It’s an old adage that if your business isn’t growing, it’s dying. But, on the flip side, your business can only grow so big in the same spot. For agents who’ve perfected their lead generation and administration systems, expansion is the key to sustained growth by leveraging established and proven systems. But how, exactly, do you structure a real estate expansion team?

Expansion Success in San Fransisco

As the Broker/Owner of the Rick Fuller Team, Rick has led his people to producing over $100 million in annual sales and successfully established multiple locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento County. In a conference call with ICC founder, Brian Icenhower, Rick shares his expansion-team structure in detail and explains its success.

Video: A Detailed Guide to Structuring a Real Estate Expansion Team

Structure for Sustained Success

The benefits of a real estate expansion team are boundless. Expansion teams are convenient for consumers and help you build a presence in hyper-local markets. Yet, as Brian Icenhower explains, a successful real estate expansion strategy rises and falls with the team’s structure and commitment to recruiting agents and staff. 

A thoughtful, strategic structure is endlessly replicable and scaleable. Once the basic system is in place, business leaders can grow as quickly as they want in a healthy and sustainable format.

As outlined in detail in the video, successful expansion teams orbit around a strong administrative center. The main office is home to:

Sales team members occupy expansion offices, which are ideally no more than 30 minutes apart from one another. This allows the team to run efficiently, effectively, and to be highly responsive.

Expansion teams allow agents to attract and retain top talent. As Rick Fuller explains, smaller groups result in better retention as people tend to get lost in larger teams. Smaller expansion teams offer a chance for everyone to excel and shine.

Properly structured, expansion teams also provide growth opportunities for existing team members–both administrative staff and sales agents.

As seen in the video, Fuller’s organizational chart contains multiple levels for career growth, with ICC’s Learning Center providing a bridge from one opportunity to the next. With the assistance of our extensive library and niche courses, unlicensed staff are trained to move consecutively from Showing Specialist to Buyer’s Specialist to Lead Buyer Agent and even further to Lead Buyer Coach.

By providing pathways to promotion, agents can climb the corporate ladder while enjoying the close-knit culture of a smaller team. See our article on Inman about onboarding agents using our free agent onboarding calendar.