Real estate giant Anywhere is turning to education and coaching in a bid to expand its owned brokerage and franchise network. The firm announced on Thursday that it is launching a new agent engagement team.
Kate Rossi will lead the team in her new role as president of agent engagement and sale leadership development for Anywhere Brands and Anywhere Advisors. In this role, Rossi will report to Anywhere Brands and Anywhere Advisors president and CEO Sue Yannaccone.
Rossi, who started her career in 1982 with Vanguard Tarquinio in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, has nearly four decades of experience at Coldwell Banker Realty. Rossi started her career with Coldwell as an affiliated agent and most recently held the role of executive vice president for the Eastern Region, where she oversaw over 22,000 agents.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do my entire career,” Rossi said. “I have done every role within the organization, but I always feel like if we could help our agents do more business, it would fix everything. I think a lot of time agents in this industry go to outside services and hire coaches, but to be able to create this team within the organization is going to be really exciting.”
In her experience as an upper-level manager, Rossi said she has noticed that the agents who are most successful have a broker or manager who works with them like a coach. Due to this, Rossi said Anywhere’s coaching and training programs will include educational opportunities for agents, branch managers, regional vice presidents and metro presidents.
“Everyone gets a license and goes into this thinking that they can do it, but what happens is the test they take has nothing to do with what we do for a living as an agent,” Rossi said. “We all have these training programs, but what really helps is holding people accountable for their actions. I am going to have a team that follows up with everyone that does a training program. You can go in and get somebody all excited about doing real estate, but if there isn’t a manager present to constantly follow up, then that excitement drops off.”
Rossi is confident that this approach will help increase the productivity of existing Anywhere agents, as well as attract more agents to the firm.
“If you help people do better, it just permeates,” Rossi said. “If an office is doing really well, other people want to join the office and the company just grows. No one gets their license and thinks they are going to fail, everyone believes they can do it.”
