How & When to Hire a Buyer's Agent

Learn how and when real estate agents should hire a buyer’s agent and the common obstacles lead agents must overcome in order to successfully incorporate buyer’s agents in their businesses. Frequently some of the most prominent hurdles reside inside the mind of a successful solo agent looking to hire a buyer’s agent. In order to establish a prosperous relationship with a buyer’s agent, it is essential that the lead agent fully understand the value provided by both parties. Before we examine the 5 key factors associated with when and how to work with a buyer’s agent below, watch as real estate agent Eric Craig explains how hiring a buyer’s agent was fundamental to now selling $50 million a year after increasing his production by $8 million annually over 4 years in the video below.

How & When Realtors Hire a Buyer’s Agent

Hire a Buyer’s Agent – 5 Keys to Success

1. Create a Path for Growth

Many talented solo agents turn away from the buyer’s agent opportunity because teams present it as a dead-end job with no path for growth. In these cases, the role appears to pinnacle at selling 40 to 60 buyer-side transactions per year before life balance gets compromised. Successful teams present leadership opportunities to buyer’s agents that excel in the role. They encourage success by providing new positions as incentives. For example, high performing buyer’s agents might be promoted to Lead Buyer’s Specialists or be permitted to bring on Showing Assistants to increase earning potential.

2. Investment vs Cost

This is often the determining factor as to when an agent should bring on a buyer’s agent. Agents who look at giving away their buyer leads to another agent as a cost are simply not ready. They are afraid of losing a significant percentage of their buyer-side commission dollars to pay a buyer’s agent. However, agents that are ready to hire a buyer’s agent look at this addition as an investment. Not only only do they know that letting go of buyers will free up significant time to get more listings, top lead agents realize that a buyer’s agent will be able to handle more buyer leads than they ever had time for on their own.

3. Strong Administrative Support

A strong administrative assistant is often the key to the team’s value for a buyer’s agent. A buyer’s agent will be more than willing to work on a team’s commission split if they are freed up to focus solely on generating new business, showing property and writing offers. Administrative support that takes transactions from contract to close enables buyer’s agents to do only the activities they do best: show and sell. This means that they can close significantly more transactions with a team than on their own. Successful buyer’s agents understand that increased net income makes lower commission splits irrelevant.

4. Letting Go

Lead agents of flourishing real estate teams don’t cherry-pick the best buyers to represent themselves. Instead, they completely stop putting buyers in their cars and let go of the buyer-side of the business altogether. Not only does this improve buyer’s agent morale, but it frees the lead agent up to perform higher dollar-producing activities as explained in Key No. 5 below. The difficult part is letting go of the mentality that your clients want to work only with you and don’t want to be passed off to another agent. Top lead agents realize that it’s not about their client’s needing them, instead, it’s all about the customer service standards they represent. Lead agents must focus on instilling these same standards in their buyer’s agents, much like a dentist does with a hygienist. Perfected team delegation methods and scripts are also essential.

5. Focus on More Listings

The team must provide leads to keep a buyer’s agent busy and successful. The addition of a buyer’s agent will free up a large amount of the lead agent’s time representing the team’s buyers and showing a property. Therefore the lead agent must use a significant portion of this newly found time to focus on generating more listings that will ultimately attract more buyer leads. Otherwise, the buyer’s agent will start to feel like a cost that is eating up a big portion of the buyer-side commissions as explained in Key No. 2 above.