"Nobody is telling me what to do!"

I heard this statement from a student who was actually thirsting for direction while drowning is a sea of information.

At first it reminded me of my youngest son standing with hands on hips at age 4 defiantly saying, "You're not the boss of me!" But this particular student was a grown adult, and the meaning behind it was a call for help.

There are half a million new and struggling real estate agents in North America, and this is the kind of complaint we are hearing all the time.

One of Floyd's management principles is to "make people independent of you, not dependent on you." In other words, it is the obligation of management to give direction, to supervise, to mentor, to guide . . . to create the confidence and competence that allows the independent contractor to actually be independent.

Salespeople need and want hands-on management until they learn what to do and what to say and build the habits of success. You certainly wouldn't hand a bicycle to a 5 year old and say, "This is a great opportunity for you to be independent of me. Go figure it out. Read the manual online. Watch the YouTube video. You got this!"

Once they become successful, salespeople still need management. They want recognition, sympathetic understanding, support and a feeling of being included. They don't need handholding, unless they start slipping.

If you are a manager, you might be thinking - that management principle was practical in a time when the average office had 8-12 agents, but I have 200 agents and no office!

The Floyd Wickman Team blog by Mike Pallin

Frankly, that's why companies hire The Floyd Wickman Team. We manage the agents in your bottom half of production, giving you time to lavish attention on your top half. We teach them what to do and what to say. We build the right habits. And then we give them back you at a higher level.

For large groups we have the live, classroom Floyd Wickman Program. For large geographies or cloud-based companies, we have the LiveStream Program. And for new agents brought on board one or two at a time, there's the Digital Floyd Wickman Course. They all get results. They all create productive independent contractors.