One of the challenges of being a selling principal is working out where your time is best spent. You still need to sell, but you're also responsible for building a business that can operate and grow beyond you.

The balance comes down to two things: What you need to sell personally, and which opportunities you should be handing to your team.

I’ve written extensively about the tension between salesperson and CEO and making the decision to maintain an active selling role, but with limitations.

Here's how I think about it now at Nitschke.

  1. Set your personal sales target

Your personal sales target shouldn't be an arbitrary number. It needs to reflect the profit you want to generate, your cash flow requirements, and the broader objectives of the business.

If you're currently responsible for a significant proportion of the agency's revenue, you can't simply stop selling and expect the business to absorb the gap.

You need to understand what that transition will cost. Are you prepared to take smaller dividends, reduce your own wage or inject additional capital while the team builds its production? Alternatively, does the business already have the capacity to support you stepping back?

These are important questions to answer before you change your selling targets.

My advice is to work backwards from the financial outcome you need, then determine how much personal production is required to achieve it.

As your team becomes more productive and profitable, you can reassess that target and gradually free up more time for leadership.

  1. Decide which leads you should handle personally

For me, the starting point is understanding where a lead comes from and who is best placed to manage it.

I'm not on the company lead roster, so if someone contacts Nitschke through the brand, that opportunity goes to one of our agents. At my stage of the business, most of my personal opportunities come through past clients and referrals, rather than cold leads.

Even then, I don’t work on a deal alone. I'll bring a colleague into the process to give them exposure to the client, the transaction, and the local market. This creates an opportunity for them to build their own database, strengthen client relationships, and develop their skills.

A number of our agents now work with my past clients because they've had the opportunity to build those relationships alongside me.

The goal isn't just to win the next listing. It's to build the capability of the team to win future listings without relying on me.

  1. Use every opportunity to develop your people

As a selling principal, one of the most valuable things you can offer your team is access to your experience, relationships, and market knowledge. This means being intentional about how you involve other agents, rather than defaulting to handling the opportunity yourself because you know you can.

Consider three questions when deciding who should handle an opportunity:

  1. Measure progress (performance & psychology)

Reducing your personal sales target is only useful if the business is becoming stronger as a result. You need to monitor the numbers, performance, and team sentiment.

I'd look at:

These measures help you understand whether you're genuinely building a more scalable business or simply moving your workload elsewhere.

I run this all at Nitschke with our real estate agency product, Operating System. I built it because there was nothing out there that was custom created for real estate companies.

It’s transformed our agency. I hope it will do the same for you.

Tracking performance is only one side of this. Tracking individual psychology, team sentiment and overall culture is a whole other side to sales.

But more on that soon.