performance.

So, if you want to know more, go to cresuccess.co/sales

That is our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you soon.