How to reset your team at quarter time.

CRE Success Principle: Don’t confuse a lack of results with a lack of commitment. When someone is doing the right activities but not getting outcomes, your role is to restore their confidence and focus, not to manage them like a poor performer. Encouragement at the right moment can be the turning point in their year.

At the end of Q1, you can get a clear snapshot of how your commercial real estate business is really performing.

Some agents are ahead. Some are falling behind. And then there is the middle group, the ones who have the potential but have not quite found their rhythm yet.

Focus on the Middle Group

In my experience, this is the group that deserves the most attention right now. They are doing the work. They are putting in the effort. But the results have not followed yet.

This is where leadership matters most.

A simple conversation can shift everything. Encouragement, belief, and reassurance can help someone break out of a slump faster than another KPI review ever will.

Reinforce the Fundamentals

When performance dips, it is easy for agents to lose focus or chase new ideas. I have seen it happen many times.

Your role is to bring them back to what works. Prospecting. Following up. Working listings. Staying consistent.

Momentum returns when the fundamentals are executed well.

Act Early

I get that it feels easier to avoid a difficult conversation or to just hope that things will get back on track – but you shouldn’t wait until mid-year to address performance issues. The earlier you step in, the faster you can help someone get back on track.

If you want your team to finish the year strong, quarter time is your opportunity to reset, refocus, and lead.

Listen to episode 262 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership to learn how to do it effectively.

Episode transcript:

We are 25% of the way through the year, which means we are at quarter time.

Now, if you follow football or any sport that has four quarters, you'll know that it's better to be up than to be down at quarter time, but the game and the momentum can certainly shift over the following three quarters.

So how you are going now and how your team is going does not necessarily determine how you are going to finish the year.

So, in today's episode, I want to just quickly talk about a few different categories or cohorts of people you may have in your team.

And I want to talk to you about some things that you can do to help people who are probably doing the right thing, so you believe have the capacity to still have a great year, but are just having a little bit of trouble getting going.

So, if you've got any of those people in your team, or maybe you are one of those yourself, I think you're going to find today's episode particularly helpful.

This is episode 262 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name is Darren Krakowiak. I'm your host. Thank you so much for joining us.

This is an episode today as part of our best of series, which was released a year ago.

And I'm timing this one to be released now because it's all about what you can do if you're a commercial real estate principal to coach your agents to higher levels of performance at this exact stage of the year.

It's the quarter time break. There's still another nine months to go.

But if you don't have the momentum behind you now, it's going to be hard to get to where you need to be by the end of this year.

Now you might see three different types of agents in your business right now.

There are those who are on track or even ahead of where they need to be. There are those who are falling short. And then there are those which could get there if you can just give them a little bit of a nudge and a little bit of support to get them to where they need to be.

So, I want to talk today about the importance of encouragement and guidance to help individuals regain focus and also build motivation, plus some tips on empowering your team to improve performance in the second quarter of this year, which will lead them towards overall better performance throughout 2026.

And before we get into this episode, I do want to let you know that since we released the original episode a year ago, we've launched a new program at CRE Success, which is called Sales Management as a Service.

So if you're a commercial real estate principal, and if you are not really into playing the sales management or department head function, you don't like the whole accountability game, or if you think that your team could use an additional layer of accountability along with skills development and mindset development, you can get that without having to hire a $150,000 sales manager or department head with Sales Management as a Service.

If you want more information, go to cresuccess.co/sales. We've already got 13 agencies around Australia on board to this, and we'd love to make yours number 14, cresuccess.co/sales.

Alright, let's get into today's episode.

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Today's episode is all about how we can help people who perhaps haven't had the best start to the year, but have really great potential to still have a great year.

Before we get into talking about those people, I just do want to talk about the other cohorts of people that you may have: the people who are already on track or way ahead of schedule, and then the people who probably aren't going to make it.

So, in terms of the people who are on track or ahead of schedule, I think it's just about giving them a bit of a rev up and reminding them of the opportunity to achieve more.

So don't let those people stay limited by the targets. If you've set targets at the start of the year for them or their own expectations about what is possible, you want to help them be motivated to do even more, to really sell the possibility, and to give them the tools and the resources that they need so that they can produce more than what they expected at the start of the year.

And certainly, the first quarter performance shows that they can exceed if they continue with the way the year is going so far. So that's what I'd be doing with those groups of people.

Then at the other end of the spectrum, we've got people who are just not going to make it, who aren't exhibiting the behaviors, who aren't putting in the effort, and aren't performing the activities which are going to lead to them being able to post a year of performance.

Well, we need to start intervening now with those people. Don't let it run and drag on until halfway through the year or three quarters of the year, or even the full year before you make an assessment on how it is that they're going.

While yes, I do believe that you can still turn things around after three months, we do need to start doing things which make it possible for us to make decisions on those people before the end of the year.

If we can see right now that they are just not going to get there, don't let it drag out.

Seen it happen many times. No one is helped by us not having those difficult conversations. We need to be willing to have those difficult conversations as soon as it is time and appropriate to have them.

I want to focus today though on this middle group, which are people who we believe can get there, but just need a little bit more help.

They just need a little bit more support in order to get their year back on track and to achieve what you know they can potentially do.

And sometimes this can be as simple as just giving them a little bit of encouragement and support, recognizing that all of us get into funks, into slumps, into periods where we just have a bit of bad luck.

And some encouraging words from you, if you are the leader of the business, can go a long way.

A simple statement like, “I know this business is trying at times.” “You are not alone.” “I've been there before, and I know that you're going to get this back on track.”

This is distinct from managing underperformance. These are the people who you can see are putting in the effort, who are doing the activities which make it likely that the results are going to come. It's just not quite happening for them at the moment.

And sometimes the thing that's missing is that mojo, that confidence. And if you are willing to give them the support and the encouragement that perhaps they need, that is going to lift those people up.

If you're willing to let them know that you've experienced setbacks before and that you've had doubts before, because we have all had doubts from time to time and we've all second guessed if this short-term period is going to last forever, we've got to make sure that these people don't lose the faith.

Because you can see the potential in them. You know that they're going to get there. You know that they're on the right track, and you do believe in them.

Well, express that. Let them know. Don't underestimate the impact of your words. You are the leader.

And even if you're not a leader, by the way, sometimes a little bit of encouragement from somebody else, an outside voice, somebody else just to come and interrupt that pattern of negative self-talk that might be going on in their mind because they've had a few bad results, that can be the difference between them remaining in a slump or getting their mojo back.

The other thing that sometimes can happen with people who you know can get there but just aren't quite having a good run is that maybe they've lost their focus a little bit.

And this is another thing that you can do as a leader. It's help them get back on track.

Sometimes when things aren't going our way, we might get shiny object syndrome, and this has happened to me, and I'm certainly someone who is prone to it.

And the problem with giving up on something that you've been working on and then starting to work on something else is that you'll lose a lot of the momentum that you've built up.

And in my business last year, I went through a period of about two and a half months where we weren't bringing on any new clients. And I kind of think about it as like a clogged drain hole.

And I'm plumbing, I'm plumbing, I'm plumbing, and finally, of course, it gets cleared, and then the leads start to come through, or the better leads start to come through.

But there was this period where I was speaking to the wrong prospects, and the prospects that I was speaking to weren't converting.

I started to really doubt what it was that I, you know, doubt my capacity, doubt my capability.

And if it wasn't for the coach that I had that reminded me to continue to stick to the fundamentals and to do all the things that I've been doing because they are the right things to be done, and that is the strategy, then I can likely get distracted by starting a TikTok channel or whatever it is that I could see other people doing in order to get results.

That would mean that I would lose all the momentum that I had based on the strategy that I had in place that was previously getting me results, but just wasn't for a short period of time.

So, if you're working with somebody who perhaps has lost their mojo and is a little bit distracted, one thing that you can do is just get them focused on the metrics which will help them get the results that they are looking for.

Often these people are already the ones who are doing the activities that make it likely that they're going to get the results.

We just want to make sure they keep doing them, that they keep trying to unplug that hole, and then the water will start flowing and the leads and the deals will start coming again.

So, make sure they're continuing to generate, to call prospects, to submit proposals.

Make sure that they're doing things like working the listings that they have harder, that they're canvassing for buyers and lessors, that they're looking for ways to improve and enhance their marketing techniques as opposed to trying completely different things which may or may not work.

Now I know as I'm talking, it sort of sounds like I'm saying we shouldn't try new things. I'm not saying that.

But what I'm saying is that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water, to use that expression, as in when things aren't going our way for a little period of time, that doesn't mean that everything that we've been doing that previously was working doesn't work anymore.

It can just mean, again, to use that blocked drain analogy, that there is a blockage, and we just need to pump a little bit harder in order to get things back on track.

And in a business where you are the leader, part of your role is to help people continue to stay focused, to maintain their motivation, and continue to do the things that, based on your experience, is ultimately going to get them to where they want to go.

So, our episode today is really about helping people who are in a slump at the quarter time mark of the year to run out at the second quarter and to shift the momentum in their year.

One of the ways, of course, you're going to be doing this is through your one-on-one meetings. If you are communicating regularly with your people, you should be able to hopefully tell if they are a little bit off.

And again, the earlier that you can intervene, the earlier that you can help them to regain their focus and motivation and mojo, the sooner that they will be starting to produce results for the business.

So, to recap, we've got at quarter time the opportunity to check if things are on track or off track.

We've generally got three cohorts of people: the people who are on track or even ahead of target, and we want to continue to motivate them and to give them everything that they need to be able to have a stellar year.

We've got at the other end of the spectrum people who are just not going to get there, and we need to start having those difficult conversations as soon as appropriate so it doesn't just continue to drag on and on.

Even though those conversations are difficult, they need to be had, and that's what is ultimately better for everyone.

And then we've got these people in the middle who we know can get there, but they just need some help, some support from you.

And again, the point of really today's episode is don't underestimate the power of your experience and your encouragement to help these people get back on track.

That's our episode for today. Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you soon.