If you want to succeed in building a team, you must be game on, serious, and investing money. You must put your time, effort, energy, and dollars into success. You must segment workflow and hire people like buyer’s agents and listing agents who will go out and work with buyers and sellers.

You may not want to work solely with buyers or solely with sellers, and that’s fine. You can work with both if you’d really like to. The best of the best in every industry are those who specialize. Not just in real estate, but in everything.

Now, you need to get that workflow segmented so that everyone on the team can do what needs to get done. When it comes to listing agents, I want to know that if I’m sending you a listing lead, you’re going on ten appointments this week and that you’re good at working with those sellers. That you’ve got a script down and you’ve got a checklist you follow. Bonus if you do it all the time!

This way, I know you are likely to set the listing, and I am likely to get paid!

Other people who may be on your team:

Transaction coordinators

Listing coordinators

Marketing coordinators

Inside sales agents

Bookkeeper/accountant

Attorney

Executive Assistants

Virtual Assistants

Runners

Another big thing for real estate agents: don’t hire one person per role. Better to hire multiple people per role. If I have just one, and they’re having a bad week or month, that’s bad for the company. It means your company is having a bad week or month. That is not good for business!

However, if I have two or more people in the same role, they’re competing and they’re both working hard. They’re motivating each other and now, they’re each more productive for me and for the team. It’s good for them, it’s good for the team, and it’s good for business.

You’ll also need a bookkeeper or an accountant at some point. For a smaller team, you can use QuickBooks Self-Employed. For a larger team, expand to the full software; it’s well worth it.

If you’re a team leader, you’re going to need an attorney. They don’t have to be on staff, but they should be available to you on demand.

The most important thing to remember as a team leader, you work for your team members, not the other way around. By providing tools and resources to them, you are removing any roadblocks that are preventing them from becoming as successful as they could be. Not only that, but remember there will be things you need to pay for, sometimes long before you make a profit, and you need to be prepared for that.

There will be bad months, and you need to be prepared for that as well. That way, during those bad months, you can still make payroll and your team won’t implode.

You should be expanding into other markets once your team grows to a certain level. For example, if I am based in Seattle, I’ll consider expanding into Bellevue or Tacoma.

When should you be building your team? RIGHT NOW. Teams are rapidly taking over the country: the race is on. There are teams in every major market in the country. You need to be thinking about what you need to do to stay a step ahead. You need to remember to focus 90% of your day on lead generation, lead follow-up, and lead conversion.

Above all, World-Class Teams have World-Class:

Team Members

Systems

Technology

Leadership

Culture

If there are no teams available to join, you can build one from the ground up. This requires a lot of effort, work, money, and perseverance, but it can be rewarding.

****If you’re looking to join a team, you can interview those in your area or you can join one of our nationwide expansion teams. Reach out to us! Call our office at (206) 300-1000 or email us at [email protected]. Facebook is also a great way to reach out to us.****