It’s a reasonable question and one of the biggest ones real estate agents have to answer when they run up against the limits of their own time and energy in their business.
Having hired (and fired) dozens and dozens of people over the last two decades, I learned lots of lessons about whom to hire and when to do it.
Here’s the information you need to know for the two hires you must make if you want to grow to 100-plus transactions.
Before you run that next ad…
Now, your natural inclination is to run out and hire a buyer agent.
It makes sense, right? Hire a buyer agent and it’s a double win: no more chauffeuring buyers around town and half the commission on every deal a buyer agent brings in the door.
How could that be a bad thing?
Here’s how: any time you might be saving by not working with buyers is going to be invested in helping your buyer agent learn how to work independently of you to do the job you once did. Also, since you’re the best salesperson on your team, you will lose money - guaranteed - on the deals your buyer agent didn’t/couldn’t close that you would have been able to close.
If you really want to get leverage in your business and put yourself on track to sell 100 homes, there are the two key hires you must make: full-time administrative assistant and an Inside Sales Agent ( ISA ).
You’re at your best when you’re working on the highest-dollar-producing activities that fuel your business’ growth and profits.
The only way to do that is by handing off the activities that pay you less or not at all: administrative work and prospecting.
Here’s what you’re looking for in hiring both of these key individuals for your team:
Key Administrative Personnel
Hiring the right people so that you put them in the right seats on the bus can be a tough job.
Hire the wrong people or put the right people in the wrong position and you will experience significant dysfunction and a measurable reduction in productivity and job satisfaction.
To avoid making that mistake, your goal in filling this position is to find someone you can plug into your systems who can then take over about 85% of what happens in a listing or closing a transaction with little to no direction from you.
From a tactical standpoint, you’re looking for someone who can:
-Process a transaction
-Manage the listing process
-Provide outstanding customer service
-Handle the day-to-day operation of your office
-Assist any buyer agents on your team with their needs
-Be your gatekeeper
-Help keep you organized
Ideally, this person will be able to handle the technical and administrative aspects of keep your machine running while being able to troubleshoot any challenges that come their way while providing front- and back-office support.
More specifically, though, you’re looking for someone who can take the ball and run with it without you lording over them.
“Operators are the ‘do-ers’ in any enterprise – they’re the practically-minded folks that get stuff done...Because of their task-oriented disposition, Operators are often hard to spot in an office environment. Easily bored by meetings and unimpressed with simply putting in ‘facetime’, Operators don’t like to sit around idly, and can usually be found in jobs that keep them on the move.
You can recognize an Operator by certain behavioral traits:
They’re action-oriented.
They improvise to get things done – and move on.
They ask forgiveness, rather than permission.
They work prodigious hours.
They often work alone.
They don’t like being micromanaged.
Unless you’re working for a full-blown bureaucracy, no group or team, no organization or enterprise can ever achieve its goals without Operators.”
A good operator won’t just take care of the details, they’ll make sure that stuff gets done...plain and simple.
