Above: Jason Posnick
Jason Posnick
Sales Manager
Lamacchia Realty, Inc.
Waltham, Massachusetts
https://www.lamacchiarealty.com/jason-posnick
Region served: New England and Florida
Years in real estate: 9
Favorite part of your job: Inspiring people
What is the most effective way to implement coaching and mentoring within a brokerage company?
The only way to successfully implement coaching and mentoring is to begin with enrollment, or getting people to see and understand the value of training and come to the realization that there’s more they can control as far as what they’re learning in order to do a better job for their clients.
When starting any sort of coaching or training program, the biggest issue typically revolves around companies requiring training and pushing agents into it. But that’s not inspiring the agent to grow. It’s forcing them to do what you want. With any good coaching program, agents are inspired and they truly believe they can improve. This leads to them making the choice to enroll in the coaching or training program—and when they’re able to do what they’ve been taught, they do so with inspired action.
For coaching and mentoring to be effective, you have to be part of a company that has a culture of constant development, learning and growth—and training was already a big part of Lamacchia Realty prior to my arrival.
What is one of the most common hurdles agents face today, and how have you taught them to overcome it?
The most common hurdle is often ourselves. It’s a combination of ego and fear, as we’re all scared of being judged and looking dumb—whether it be by our friends, family, colleagues or strangers. My biggest push when coaching and working with agents is getting them comfortable with the basics. When you master the basics of real estate—communication, conversation, listening versus speaking and understanding other perspectives—you lead with empathy.
It’s asking the right questions, which allows agents to stop thinking of their own ego because it’s impossible to be self-centered and curious. Getting agents to recognize that they make a bigger impact by understanding their clients has been huge, especially in today’s market, where clients have more obstacles, issues and fears than ever before.
In real estate, you don’t sell houses. You sell yourself and your ability to help someone accomplish their goal better than anyone else. If you earn the human relationship, you’ll earn the business 99.99% of the time, and you’ll have more fun doing it.
Part of your role as sales manager involves a specific focus on company online buyer and seller lead sources. What does this entail?
When I joined Lamacchia back in June, they’d been buying leads from Zillow and Realtor.com®, and they were converting them well, but by simply changing a few processes, adding a few questions and tweaking the script a little bit, we’ve brought our conversion from 4.3% to 9.2% from the end of June to the end of 2024.
The biggest switch was being human. It’s relational sales, focusing on a prospective client’s current situation rather than when they want to see a property or how buying/selling a home will improve their quality of life. I believe that real estate is about positive life change more than anything else. When we understand the desire of that change, and we can help facilitate it, we’re having deeper conversations. These tweaks have led to deeper relationships, more impactful meetings and a lot more sales.
Tell us more about your leadership philosophy.
I believe that true leadership isn’t about being in charge but rather, taking care of those in your charge. As agents, this means taking care of our clients, which extends further than simply showing up on time. It’s asking to understand rather than asking to speak, being interested versus being interesting. We need to focus on understanding a client’s fears and problems in order to provide solutions. Far too many agents lack empathy because they’re focused on the sale and what they themselves need, but when you look at it as taking care of those in your charge, your business will be better. By taking the time to ask the questions, lead with empathy and have or understand perspective, we’re taking care of our clients and helping them choose to follow us.
Leadership isn’t about having followers. It’s about having people choose to follow you. While many people want to be in leadership because of power or ego or status, the people who actually become great leaders are the ones who care about others.
What attracted you to Lamacchia Realty?
There were two reasons I chose to work for the company, the first being Anthony . Not only has he built a great company, but I truly respect the way he spends his time with both his agents and his family. I knew that he had a great business, and that he was a smart agent, but I have gained even more respect for him over the years after seeing the amount of time he’s dedicated to fighting for his agents. He’s a human being I respect and admire.
The second reason I joined the company is because it’s a place that truly helps agents grow. The company I was with prior to Lamacchia was using agents to grow the company rather than using the company to grow the agents, and there was constant attrition because of that. I quickly realized that this type of environment isn’t scalable or maintainable. And it’s not in people’s best interest.
Coming to Lamacchia and seeing what they’ve set up, there’s no doubt in my mind that the company is built to give agents access to every resource they could need to build a business without requiring that they use any of them.
For more information, visit https://www.lamacchiarealty.com.