Strategies for Real Estate Team Leaders

Working in real estate is tough. Being a real estate team leader is even harder. But there are certain steps you can take to ensure you build and cultivate a team that consistently produces results. To help you out on your real estate leadership journey, we’ve put together some tips and best practices for leading your team to success.

The All Important Question

Before you even start building or training a real estate team, you have to make sure that even having a team is the right move for your own business and career. You need to ask yourself questions like:

• Do you have enough volume for a team?
• Do you have so many current listings and transactions that you’re sacrificing new leads?
• Are you too strapped for time that you don’t have time to generate new business?

It’s at this point when you should consider starting a team to help handle the volume you are generating. Typically, 50 to 60 transactions per year is the most that an individual agent can handle. A good rule of thumb is to have at least 40 to 50 transactions before you consider starting a real estate team.

Who Should You Hire First for Your Real Estate Team?

You might be tempted to hire an ISA or another agent as the first additions to your team. But this could be a mistake! Before increasing the volume of your business, you have to hire a rockstar administrator to help you handle the mountains of paperwork, your large database, and your busy schedule. Only once you have an administrator to take those burdens off of your shoulders should you begin to hire more producers.

After an administrator, we typically recommend the next hire for your real estate team to be a buyer’s agent and then an inside sales agent. Then, it’s all about adding new team members once your business volume stretches your team too thin.

Strategies to Lead Your Team to Success

Once you have your real estate team, you need to run it and lead it effectively. If your team doesn’t succeed, then you won’t succeed.

• Lead by example – Ultimately, your team will emulate the actions you take and the tone that you set. It’s important to maintain a proactive, motivated, and organized approach to team management. Experience, clear communication, goal setting, and mentoring are also standout qualities that agents look for in a real estate team leader. 
• Be a resource, but give them space – Your agents need the space and freedom to act and make decisions for themselves. Your role is to be there for them when they need guidance and assistance, but not dictate what they do, who they meet with, etc. Most agents got into the business for the same reason you did, to have more freedom and flexibility than in a typical 9-5 job.
• Devote resources to training – Part of being a successful real estate team leader is providing the training opportunities and resources your team needs to be as productive as possible. You can just hire agents or ISAs, hand them a script, and expect them to be top producers. They need a program that helps them work on conversation techniques, role plays, call reviews, and someone to hold them accountable (check out our training programs here).
• Use meetings sparingly – Meetings can be very helpful for your team, but they can also be drains on time and productivity if they are done correctly. Schedule them only when they are essential and have a clearly defined purpose.

If you want help bringing your real estate team to the next level, we have a real estate leader training program that can help! Click here to check it out.