What effective accountability looks like for commercial real estate agents?

CRE Success Principle: When people know they can be honest about where they are without being punished for it, problems surface earlier and can be solved faster.

Commercial real estate agent accountability should not be about catching people out.

I believe it should be about helping committed people get better.

That is exactly what happens during the monthly Performance Tracking call inside Agent Accelerator.

A Simple Structure Creates Better Conversations

Every call follows the same rhythm: wins, learnings, the PDF (Production, Development and Freedom) Plan, hot seat coaching, commitments, and Q&A.

That consistency matters. Everyone knows what to expect, and the conversation can quickly move from status reporting to solving problems.

Accountability Without Blame

The PDF Plan stands for Production, Development, and Freedom. Members self-assess each area using a simple traffic light system.

Green means they are on track. Yellow means something needs attention. Red means they need proper help.

There is no punishment attached to yellow or red. Being honest about where things are just creates the opportunity to focus attention where it is most needed.

Solve Real Problems, Not Hypothetical Ones

A hot seat coaching conversation is where this approach really comes to life.

Recently, an agent was generating plenty of activity and buyer interest but struggling to convert that interest into written offers.

The group worked through the situation and identified specific tactical actions the agent could take immediately.

That is the point of accountability: not another motivational speech, but a better next move they can practically take.

If you want to see what structured accountability and coaching can look like for commercial real estate agents, listen to episode 290 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership.

Episode transcript:

So, the name of our program for commercial real estate agents, as you may know, is called Agent Accelerator.

And on one of our recent calls, a member was reporting that he was falling behind on his production goal.

And I could tell how he was feeling about it by the way that he said it. It was kind of like he was bracing for something after he reported where he was at.

Now, what happened next wasn't a reckoning. The group leaned in, someone asked what was actually going on, and within a couple of minutes, the agenda had shifted from checking on a number to solving a real problem.

And that's not what most commercial real estate principals picture when they think of accountability, right?

Because the program exists to upgrade skills, to enhance mindset, and to provide the accountability that commercial real estate agents need.

So in today's episode, I want to take you inside our monthly performance tracking call, which is where the accountability happens, so you can see exactly what it's like from the inside.

This is episode 290 of Commercial Real Estate Leadership. My name's Darren Krakowiak, and I help commercial real estate principals to build an agency that can run without them, so they have the choice to work on or off the tools.

Now, the monthly performance tracking call inside Agent Accelerator, it's one of the four calls that happens every single month, and it always follows this particular call, the same agenda every time we run it on the first Tuesday of the month.

It's definitely not a loose chat. There's a very deliberately designed rhythm to this call, and that rhythm is, I think, why the call works.

So, we always start off with wins. We want to know something from every agent that they can share that went well over the past month.

Not necessarily a closed deal or a new listing, just something that represents some progress.

It could be really, really small, and that just sort of sets the tone before anything gets too hard.

We then move into learnings because sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.

So we want to know here, what did they figure out? What did they get better at? Or what did they realize over the past month?

This is about small, honest reflections, not a big theatrical performance.

Then we get into the PDF plan check-in. PDF stands for Production, Development, and Freedom in the program, and it's how we hold our members accountable, and we support them in achieving their goals, and I'll come back to that in a moment.

Then we move on to the hot seat. And this is where one or more commercial real estate agents gets the group's full attention on a specific and real problem that they're facing right now.

And then the group, our dedicated accountability coach, whose name is Christopher, and myself all work together to help solve this problem for that member.

We then move on to commitments, and we're looking for one thing that each member is committing to do by the end of the month.

And finally, we open the floor to Q&A to allow time and space for anything important that hasn't already come up during the set agenda that we have for these calls.

So it's wins, learnings, PDF plan, hot seat coaching, commitments, Q&A.

That's the agenda. It's the same call structure every single month on the first Tuesday of every month.

And that not only makes it easy for me and for Christopher to run these calls, it also means that our members know exactly what to expect.

Now, I want to get back to the PDF plan. It's the check-in that we do, and we use a simple traffic light system based on each member's PDF plan.

Members self-report on whether they are green, yellow, or red. That's what the colors of the traffic light across three areas, production, development, and freedom.

And what I want to be clear about here is, like, what each color means, because I think it's easy to make an incorrect assumption, and we make sure all our members understand this.

Green means you're on track. It doesn't mean you're finished. It doesn't mean it's perfect. It just means you're on track. You're moving in the right direction.

Yellow is a self-assessment that says something needs attention. Something's not quite right. It's not failing. It's just the agent being straight about where they are really at.

And if someone reports red, then that is definitely a trigger. It's not a trigger for blame, but it's maybe a call for help, that someone needs some support. Red means that we can get laser focused on that person in that moment because they are in need of some real help.

What I like about this mechanism is that it makes being honest easy.

Nobody's pretending that things are better than they are because yellow and red aren't things that we are punishing. They're just the signal for where our attention on the call needs to go.

And if someone is yellow or red in a certain area, in my experience, it means that whatever they're struggling with is going to be relevant to the other 75 members that we have in the program.

So that's the PDF plan.

And now I want to walk you through what a hot seat looks like because it's probably a bit unfamiliar if you've never taken part in a group coaching or training program.

So, on a recent call, one of the agents raised a problem. He had plenty of activity going on on the deals that he was working through, on the listings that he was carrying.

There were inspections happening. There was real interest or what felt like real and genuine interest from buyers, but nothing was converting into written offers.

Interest was stalling right before the point where it needed to turn into something tangible that this agent could take to their vendors.

So this agent reported that they jumped on the hot seat, and then the group worked through the problem.

No one was providing generic advice. Those who contributed all gave specific and practical suggestions.

Things like getting any interest in writing early, even informally, so there's something concrete to work with instead of, you know, just a verbal maybe.

If a buyer's hesitant on price, get a lower softer offer on the table first, something that starts a real negotiation and conditions your vendor on the state of the current market, rather than just waiting for the perfectly positioned offer that may never come.

We also discussed the fact that getting what feels like an undesirable offer in front of the vendor can often soften them up for a future offer that may still be off the mark, but is a lot closer to their expectation.

Now, within a few minutes, that agent had two or three specific things that they could try in the coming days.

Not just a pep talk or motivation. We had given them actual tactical moves based on the situation described, worked through by a room of people who've either seen the pattern before or people who need to make similar adjustments themselves.

Now, those who already know what to do, they get a timely reinforcement of a fundamental commercial real estate agency skill, and those who don't already know learn a new skill that they can deploy in their market.

So that's what a hot seat is. It's live coaching of one person for the benefit of the wider group.

It's a real problem that gets real attention from the group, our accountability coach, our accountability coach, Christopher, as well, and from me, and something specific to act on by the end of, you know, what is usually a five-minute coaching discussion.

So, I also want to let you know that a couple of specific standards get reinforced consistently across these calls, and they connect directly to some of the things that we've been talking about on this podcast.

So, one of the things that we are constantly reinforcing for our members is the prospecting standards.

So, for agents who haven't developed a consistent prospecting rhythm, we set a standard of something that they can aspire to at the first stage of them becoming, I guess, habitual prospectors.

And one of the things we talk about is five outbound calls and five actions to move an existing deal forward - five plus five.

So five bits of activity on a new opportunity and five actions that move an existing deal forward, and we want to do that every single day.

If you've heard episode 284, it's the same discipline that's behind the principle of consistent, persistent, and proactive prospecting.

It's just expressed as a specific daily number that agents who need that level of direction can hold themself accountable to.

And there is another two-part question that I recently challenged our members to take back to their own principal.

If you have any agents in the program, maybe this question will sound familiar because maybe one of your agents asked you this question.

The first question that we encouraged our members to take back to their principal, to take back to the person that runs the business, that owns the business that they're in is, "What is one thing that I could do to improve my performance?"

So, "What is one thing that I could do to improve my performance in this financial year?"

And we provided our members with some advice on what they should do in terms of listening carefully to the answer and taking it all in and repeating back what they've heard to show that they've understood.

And then we recommended that they ask a second question, which is, "Are you willing to help me with that?"

Just a small thing, I think, but it opens a very important door because it gives the agent a reason to start that conversation, and it gives the principal a specific concrete way to respond.

Rather than just a sort of, "Let me know if you need any help," it's something specific.

Because I think if you're a commercial real estate principal and one of your agents came to you with that question, I'm guessing that, one, you'd be impressed that they asked, and two, you'd be thankful for the opportunity to provide them with some guidance and direction.

Maybe it opens a door to provide them with some feedback that you've been wanting to give them.

So that's just a little window into what's happening inside of our performance tracking calls on the first Tuesday of every month inside Agent Accelerator.

We also have other calls for the second, third, and fourth Tuesday of the month, and the fifth Tuesday of the month when there is five Tuesdays in a month.

It's a very deliberately designed structure. In the performance tracking calls, we've got the traffic light indicator there, and that makes it easy for agents, for our members to be honest, and we give them support when it's needed.

We don't give them punishment. We're working through real problems live with specific and practical outcomes, and we're setting standards, and we're reinforcing them consistently without their principal having to be the one who's always repeating what those standards should be.

So, if you've heard episode 279, where we talked about sales management as a service, about Agent Accelerator, you'll remember the numbers.

A modest improvement in a couple of agents' performance more than covers the cost of the program, many times over, in fact.

And today's episode is just an example of how we produce that improvement. Not theory, just a Zoom meeting, some structure, and real problems getting solved.

Now, if you'd like to find out if this is the right fit for your business, for your team, send me a message on LinkedIn, Darren Krakowiak, and tell me how many agents are in your team and maybe let me know one main performance challenge right now, and I'll get back to you personally.

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