Systems, Training & Recruitment in Property Sales

Talent is overrated. Systems are underrated.

This is a controversial statement in an industry that worships the “Rainmaker”—the charismatic super-salesman who can sell ice to Eskimos. But if you are building a business, relying on Rainmakers is a vulnerability. They are rare, expensive, and difficult to manage.

I didn’t want a business that depended on finding geniuses. I wanted a business that could take ordinary people and produce extraordinary results. To do that, I needed a system.

The Factory Model

I began to view our sales organization not as an art studio, but as a factory.

• Input: Raw recruits (untrained, hungry).
• Process: Training, scripts, discipline, monitoring.
• Output: Closed deals and commissions.

If the output was inconsistent, I didn’t blame the raw material; I blamed the process. We obsessed over optimizing the “Assembly Line” of a sale.

1. The Recruitment System: The Filter

Most agencies struggle with recruitment because they beg people to join. “Come join us, high commission, flexible hours!” It smells like desperation.

We reversed the polarity. We made it hard to join.

We implemented “Selection Days.” Instead of 1-on-1 coffee chats, we rented a hotel ballroom. We invited 100 potential candidates. The presentation was high-production value—loud music, success stories, huge checks. But the message was stark: “This is the Navy SEALs of real estate. Most of you won’t make it. But for the ones who do, life changes.”

We then gave them a test on the spot. Simple math, basic logic, and a mock pitch. We cut the bottom 30% immediately.

The Insight: People value what they have to fight for. By filtering, we attracted a higher caliber of psychological commitment.

2. The Training System: Drilling, Not Teaching

Traditional training is passive. You sit in a room, someone talks at you with PowerPoint slides, and you take notes. You forget 90% of it by lunch.

We moved to Active Training. We treated it like sports practice.

• Role-Play Loops: We would take a script—say, the “Price Objection.” The agents had to pair up and spar. They did it 50 times in a row. Until the words didn’t sound like a script—until they sounded like their words.
• The “Hot Seat”: In morning meetings, I would randomly pick an agent. “Sell me this pen.” Or “I’m a buyer, I think the market is crashing. Convince me otherwise.” It created a high-pressure environment that simulated the stress of a real negotiation.
• Product Knowledge exams: Before you could sell a project (e.g., Pavilion Damansara Heights), you had to pass a written and oral exam on the specs. If you didn’t know the maintenance fee per square foot, you weren’t allowed to talk to clients.

We didn’t just teach them what to sell; we taught them how to think. We taught frameworks for negotiation, status management, and reading body language.

3. The Accountability System: The Scoreboard

In sales, you can delude yourself. You can feel “busy” without being productive.

We killed the delusion with data. We tracked Leading Indicators, not just Lagging Indicators.

• Lagging Indicator: Sales closed (Too late to fix).
• Leading Indicator: Calls made, Appointments set (Fixable today).

Every agent had a daily tracker.

• 50 Calls.
• 3 Appointments.
• 1 Viewing.

If you hit the inputs, the outputs took care of themselves. If an agent was slumping, we opened their tracker. “You made 10 calls yesterday. That’s why you have no sales.” It removed the mystery. It wasn’t “bad luck”; it was low volume.

The System is the Boss

The ultimate goal of these systems was to remove individual variance.

When you have a system, you don’t need to be a tyrant boss yelling at people. The System is the boss. “I’m not yelling at you because I don’t like you. I’m pointing out that you are below the Red Line on the scoreboard.”

It depersonalized management. It created a standard of performance that existed outside of my mood or their feelings.

Conclusion

Building these systems took time. It was boring work—writing manuals, creating spreadsheets, refining scripts. It wasn’t as sexy as closing a million-dollar deal. But it was the work that built the asset.

To this day, when I look at any business—whether it’s AI, tech, or services—I look for the factory. Where is the documentation? What is the training process? How is success measured?

If those things don’t exist, you don’t have a business. You have a hustle. And hustles don’t scale.