Building a Real Estate Team in 2018: 16 Tips From the Pros

“Read the E-Myth by Michael Berger. Where so many agents fail when growing a team, is not fully understanding that you will have to wear the hat of a technician (still being a real estate agent), manager (overseeing the team and operations), and entrepreneur (tasked with setting the vision for the organization). You’ll need a strong documented approach to your business. Having systems and processes in place is the only way to scale, or you will fail.”

“I have had a real estate team since 1985. The top piece of advice is to hire quality teammates. Do DISC testing to confirm the people have the skillset to succeed in sales. When someone is a bad fit, because they have an energy-sucking attitude, have conflicts, or engage in sloppy or poor business practices, be quick to fire. It is not the people you fire that make your life miserable.”

“In my catering company, I built as the need was there. I acquired other companies when the finances were there, and supply and demand existed. I added team members and leaders when the budget permitted and a need was there. One day, I looked up and realized I was no longer needed in my business. This was 7th level (as described in MREA), and it was built naturally, organically, as was needed. THIS is how a real estate team will be built successfully by most that do well. (Oh and by the way, it’s all based on strong lead generation).”

“My biggest struggle has been — and still is, to an extent — finding and recruiting talented agents. I believe constructing a team is the most critical part of your business. As promising as it feels when you start selling houses, it can also be overwhelming. It’s easy to want to take a shortcut and hire anyone who will help, which can become disastrous. My advice to anyone wanting to build a successful team is to implement a consistent recruiting and retention process.”

“As a Keller Williams team, I employ the KPA method (Keller Personality Assessment), which matches personality and behavior to the job role. I also spend considerable time — an entire interview, in fact — asking about the candidates questions about their personal aspirations and goals outside of the job. This helps me see if I can foster the candidate’s goals as much as the candidate can help the team grow. Of course, I’m still learning from the process, but I enjoy this aspect — getting to know the individual beyond the resume and boilerplate answers.”

Over on Inman, legendary real estate coaching duo Tim and Julie Harris stress the importance of having systems in place before you start hiring:

“Before you start hiring people, systematize business to ensure that you can generate, prequalify, convert, and close business. You want to have a system that you can train your team in using and one that they can use without having to stop and ask questions every five minutes about the how and why for every procedure. Now often what happens is the reverse: an agent starts building a team, and they try to systematize everything as they go along. That’s just an invitation for trouble, though, so get the following items together beforehand, and save yourself the headache.

• Lead generation system
• Prequalification system (The last thing you delegate)
• Listing system including PLP and Complete Home Seller’s Guide
• Client care system (someone to take care of sellers while listed)
• Closing system
• You need to have staff agreements/contracts completed. Non-Solicitation, expectations, how they win and lose, etc.
• Staffing system. How will you recruit, hire and train?”

“When you get to the stage in your career where you need help to handle all your leads, your first move should be to hire a virtual assistant. Here’s why: a virtual assistant can help with all the day to day administrative and social media tasks that keep you from closing deals. The fact that you have administrative support on tap will also be a draw for recruiting junior agents to your team. That means you’ll have an easier time recruiting. Even better, because of exchange rates, an overseas virtual assistant can offer an unbeatable ROI for your real estate team.”

To learn more about how to choose and hire a virtual assistant, check out our article on hiring a real estate virtual assistant here.

“I wish someone would have told me the importance of hiring. Making sure you not only get talented people but also get people who naturally fit for the role that you are filling.

This helps with making sure you are bringing on naturally outgoing people as realtors, as well as staff people who actually belong as a staff person. We use an assessment tool that Keller Williams provides and it has proven to be a game changer for us. We never get everything 100% right, but we get better every time.”

Over on Real Estate Uncensored, Greg McDaniel walks you through how to build out the ideal team structure. Greg explains a few different team structures and why he doesn’t like models that restrict agents to one side of the transaction.

“Don’t wait to start your team. It is not as hard as it looks. You just build on it, with buyer’s agent, listing partners, and admin. Hire a coach that specializes in teams and speak to other top teams. Have strong systems in place for your team.”

“When I started building a team I was completely lost. I had people on the team that did unexpected things that I could influence but not control. It taught me that to run a team or a business it needs to start with people, be about people, and end with … people. I had to go back to the drawing board many times to get it right and not just have an ideal “client” but have an even clearer picture of the ideal hire.

For example, when I first started I hired people out of need. If you did well in your interview, you were hired. I just needed help. That was a recipe for disaster because I might have hired a talented person but I put them in a role they weren’t suited for and without direction. As time went on, I started to add systems to hiring and looking for specific roles. This added DISC profiling, interview questions around specific tasks, “tell me about a time when you sat still and made phone calls for 3 hours.” In addition, we created a profile of what a good team member looks like — “they have these values, this DISC profile, they use this kind of vocabulary.

Specific examples:

• I hired someone who had never used Gmail — so of course, we had to add a technical layer to the hiring process.
• I hired a very people-oriented person for a desk job
• I hired a very critical, negative person for a people-interaction role. They were excellent critical thinkers but not great for a role that is supposed to be the first contact for customers.
• I hired someone with experience in a different industry that made complete sense to me, but THEY never saw the connection.”

“My mother and I have been working together as a real estate team for the last 15 years. She has been in the industry for 35 years; I joined her 15 years ago.

When we first started as a team, like any businesses we had to adjust and learn how to work effectively with one another. In order to be successful as a team, you must ensure that what you lack as an individual, whether it’s a skill or a personality trait, your teammate embodies to ensure you cover all clientele.

The most challenging part of the team is ensuring you have a seamless transition between you and your teammates when helping clients so it is smooth and flawless. A client should never feel the other teammates don’t know what they want or don’t want due to lack of communication amongst the team. We are lucky that we are not only a team but we are a mother-daughter team so we had practice communicating with one another and we knew our strengths & weaknesses. Everyone thinking of becoming a team should learn that first to ensure the differences complement each other and not work against one another.”

“I wish someone would have told me to join an experienced team in the beginning so I could get my Ph.D. in real estate without having to learn it through trial and error! I would have learned the ropes faster, gotten to witness and understand the power of delegation (it’s ok not to have control), would have had active mentorship and understand how to deliver it and receive it, and just a greater mastery of our industry in the first few years of my career.”

“It’s about the person and not the system. Systems are important yet make sure to invest in your people. We tend to spend so much time focusing on building the ‘mousetrap’ and the infrastructure for our companies that we often miss the biggest opportunities and that is in our people. Opportunities to learn that an agent on the team has a daughter who is struggling in school and you, as the team lead, ask and learn more about the person and needs.”

“Having a business plan and a systematic model to follow for growth is a great insight. We tend to get stuck throwing things at the wall and hoping they will stick. In real estate, we have so many tools at our disposal and models to follow. The trick is to find something that fits YOU and build your business plan around it.”

Over on Inman, legendary real estate coaching duo Tim and Julie Harris break down the importance of learning the art of delegation.

“You can’t just hire people to take over your responsibilities, walk away from them and expect that you’ll continue to get results. You need to stay involved with the business and oversee the work being done in your business so you can stay on top of what’s making you money. If you think that building a team will save you time, then realize that you’ll likely be reallocating that saved time into other areas.

This point is related to delegation: if you’ve hired good, quality people, then trust them, but once again, stay involved with what’s going on in your business to verify that everything is being done. One of the best ways to check that things are being handled properly is by the numbers because numbers don’t lie. If you’ve given leads to your team, then find out what happened on those calls; don’t just take it on faith that they were all handled for you.”

This real estate coach and trainer extraordinaire gives this sage advice:

“Before I could build a team, I had to learn the language of real estate as a whole. Before I could build, I needed to comprehend better how a real estate business is built. I took to the MREA (Millionaire Real Estate Agent) and began learning the models.

In no particular order, I learned:

• The Economic Model – How a real estate agent (or business) earns income.
• The Budget Model – How a real estate agent (or business) should budget and spend what they earn.
• The Lead Generation Model – How we would generate leads as an agent and as a team, what the sources would be, how much of each we would work towards, and what that would bring us in regards to business.
• The Organizational Model – Let’s just say I was drooling over this one.

But before you would get even close to building a real estate team, I would hope you would first determine your business plan, so you can then help your team members determine theirs. You’ll want a profitable business and adding leverage before you are ready can quickly send you into financial ruin. The models come first.”