In 1927, the New York Yankees broke the record for most victories in a season before going on to sweep the World Series. With sluggers like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Earl Combs, their lineup, affectionately nicknamed “Murderer’s Row” was legendary. Nearly one hundred years later the 1927 Yankees are still widely considered the greatest team of all time.
All great teams share a few key characteristics, whether they’re playing baseball or running a real estate business. Here’s what your real estate team can learn from the greatest team of all time and how you can become as legendary in the real estate industry as the Yankees were in baseball:
Accountability
Even the most skilled players need someone to hold them accountable. This was especially true for Babe Ruth. While Ruth broke record after record because of his unparalleled natural talent, he wouldn’t have achieved the same levels of success without the Yankees manager, Miller Huggins.
The Great Bambino was known for staying out late at night with his buddies, which would often make him late for practice the next morning. After one such circumstance, Huggins suspended the great Babe Ruth indefinitely and gave him a fine of $5,000. Ruth insisted that the Yankees team owner, Jacob Ruppert, would overrule Huggins and dismiss the fine and the suspensions, but Ruppert stood with Huggins’ decision. Ruppert understood, just like Huggins did, that even an all-star like Babe Ruth had to be held accountable for his actions.
Ruth ended up apologizing for his behavior and began showing up for practices on time. He respected Huggins after that and continued playing with the Yankees for another decade, honing his skills with Huggins’ support. Babe Ruth once said about Huggins, “He was the only man who knew how to keep me in line.”
Hopefully, the members of your real estate team are easier to manage than the unruly Babe Ruth. However, it’s common for talented real estate professionals to think they can succeed all on their own. Like Babe Ruth couldn’t succeed without accountability from Huggins, real estate professionals won’t reach their full potential without accountability from their team.
Implement systems of accountability with your teams like the Daily Success Habits Tracker and team huddles. The Daily Habits Success tracker holds you accountable for your time, and team huddles encourage team members to check in with each other regularly. Even your most talented team members will skip their positive routines occasionally. When a team keeps each other accountable, everyone can support each other in moving toward the team’s shared goals.
Utilizing Each Team Members’ Abilities
The best teams include people with a variety of abilities. Each team member should bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table. When you work together, team members can amplify each other’s strengths.
The Yankees lead-off hitter was named Earl Combs. He held the first position in the lineup for nine years, not because he was a homerun hitter, but because of his skill at getting on base. Later in the lineup, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel, and others, would often clear the bases, but they needed Combs to first get on base in order to score the most points.
If you have support team members like an admin or inside sales agents who are excellent at finding leads and setting appointments, they’re your Earl Combs. Your buyer’s and seller’s agents might be the ones that close the deals, but they need those team members to set the deals up in the first place.Leveraging everyone’s unique strengths creates a truly effective team.
Divide and Conquer
The Yankees had a couple of highly ranked starting pitchers, like Waite Hoyt and Urban Shocker, but even a star pitcher needs a relief pitcher. That’s because pitching takes more energy than other positions because you’re constantly in the middle of the action. Even if you had the world’s best pitcher, you’d never succeed if you tried to have them pitch all game, every game.
Similarly, being a buyer’s agent takes a lot of energy. Buyer’s agents spend more time and effort to close one deal than any of the other positions on your team. That’s why if you don’t already have a designated buyer’s agent on your team, you need to add one. If you already have one, you might consider hiring more. When you have enough buyer’s agents, you’ll be able to give each client the level of service they deserve, while still growing your business.
Shared Vision
One of the strengths of the 1927 Yankees was how unified they were as a team. The strongest teams work toward the success of the team as a whole, rather than focusing on personal victories. Lou Gehrig excelled at this. Despite being one of the greatest players of all time, he preferred to stay out of the spotlight. He was often overshadowed by the success of some of his teammates like Babe Ruth, but he didn’t care about personal recognition. He just cared that his team did well.
At the end of Gehrig’s career, his team members recognized him for his dedication to the team. The team held a massive Lou Gehrig appreciation day, and they retired his jersey number, which had never been done before at the time. Then they presented him with a trophy with a poem inscribed on it. The final lines of the poem read, “Let this be a silent token of lasting Friendship’s gleam, and all that we’ve left unspoken; Your Pals of the Yankees Team.”
To this day, a Lou Gehrig memorial award is given each year to the professional baseball player who best represents his selfless character. The reason he’s made such a lasting impression on the world is because people recognize how valuable a team player he was.
Team members who look to Lou Gehrig as an example and prioritize shared goals will see progress not just for the team, but also for themselves personally. It benefits everyone when the team succeeds. That’s what Lou Gehrig understood, and that’s why the 1927 Yankees achieved unrivaled levels of success and remain a legend to this day. Follow their lead, and you can build the greatest real estate team of all time.
At Workman Success Systems we teach agents how to build high-performing teams. To learn more about building a team that dominates in the real estate industry, schedule a free consultation with one of our business analysts.
