After a certain point in their careers, some top producers face a challenge familiar to many: the dreaded plateau.
It feels like you’re stuck in the mud with no viable escape route, and while it’s better than seeing your sales drop, it’s still incredibly frustrating.
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Not all agents overcome a career plateau, but Bonneau Ansley found a formula that has allowed him to grow almost every year for more than a decade.
Ansley shared with Inman how he made that change for his company. Check out some of his top tips below.
Changing every year
Agents can’t expect to grow if they keep doing the same things year after year, Ansley told Inman.
Bonneau Ansley | Bonneau & Company
“You have to make sure your habits match your goals for tomorrow,” he said. “What I mean by that is if you want to grow your business and you keep doing the same things you did the year before, you will get the same results.”
When Ansley was pulling in about $100 million a year and wanted to work toward becoming a $200 million agent, he said he took steps to expand his team size to one that could support $200 million in production.
“Since I’m a single producer, those are more supporting roles for me,” Ansley said. “That is, if I try to double my revenue from $100 million to $200 million, I will double my social media. I’m going to double the number of phone calls I make, I’m going to double the number of going out to meet people. So change those habits to get you to the place you want to be.
Ansley has been working in his primary market, Atlanta, for more than two decades, but about a decade ago he realized he had capped his sales volume at around $200 million. He sold as much as last year, but was disappointed that he had not grown.
He knew he had to do something different again to start moving the needle, and made the bold move to start his own real estate agency.
“I felt stuck, even though I had a good year, as good a year as the year before, but I felt like I couldn’t grow anymore,” Ansley told Inman. “So at that time I started Ansley Real Estate, and I did that to continue to grow as a person, as an entrepreneur and as a human being.
“We were able to use the same philosophies that I personally have had to grow my own real estate business into Ansley Real Estate’s business, where we started with me as one agent and grew to over 500 agents throughout Georgia.”
Ansley and the company became a subsidiary of Christie’s International Real Estate in 2022. With the acquisition of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate by Compass, he is now also affiliated with the real estate giant led by Robert Reffkin.
Building a highly competent team
In addition to his real estate agency, Ansley still runs his own team, Bonneau & Company, where he is the sole production agent (and of which his wife, Jen Ansley, is a member). But there’s no way he could have reached a recent personal best of about $490 million in annual sales volume in 2022 without that team of support staff behind him, he told Inman.
“I’m smart enough to know how stupid I am,” Ansley said. “And what I mean by that is that I focus on just 20 percent of the business, both as a personal agent and as the founder of Ansley Real Estate. But I feel like I do that 20 percent better than anyone else. And anything that I’m not very good at, I can delegate to someone who is very, very highly trained and skilled in that position. So I can do a lot more knowing that I’m not going to be good at something and not try to spend any time, effort or energy in that certain thing.”
Some of the players on his team that Ansley said he couldn’t live without include a closing coordinator, a listing coordinator and planner, a social media/marketing/PR expert and another crucial teammate who serves as his right-hand man in every transaction, he said.
“Everyone on my team, for the most part, has been with me for a decade or more,” Ansley said. “So building a team with longevity and loyalty really makes things very efficient.”
Growing skills
Over time, Ansley has also expanded its areas of specialization to include new developments and expanded into key feeder markets, as part of its commitment to sustainable growth.
“I can have a whole side of Bonneau & Company that deals with new developments in Georgia, from 23-story condominiums to planned communities, and we do fantastic work with brand creation, sales strategies, PR, marketing and things like that across the team,” Ansley said.
Once Ansley noticed that some of his clients owned properties in Highlands, North Carolina, and in Sea Island, Georgia, he realized he could further develop his business by operating in these feeder markets. Today, he co-owns a subsidiary in Highlands, North Carolina, with fellow investor Jackson Properties.
These strategic business moves have allowed Ansley to grow consistently over the years, but his personal interactions with customers keep his referral-based business strong, he said.
“I’m trying to create fans in the community,” Ansley said. “It could be the local guy cutting hair, or it could be the clerk. And I make sure that when someone talks about real estate or a nice car pulling up to the table, the clerk leaves my magazine on the passenger seat. So I try to create fans in my community who want to talk about me and do business.”
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Email Lillian Dickerson
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