I have been lucky enough to be president of our local Association of Realtors this year. This year has been tough on many levels. This was certainly the year of change at KGVAR.
I'm going to write up a lengthy blog article once the year wraps up to cover the highlights... and the not so highlights.
Today though, I took the biggest risk with the Membership. Earlier this week I rolled out the requirements for production awards. To my knowledge our Association is one of the last remaining Realtor groups that gives out some kind of production acknowledgment in the form of an award at an annual banquet. One of our neighboring Associations also continues to reward and recognize Members for outstanding performance. This year I was able to attend their banquet (as an honored guest). There banquet was great and offered me the chance come up with some new ideas for our own program (to be held in February of 2007).
KGVAR has grown since I joined in 2001. Grown from around 100 Members to over 500. We've also seen the average price home jump from the high $90 range to $200k. Since I've been a member we have awarded those Members that have sold 1 million dollars worth of property or more with a production trophy or plaque. Today a Member would only need to fall into 5 average deals in one whole year to qualify for such an award. Looking at the tracking numbers of individual production, there'd be just about half of the Members that could be eligible for the less than average award.
Our Association has been lucky over the years to have our Affiliate Members of the Association sponsor the awards. Last year we raised nearly $5,000 to help offset the costs of an awards budget at the same amount. In other words those nice awards do not cost the Members or the Membership any money out of our general funds. We thank those fine Affiliates for their generosity. Last year the $5,000 was enough to award 132 Members. Today $5,000 is still our budget for awards. I know first hand that some of our major sponsors among the Affiliates are cutting back costs, so I'm not real excited to head into our annual meeting and ask for more funds to cover costs for over 250 awards.
All throughout the year, not a one Member stepped up to say that he or she wanted to start an awards committee or task force. I had plenty on my plate already dealing with fighting the county on some proposed 'Matrix' and merging three local MLS's into one regional Data Exchange. Yet I knew all year that at some point somebody would have to step up and look at the budget and produce an awards program. Yeah, that someone ended up being me.
The changes I made were simple, fair, and progressive.
I raised the minimum production award level to 5 million dollars. At this rate about 60 Members would meet the minimum or just over 10% of the Membership. 5 million in average SFR sales would mean the Member sold at least 25 sides worth of transactions, or two deals a month. I still don't think that this is all that special to garner an award for production, but change has been rough on the Members this year and I didn't want to ruffle the feathers fully.
I also set aside an award structure in two categories. Two top 10 lists if you will. One top ten list would be for agents that do not work in tandem with other live human beings, and agents that work in teams, tandems, hire staff (such as an Assistant licensed or otherwise), or otherwise co-list with another live human being.
I did this because I thought it might be nice to recognize the efforts of those agents that are truly on their own. Individual agents have only 24 hours in a day. A team effort of two live human beings has 48 hours in a day... a team effort has an obvious advantage over an individual agent.
I also think that it would be nice to give the opportunity to recognize all members of a team agent situation on the same award. On the team top 10 list, at least 20 live human beings would get recognition for the team effort. It is quite possible that on the team top 10 list that there may be 50 Members recognized.
Okay, pretty simple changes if you ask me. Fair, reasonable, and progressive are other terms that jump into my head. Easy for me though, I'm biased... these were all my ideas. I spent most of last weekend writing out the production awards rules and announcements. Why did I spend all of that time doing that?? Because they never have been written down before. I even came up with a couple of snazzy forms which act as an agreement between the Members that wish to receive an award and the Association. For no other reason than for accounting.
All right, I roll out the announcement on Monday of this week. Yes, I know pretty late in the year to make these changes when average agents are accustomed to getting an awards plaque with their name on it. I know how much they really look forward to it all year long. In my electronic announcement (email and MLS bulletin board) I mentioned that I would appear at the local MLS meeting today to talk about the changes.
I had a feeling that I knew what I'd be in for this morning. I knew that it wouldn't be pretty. I even wore a black shirt today if only to help my chances to appear to be more intimidating that normal.
You would have thought that I canceled the Holiday Season today. No not all, heck not even the majority of Members who attended today, voiced negative opinions about the changes I have made to the awards program. There still was plenty of dissension in the ranks. After about 25 minutes things cooled down enough for me to make like Elvis and leave the building.
Members voiced objections earlier in the year as the Association headed towards a regional Data Exchange, but this was another whole level. I cannot and will not share the details of what was said because I consider the most voiced of critics as fellow Members that I have a lot of respect for. I will say that these folks made things much more difficult of a situation than it needed to be. Seriously, you would have thought that I just took everyones milk money from them.
As I was leaving I remembered a remark that was made to me by another fellow Member (who was not involved in any way shape or form today), a fellow Member that I have tremendous amounts of respect for, a Member that has been not only a past president of our local Association but also a past president of the state Association. He said to me... "So you want to be president eh?? You won't be when it is over."
Today was the first day all year long that I believed he was right. And just 11 days left till I'm done to boot. I hope he is surprised that it took this long.
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