FOR BROKERS: Companies to Watch

BY ROBERT FREEDMAN

Andrew Fletcher
E-mail: fletch@impactrealestate.net

A tailored style

Michigan broker manages sales associates one-on-one.

Is it possible to build a small but productive brokerage around the practice of individualization? With just a handful of associates, Impact Real Estate has grown into one of the busiest brokerages in its Niles, Mich., market since its launch in mid-2001 on the idea that it can.

Individualization isn’t a term that broker-owner Andrew Fletcher, ABR®, GRI, uses. Rather, the former associate at RE/MAX Four Flags Realty prefers to say “people matter,” a phrase he’s adopted as his company motto.

The simple statement encapsulates two key aspects of how Fletcher interacts with his associates. He identifies what makes each of them tick, and he offers compensation, training, and support choices for each of them based around those unique characteristics.

Before he affiliates associates, Fletcher administers DISC (dominance, influencing, steadiness, compliance) personality assessments to determine the kind of salesperson each associate would be—someone who’s good at persuading others, for example, or whose strength is analytical.

If the person is a risk-taker, the associate might pay the company a monthly fee and take a 95 percent split. If the person seeks more financial stability, a 50-50 commission split might be appropriate.

Fletcher also tries to tailor coaching to each person’s learning style. “How do they like to be communicated with? Do they like to be cajoled? Do they just want the facts? Do they want help with their life goals as well as their business goals? I adjust how I manage them based on their learning styles and needs,” he says.

The individualized approach is paying off. In 2002, its first full year of business, the company closed about $11 million worth of real estate in 117 transactions with six associates. In 2003, with 15 full-time associates, the company closed about $20 million in 180 transactions, the lion’s share of them in Niles. That would account for something close to 30 percent of the 547 transactions closed in that city, according to figures from Impact and the Southwestern Michigan Association of REALTORS®. Fletcher’s goal for 2004 is 200 transactions. As of late March, the company had closed nearly 30.

It’s not for everyone
Can he provide every prospective associate an individualized program? No, which is why he has dropped back to six associates. Some have found the atmosphere—Fletcher pumps in high-energy music over the office sound system, rings a bell whenever an associate gets a listing or sale, and hosts weekly motivational meetings open to salespeople from outside his office—at odds with their personality. “One associate liked the environment at first but then came to feel there was too much pressure, so she left,” says Fletcher.

Today, only if prospective associates are comfortable working in that environment does Fletcher consider affiliating them. “I used to feel I could hire anyone and make that person a winner,” he says. “But I learned it’s better to identify the ones who want help and then do what you can to help them.”