Real Estate Team Leaders: How to EXIT Production in 12 Months – How to Hire

In this article series, we’re going to cover 5 strategies for real estate team leaders to implement that will help them exit production within 12 months. Pulling yourself out of the day-to-day operations of your team is one of the most difficult tasks that team leaders can do. After all, you built your team, you’re essential to its success, and you’re nervous what will happen if you remove yourself from its regular operation.

The problem for a lot of real estate team leaders is that they make themselves the linchpin for their entire team, and everything they do on a daily basis makes them irreplaceable. But if you are truly irreplaceable, then you will never get out of production.

If you want to earn a multiple six figure income without selling homes, then the first step you have to take towards exiting your day-to-day is to give up some of that control. You need to allow others to step in, and basically make yourself replaceable.

It Starts with Letting Go  

Most real estate team leaders have their hands in a lot of different pots and wear many hats. They are a mentor, consultant, trainer, partner, and agent all rolled into one. The first step towards really freeing up your time is to step out of the agent role, lead generator role, or any other production focused role. Rather than directly selling, your job needs to be to facilitate your team’s success—helping them become as productive and profitable as possible.

The way you do this is through building systems and a culture that make lead generation, lead conversion, negotiating deals, and closing deals as easy as possible for your team. The more you work on and refine these systems, the even more time you will create for yourself.

But it all starts with pulling yourself out of being directly involved in the sales process. Which means you have to make some hires.

How to Hire for Your Real Estate Team

This article is aimed at real estate team leaders who already have a team. So I’m not starting with who you should hire first to start building a team. Instead, I’m focusing on who you should hire as real estate ISAs and agents going forward. Because if you’re building a team from the ground up, then you shouldn’t even think about an ISA or agent for your first hire. You need an admin. If you’re just starting a team, then check out this article.

But assuming you have an admin and at least a small team of agents and ISAs, let’s talk about how to hire to get yourself out of production. Here are the steps you should follow:

• Treat it like lead generation – Finding candidates is like lead generation for your company, especially when it comes to real estate ISAs. Run ads for the position on Indeed and other job websites, and aim for a high volume of candidates. You should be trying to generate 20 to 30 resumes of potential hires every week. If your ads aren’t generating that many candidates, then tweak and revise them.
• Build your short list – Once you have a sufficient number of candidates, start screening and narrowing down to build your short list. Most real estate team leaders do not do this effectively. Typically, they just go off of what the candidate tells them about themselves. But if you really want to find rockstar candidates, then you need to do it differently.
• Evaluate skills before interviews – How do you screen their performance and evaluate their skills? By checking how they talk on the phone with you or another team member. When it comes to ISAs, the most important skill they need is to be able to have good conversations with complete strangers. If you don’t think someone is very good at speaking on the phone, then they most likely will not be able to accomplish that. Hear how they sound on calls, on voicemail, and in roleplays. All before you conduct a traditional interview.
• Interview – After narrowing down your resumes and then see which candidates sound good on the phone, the next step is to conduct a formal interview. This step will help you gain a deeper understanding of their experience, skillset, mindset, motivation level, and, generally, what kind of person they are.

Real Estate Team Leaders: Hire the Right Way 

The problem with most real estate team leaders is that they handle the hiring process the wrong way. That’s why they make bad hires and why they can never pull themselves out of production without their team taking a hit.

Instead of narrowing down resumes, interviewing, hiring, then screening their performance, the process should go: narrowing down resumes, screening their performance, interviewing them, then deciding whether or not to make the hire.

Hiring the right people is the first step towards removing yourself from production. Keep an eye out for the next article in this series that will cover how to set clear expectations for your team.

You’re not alone as a real estate team leader. We have leadership programs that can help you at each stage of your business. Click here to learn more.