There’s no doubt that many reading our recent research, Success Secrets of High-Growth Real Estate Firms, will notice that the lists skewed heavily toward Keller Williams firms.
Keller Williams affiliates represented 27 of the 50 fastest-growing firms in growth in agents; 32 out of 50 firms in the growth in transaction sides; 33 of the top 50 in growth in sales volume and 21 of the top 50 in growth in per-agent productivity.
The question may be asked: Why was Keller Williams able to achieve these results?
First, this growth was mostly organic. However, some of it was due, as with many other high-growth companies, through mergers and acquisitions, or combinations of some sort. However, this only explains a small part of these results.
Keller Williams has been unique in that it is among the very few national companies with both a strong focus on recruiting (which many have) and a system that they established to measure accountability and results in this important area.
They simply executed their recruiting system better than most other national or regional brokerage firms. And, as is the case, recruiting more agents drives more transactions and sales volume. This is widely known to all leaders of our industry.
It is the last factor, growth in agent productivity, that is the most surprising, although it shouldn’t be.
Keller Williams has also developed many different training and educational programs, from Bold and Ignite to MAPS Coaching, which help its agent become more proficient. Is it faultless, and delivered with some unevenness across their over 700 offices? It is not faultless and it is uneven in its application, and the data shows that.
But again, Keller Williams is able to measure its application across their platform and can share what happens with agents who get engaged in their training programs.
So what is the best kept secret of Keller Williams that achieved these results? They are focused on the first two legs of the three that brokerages must do to truly succeed. They recruit talent and develop talent. They have a system that has proven to work in these two key areas.
