Expanding your solo real estate business into a powerful, driven team is an exciting part of any agent’s career. Establishing a real estate team can grow your business, reduce overheads, broaden your proficiencies, and mitigate risk. Sounds like a good deal, right?
As the industry shapes and evolves with time, so do the logistics of leadership and fundamentals required to drive a successful real estate team. Evolutions in the traditional brokerage model mean team leaders have better tech support, more efficient lead generation strategies, and increased access to education. These changes are transitioning the leader’s role as a provider and director to a powerful guide who motivates and adds value to their team.
So how do you embrace these evolutions and lead a team to the cutting edge of the real estate industry? What value can joining a real estate team offer your business? We’re going to explore these questions and more in this article about finding and building the right real estate team.
How Do I Join A Real Estate Team?
If you’re contemplating joining a real estate team, a good place to start is by speaking with other agents you know and building a list of those recruiting for their teams. Speak with team leaders to determine whether their team structure is compatible with your workflow and goals.
There are two things you’ll want to look for in the beginning. First, consider whether the leader has experience, whether their team performs harmoniously and efficiently, and whether the team is growing year-over-year.
Second, take a look at the particulars of the brokerage and consider how this will nurture the growth and success of your team, along with any challenges it may present. For example, if you love freedom and flexibility in your daily life, virtual brokers like eXp may do this better than traditional brick-and-mortar brokerage models.
Should I Join A Real Estate Team?
It’s common for people taking their first steps in their real estate career or establishing themselves in a new market to join a real estate team. Under these circumstances, a team makes it easier to discover your newfound market and generate inbound leads for your business.
A good real estate team can provide you with hands-on industry experience, teach you your roles and responsibilities, and demonstrate what good team structure, systems, and leadership look like. If you want to be a part of an engaging and collaborative real estate team and discover lifestyle freedom through your real estate career, book a discovery call with Elizabeth Riley to learn how to get started today.
On the contrary, if you’ve got a well-founded personal and professional network accessible to you or are an agent drawing from a vast background in the industry, joining a team may not be a necessary step in your evolution. In fact, creating a group of your own may indeed be the best way to move forward. To start, you need to choose the right people for your team. So how do you identify them?
Who Do I Need In My Real Estate Team?
A cohesive team will add more value to your work than any individual agent. So as you focus on constructing your real estate team, try to build an excellent team of professionals that work well together, rather than a team of brilliant minds who cannot collaborate. Here are some roles most teams have on their front line.
Assistant or Office Manager
A real estate assistant or office manager takes care of the administrative tasks in the team, such as organization, internal and external communications, and filing records. Other responsibilities may include basic bookkeeping, entering team data, and following up to gather client feedback.
With this position filled, licensed real estate professionals are free to manage tasks related to lead generation, conversion, and tracking. It’s possible to find virtual assistants online, which may be more efficient or cost-effective – so long as somebody is doing the work!
Transaction Coordinator
Certain admin tasks are beyond the responsibility of a generalist admin staff member. A transaction coordinator is ideally a licensed agent in charge of organizing transactions and ushering them through their final stages of completion.
They can offer your clients readily available support during the transaction’s entire journey without distracting seller and buyer agents from commission-driven duties. It’s a good idea to hire a transaction manager early, though if you’re concerned about saving funds, consider hiring them on a per transaction basis.
Buyers Agents
A buying agent is a licensed real estate professional or associated broker dedicated to serving buyer leads brought in from lead generation initiatives. Your buyer’s agent converts leads, handles negotiations, and works closely with you during client consultation meetings.
As the team leader, you bring a flow of leads to the buyer’s agent (alongside your inside sales agent, eventually). You will also split commissions with them, so it’s a good idea to wait until your business closes on 60 or more homes per year before adding a buyer’s agent to the team.
Listing Specialist
A listing agent is a licensed agent or associate broker who focuses on the seller leads generated for your business. The role includes helping sellers to price, stage, and market their homes, as well as showing the property to prospective buyers. As business grows, they may coordinate with your showing assistant to offer property tours, freeing up their time to convert more leads.
The agent in charge of listings will negotiate offers with prospective buyers and work with buyer’s agents to finalize the deal. Listing agents earn a commission, often paid by the property seller as a percentage of their sale proceeds.
Team Leader
Underpinning the team’s hard work and driving success in your real estate team is a competent and visionary team leader. Your role as the leader includes charting a strategic course for the team and keeping all team members engaged and accountable. Efforts as the team leader get directed towards lead generation. You can expect to spend a fair portion of your time recruiting new team members, training the team, and managing everyone to keep the business stable.
Before entering the team leader endeavor, ensure you have the competency, skills, and experience to lead a team to the top of the industry. Your team members will look to you for guidance and direction, so a strong desire to be in the spotlight is also necessary.
Additional Team Roles
Showing Assistant
Showing assistants are there to offer your team support by assuring that showings, inspections, and appraisals are taken care of when you are not present or busy with other tasks. In most cases, you can also hire a showing assistant as needed.
Marketing Specialist
Your marketing specialist may not be a necessity on the front line of your newly established team, though once your team gains traction, they may be one of your most valued team members.
Ideally, a marketing director is a licensed agent with hoards of experience in real estate marketing. They will take care of your team’s marketing initiatives, such as ad campaigns, an online content marketing strategy, newsletters, performance tracking, and social media accounts. Eventually, they will become a prized lead-generating machine for your business.
Inside Sales Agent
An inside sales agent will assist you with the lead flow as they attract leads and listings to your business. This outbound real estate agent will prospect qualified leads and cultivate new clients to add to your sales funnel.
How Do I Put An Excellent Team Together?
A rule of thumb when you start building a real estate team is to hire carefully and don’t rush the process. A powerful real estate team comprises real estate experts with personalities that match the tone and direction of your team. To ensure you maintain a balance in your team, it’s a good idea to recruit one person at a time and ensure they understand the work before adding more professionals.
Everybody has unique personalities, strengths, and working styles. While the team needs to mesh well and achieve goals together, it’s not necessary to ensure everyone thinks in the same way. Use the diversity of your team to create a harmonious combination of strengths, innovation, and productivity.
Some team members use a personality assessment tool to balance abstract and linear thinkers or introverts and extraverts in the team. Keep an open mind and take the time you need to choose the right person for the right role.
How To Run A Successful Real Estate Team
Operating a solo real estate business and becoming a team leader will feel distinct. Each poses its own unique set of challenges. In this section, we’ll explore how to lead a successful real estate team and how the right real estate brokerage can support your aspirations.
Check In With Yourself
The first and most important requisite to running a real estate team is ensuring you have the makings of a true leader. You will be the one to chart the course and set the sails for your team, providing every individual team member with direction and motivation to strive and achieve.
You know you are managing well when your team can collaborate and find solutions on their own. Leadership skills can be cultivated over time, so don’t worry if you’re out of practice. You’ll have the best start if you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a leader, then work hard to fortify them.
Learn From The Best
Mingling with other team leaders to discover their professional highlights and challenges will give you valuable perspective when it comes to managing your team. Connect with great leaders in your personal and professional spheres and meet with them to discuss your aspirations and uncertainties. These people will likely be there to support you as you step into a leadership role.
Another way to learn about excellent team leadership is to engage a qualified mentor who can show you the ropes as you gain experience and develop your skills.
How Does eXp Develop Leaders?
eXp World is a virtual campus where employees can meet, learn, and interact through a personalized avatar in the online space. As they say, a rising tide lifts all boats, and eXp supports all agents to become empowered industry leaders if they so desire.
Here, agents can access over 50 hours of live training each week, as well as an on-demand video library to expand skills and knowledge at their own pace. Industry thought leaders and top producing eXp agents regularly host events to help agents brush up on best practices, including agent leadership meetings.
Decide On Your Compensation Model
It’s a good idea to have a compensation model decided before you begin recruiting. Keep in mind that the commission split you decide on with our team isn’t something that can be altered down the road – except for when you choose to give your team members a higher commission split. It’s best to keep commissions uncomplicated.
eXp makes it easy for agents to build their own real estate teams with flexible predetermined real estate team structure options. These systems help team leaders to scale their business and expand reach as well as look after your bottom line. Here is a quick rundown on the flexible team structure options eXp offers:
Traditional Team
The traditional team structure is the most frequently used model in the industry. With eXp, a team leader maintains an 80/20 commission split and caps annually at $16k. The agents hold a half cap at $8k and split commissions with the team leader at 75/25, in addition to their annual cap contributions.
Mega ICON Team
Further down the track when your team expands to comprise over ten agents, you can lead a Mega ICON Team. Like the traditional teams, the leader maintains a $16k cap, though each team member holds a quarter cap at $4k.
To become a Mega ICON Team leader, your team must have closed at least $40 million in transactions or sold over 175 homes in the past 12 months. The combined team cap is a requirement each year – which may be hard work for those leading teams closer to ten. But it becomes easier as your teams grow to, say, 20 agents.
Self-Organized Team
A self-organized team is popular for those starting their first team or those beginning with small partnerships. All agents involved have a $16k cap, and there is no required minimum commission split between the team leader and agents.
This is advantageous for those dipping their toes in team leadership as no formal agreement is required, and you can choose whatever commission split you like with your agents.
Domestic partnership
Married couples can form a domestic partnership team and work together to achieve their goals. No formal commission split is required, and it’s easy to establish or dissolve a domestic team at any time during your career with eXp.
Develop A Business Plan
The way you manage your solo real estate business and the way you manage a real estate team are totally different. You’ll need to outline your overall goals and a working timeline to achieve them, decide which resources and needs your team will have, and how you plan to pay for them. Another important consideration is what you plan to do with the revenue your team generates.
Research and understand the market you enter your team in and the niche you serve within that market. Are you selling in high-end locations? Is your clientele first-time buyers or serial investors? Each market segment you serve requires a tailored marketing approach. How do you plan to reach your target audience? It pays to figure this out early and revisit the plan at a later point if you need to.
Decide On A Lead Generation Strategy
A good reason to start a real estate team is that you can’t handle all of the leads you have on your own. In this case, it’s likely that you’ve already developed an effective lead generation strategy that could help your business grow organically.
When you have more agents on the team handling qualified leads, you’ll want a strategy to continue growing your flow of leads to keep the business thriving. Keep in mind that purchasing lots of leads will not necessarily make your business profitable. It may mean that you’re selling more homes, but it’s necessary to surpass your overheads and expenses to run a profitable business.
How does eXp support Lead Generation initiatives?
With eXp, you don’t have to be a marketing specialist to move qualified leads into the pipeline. With a sophisticated marketing suite available to all agents, teams are equipped to create their own marketing tools and maximize lead generation activities.
Want to create compelling video footage and stunning graphics for your website and social media accounts? No problem. Need branded event kits, business cards, or newsletter templates to keep your community strong? You’ll find it all in eXp’s marketing suite. Additionally, all agents are given free access to a KVcore lead generation web platform and CRM software, allowing agents to produce online buyer and seller leads fast.
How Will Your Team Communicate?
Before we dive into communications, let’s knock one headache off the list: office space. While traditional brokerage models have used their office headquarters for teams to work together, eXp Realty has developed the world’s first virtual brokerage model. Meaning, team leaders are no longer obligated to worry about the hassle of finding and managing office space for their teams.
Brick and mortar offices add to the team’s expenses and often cut into everyone’s profit margin, whereas recent tech developments have made physical office space futile in many respects. In a virtual office, everyone can work when and where they choose so long as they have their laptop and an internet connection. Although, this model underpins the importance of having a tight communications system.
How Does eXp Facilitate Team Communications?
All teams need an efficient and effective platform to communicate with one another. eXp has developed an immersive tech platform, Virbela, offering cutting-edge solutions to remote-based collaboration. Through the platform, employees can meet, hold and attend classes, and host virtual events in one online space – which effectively only requires an internet connection to tap into.
Develop A Growth Plan
It’s unlikely that your business will move from a solo performance to a team comprising all eight roles we mentioned earlier (though if this is feasible, go you!). It’s more plausible to expect that you’ll hire one or two new real estate agents or admin assistants to handle the work immediately, then grow the team as business scales.
Therefore, it’s a good idea to instantiate a growth plan that details how to strategically grow your team over time while ensuring your inbound leads are sufficient to keep everybody busy and your business profitable. Go back to your business plan and decide how many people you’ll need to fill each role as you work diligently towards your goals.
How does eXp help grow your business?
eXp agents benefit from an unparalleled revenue share model designed with business growth in mind. Any eXp agent sponsoring an agent into the brokerage receives a predetermined percentage of the new agent’s commission. This system runs seven tiers deep, meaning that you will receive a percentage commission from any agent your sponsored agent recruits, and so on.
Revenue share creates multiple passive income streams for agents at all levels, creating space and time for teams to focus on selling real estate. What’s more, you can still benefit from revenue share even if you choose to leave real estate, provided you retain an active license with eXp.
Select Your Tools
In the real estate industry, tools automate processes and optimize your team’s productivity. The right tool can help you with anything from transaction management, CRM, and your client database, to marketing and inventory. They will also help you to track your team’s goals and finances easily. In addition, they will help to ensure that your team stays on task.
What Are The Benefits of EXP Tools?
eXp Realty provides agents with Skyslope, a world-class transaction management software to monitor client-agent communications and manage documents in the pipeline. Among CRM, continued education, and website management tools, agents have access to Regus coworking centers around the country, so you can easily access a quiet and professional meeting or office space.
When you create a team with eXp, selecting your tools is a simple process. Everything is effectively provided for you!
Final Thoughts
Building a real estate team can lead you to more free time or more revenue. However, it rarely leads you to both. As you build your team, consider which of the two you are trying to achieve, and work your goals into your team’s business practices.
eXp saves team leaders significant amounts of time and money by providing all the equipment teams need to get up and running and thrive in the long term. To discover how powerful your real estate team could be under the eXp banner, get in touch with Elizabeth Riley for a discovery call today!