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Building a Successful Real Estate Team (The 5 Steps)

Last updated on November 14, 2021

Building a Successful Real Estate Team

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When your real estate business grows, you’ll start to feel like you’ve got too much on your plate. It may become more challenging for you to do the things you did before on your own. 

And when the time comes when you’re no longer able to handle a handful of clients at the same time, it may be best to get help from other people. 

Now that you’ve established a career in the industry, it may be time to take the next step and create a real estate team. 

You will be able to cascade your responsibilities to other people, making you more efficient. Instead of turning clients away, you get to welcome more opportunities. 

In this article, you will learn the 5 steps to building a successful real estate team. 

So let’s get straight to it!

The 5 Steps to Building a Successful Real Estate Team

Here are the 5 steps to building a successful real estate team:

  • Have enough volume to justify building a team
  • Get necessary systems in order
  • Hire the right people
  • Track your goals
  • Train together

Let’s look into the details. 

1. Have enough volume to justify building a team

This step is where you assess whether building a real estate team is the right move for your business or not. You’ll have many things to consider, but perhaps the deciding factor will be whether or not you have enough volume to justify doing it.

If you’re sacrificing new leads because you have too many listings and pending transactions, then it might be the time to start your real estate team. 

Typically, you might be able to handle up to 40 transactions alone. Anything higher may be too much for you and may even pressure you into letting go of new prospects. 

Apart from enough demand and business opportunities, you also need to consider if you are emotionally and mentally prepared to be a team leader. 

Remember that you will need to manage your team members. And, leading a team requires additional skills. Just because you’ll be having people to share your tasks with doesn’t mean you’ll have more time. 

2. Get necessary systems in order

Before you begin the hiring process, you need to get your systems in order. The last thing you want is additional headcounts with nothing to do. 

Below are the things you need to get ready before building a real estate team:

Business Plan

Your business plan will no longer just apply to you. It will now be in the interest of your entire team. 

Therefore, you must create a new business plan that will be reflective of the goals you want to achieve with your members and the actions that your team will take to meet them. 

Tools and Software

You will need to set up the tools you will use for your business transactions. These include productivity software, client database, accounting, lead generation, listing, marketing, advertising, and other transaction management systems. 

Without setting things in order and systemizing before starting a team, you will waste a significant amount of time.    

Marketing Strategies

Before you hire new agents, make sure you already have a marketing strategy in place. The purpose of building a team is to level up, not start from scratch. 

If you already have a website or a social media page, create a plan on how you intend to expand your online presence and what additional methods you will use to continue promoting your brand.  

Commission Splits and Referrals Structure

Keep your commission fee structure simple. Allowing your agents to negotiate their splits individually will do more harm than benefit to your business. 

Apart from inviting internal competition, having different commission splits will cause your team members to have different degrees of motivation.

Ideally, you should start at a 50/50 split to keep up with overhead expenses. From there, you can increase as your business progresses to encourage team growth.   

3. Hire the right people

Below are the positions you will need to fill when creating a team: 

Admin Assistant

When things get harder to handle on your own, the first person you will need is an assistant.

Hiring an admin assistant early on will allow you to take administrative tasks off your to-do list. Your admin assistant will be able to help you ensure all systems are running before you hire more members. They will also be able to take over simple tasks such as taking calls, scheduling meetings, and filing paperwork.

If budget is a concern because admin assistants require salaries instead of commissions, you can opt to hire a virtual assistant.

Buyer Agent

A buyer agent is another important team member that you will need to hire early in the process. They are responsible for converting leads, showing properties, responding to buyers’ needs, making offers, negotiating, and prospecting for buyer and seller leads. 

Don’t make the mistake of hiring a newbie as your buyer agent. An experienced one will no longer need much training and will be productive right away. 

Inside Sales Agent (ISA)

While you and your buyer agent will be spending more time closing deals, the inside sales agent will focus on prospecting new leads, following up, and helping convert them into scheduled appointments.

The perfect candidate for this role is consistent, persistent, and creative enough to generate a steady stream of prospects.   

Listing Agent

As the name suggests, this agent’s job is to assist you with listings. They will be responsible for adding more listings to your inventory and taking care of some of your marketing duties.

An essential quality that you should look for when hiring a listing agent is proactiveness. They must be able to keep you and your buyer agent busy by attracting as many clients as possible.    

4. Track your goals

Regularly revisit your goals. Trust your guts, but always evaluate yourself and your team. Keep track of what went well and what did not and discuss them with your members.

Also, encourage your members to openly communicate. This way, you get to take their inputs and ideas that can contribute to the success of the entire team. 

5. Train together

Just because you will be able to cascade tasks to your members once you’ve built a team doesn’t mean you’ll have fewer responsibilities. It’s quite the opposite. You will be accountable for your team members and their actions and partly responsible for their successes. 

You work together, so it is essential to train and learn as a team. If you want your team members to deliver, you have to be generous with sharing your knowledge. 

Let them ask questions, encourage them to be proactive, and teach them everything they need to know to reduce back and forths when they’re unsure how to proceed with a task.     

Conclusion

Building a real estate team will not only help you unload responsibilities to other people but also takes your business to the next level. It enables you to earn more, grow, and succeed even further. 

By building a real estate team, you also get to do something rewarding, that is, helping people achieve their victories. 

So if you want to build a successful real estate team, you can follow these 5 steps. 

Good luck!

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