Brian Icenhower: I want to get into a conversation about the ISA position: inside sales agents on real estate teams. I’ve been through a real evolution with them. They’ve been used at a heavy rate for a good solid 15 years, and we’ve seen a decline. They were very much in vogue, because who wouldn’t love the idea of hiring one person to do all my lead generation and field all these calls?

There are lots of different conversion rates with leads out there, but most of the time, the cheapest leads are what ISAs are filtering. That’s a 1 to 2% conversion rate when you’re talking about Google pay-per-click, Facebook ads, things like that.

So what ends up happening is, “Okay, I’m going to hire these ISAs.” But there are massive systems they need to go through. We have an ISA training course that I recommend we always put our ISAs through. We even have an ISA manager course that our coaches put the people who manage the ISAs through. Even our online lead conversion course doesn’t hurt, at least for the workflow: everything that needs to be done with conversion, follow-up, and lead routing.

But there are some very big problems that occur with ISAs. As the real estate market hit its pandemic boom, and then the resulting inflation and interest rate increases, you saw a lot of ISAs go away. Pretty much, you saw a lot of real estate teams go away, because the tide went out and everybody saw who was skinny dipping without good systems.

There are still plenty of successful ISA teams, and we coach a lot of them. But probably the most glaring problem with them is turnover. I mean, who really grows up wanting to be a telemarketer? There aren’t many people who plan on staying in the ISA role for a long period of time.

So how do we overcome the turnover problem with ISAs? Because it’s a high one. Of any position in real estate, the turnover is massive. Massive. Even higher turnover than real estate agents, where 33% quit after their first year and 78% don’t make it five years. ISAs, boy, it’s a very rare bird that stays in the chair for a long period of time. It happens. You can get lucky. So how do we keep them? How do we structure it?

I’ll tell you, one thing you can do is have a deep bench of them. Having one ISA is probably not a good idea. Period. You really need to have two or three, because almost always one goes down, one quits, or one doesn’t perform. If you have one ISA, get your whole team dependent on them, and then lose that ISA, you’re going to make a really hasty hire to replace them. It’s exhausting. So having backups is very important. You’ll just get tired of working with them after a while if you don’t.

There are ISA services out there, and they don’t usually do as well. They’re a little more expensive, but they don’t convert at as high a level. They don’t have a relationship with your agents. They often don’t know enough about your local market to add value to clients while they’re nurturing them along, before they ultimately hand off a hot lead to a sales agent who’s going to meet the client in person.

There’s a lot of nurturing with online leads. We have to add value. We have to talk about local markets. It’s not like we just get a lead and hand it off. There’s tons of lead follow-up, and that’s the vast majority of what ISAs are doing, not just speaking to initial leads.

From a structure standpoint, you can do a straight hire. You hire an ISA, you typically pay them something close to minimum wage, and then you bonus them off closings. You could bonus them off appointments held, meaning they set an appointment and the client actually showed up for it. I would not do it off appointments set, because oftentimes those get set weak and the client doesn’t show up. If the appointment’s set correctly, it’ll be set strong, and they show up. But I prefer paying off closings, because that way you know you’re making money when you’re paying them. That’s probably the traditional way to do it. What kind of percentages are we seeing?

ICT Coach: I coach a lot of ISA teams, and I run an ISA group coaching program where we all get in there and role-play, so I know a lot about why ISAs work and why they don’t. Most people are paying around $3,000 to $3,500 a month, somewhere right in there depending on your market, and usually around 7 to 10% off the closed transaction, off the buyer agent’s side.

A lot of people want to take it off the top, and that’s just not fair, because the rainmaker’s paying for the ISA’s salary and all the systems. We usually pay it off the team agents’ share, whether that’s the buyer’s agents or the listing specialists, and it’s usually around 7 to 10%.

Brian Icenhower: I think that’s an important point. If your buyer’s agents are only getting paid 30% on that deal, that’s fine. They don’t have to take those leads. But there are certain agents who really need to pay the bills, and those are the ones who are going to take ISA leads. That’s typically why the bigger the team, the better, because you’re going to have agents with different levels of motivation. I definitely would pay it off the buyer’s agent side, and if they don’t want the leads, they don’t have to take them. I just hope they’re doing something else to generate business, unless they don’t really need business that bad.

ICT Coach: One of the scenarios there is that when you pay them with a success fee, you get a hungry person. They’re more likely to stay with the client and help the agent, because they developed a relationship with that person while converting them to an appointment. It’s like you have two people on the deal.

Some of the teams we coach give a higher amount for a listing appointment, because off one listing you can get multiple listings and multiple buyers, so they charge the agent a little bit more. People ask, “Why would the agent pay that?” Because it’s business they did not have. It’s additional business. With the people I coach in our system, they don’t balk at the agent paying the bonus.

And think about this: all the teams I interact with that have ISAs, the team pays the hourly rate. The reason they pay hourly is to get past the 1099 scenario. You can tell them what hours to work, you can have them do outbound calls, you can tell them what to say. It gets rid of a couple of the 1099 issues you might have, and then they bonus them.

Brian Icenhower: That brings up another point. When you have multiple ISAs, you can stagger their hours, because oftentimes leads come in at night and on weekends. If you just have one who works 9 to 5 every day, it makes it really tough. Now you can have one working Thursday to Sunday and others starting earlier in the morning.

Online leads come in at night. It’s just the way it is. They come in at 5, 6, 7, 8 o’clock, when people are off work, sitting down with their tea, and searching online. So having multiple ISAs on staggered schedules matters, and I see the advantage of a W-2 that way. You can set that expectation up front.

ICT Coach: The other thing you said, Brian, that I thought was great, and it doesn’t just apply to ISAs: you’re better off with part-time people on your ops team, because then you can have two. If one leaves, you’ve still got one who can go full-time for a short period, and you’re not left with a hole. With ISAs, it’s great to have multiples because you get some healthy competition between them, just like you do with agents. It’s natural. “Hey, I want to close.” They help each other and boost each other up. That’s a tough job, because if you’re doing it right, you’re on the phone your whole shift.

Brian Icenhower: Yup.

ICT Coach: One thing I want to jump in and say: I think it’s also about how the rainmaker or leader frames the position. Most administrative assistants want to become agents, too. Almost everybody says, “I’m going to get my license someday,” and many of them don’t. In the ISA world, you have to sell them on the job.

“Hey, if you’re making 80, 90 grand, you’re not working evenings, you’re not working weekends, and you’re not driving all over in your car, you’re sitting right here. It’s a pretty good gig if you do it right.” Sell them on the position. “Do you really want to drive all over the city and do all those crazy things? You’re doing pretty well right here, and I don’t think you’d be making much more money.”

It’s how you frame it, and it keeps those people in the seat. I explain it right up front when I’m hiring: this is who I’m looking for. If you’re just using this as a stepping stone to become an agent, you might want to keep interviewing.

Brian Icenhower: I think that’s important, too. Highly social people oftentimes love the idea of being out there with the masses, driving all over, getting to know these families. So believe it or not, if you want some longevity in the role, you’re kind of looking for the person who wants to stay home. The guy who wears the Pink Floyd black t-shirt, who doesn’t really want to work with people he knows, and who has no problem communicating with strangers. People who are a little more reserved, who don’t want to get out there, who aren’t “people people.”

ICT Coach: One of the lines I like to use when people are interviewing with us is, “If you’re hitting your money goals or wealth goals with us, do you have any reason to ever want to leave?” We ask that of our buyer’s agents, our listing agents, and anybody we’re interviewing. As long as you’re hitting your goals, whatever they may be (we set those at the beginning of the year, in October and November), do you have any reason to interview anywhere else? And if you’re ever not hitting them, I ask that you come talk to us before you go interview, so we can reset your goals and find out where your unhappiness lies. That way, we predetermine that you’re going to hit your goals with us, and you have no reason to leave.

More often than not, in this social media world, we’re looking at somebody else living in a glass house, and they’re not happy. I don’t want you looking at people saying, “I’m on a 100% split,” when they sold two houses. Don’t look at them. They’re not making any money. Your net income is ten times theirs, and I’ll gladly put every one of our agents’ net income up against theirs. Let’s do “big bank, little bank,” like we did back in grade school. If you’re hitting your economic goals, let’s be happy. That’s what I really want people to look at.

Brian Icenhower: I like that, because you could literally pull up the average production per agent in the MLS and show them the average agent sells fewer than two houses a year. We know 60 to 70% of them haven’t sold a house in the last year. So you could show them that this is much more stable and much more secure, and they’ll be making five times as much as the average agent.

ICT Coach: And show them that those agents are also paying splits to their brokerage, paying referral fees, buying their leads, and paying all these other fees, and they have none of the services we provide. They’re really making 40%, and they’re not telling you that. Don’t compare your insides to their outsides. Let’s look at your net income.

Poor people think of percentages, rich people think of denominators. Let’s pay attention to your net income and your goals, and as long as you’re hitting those with us, let’s keep going where you want to go. That $90,000 line you used is a great line. If you hit your goals, let’s be happy with that, and then set bigger goals if you need more money. And let’s hit those.

Brian Icenhower: I like it. Now, I know a lot of people hear that you’ve got to pay an ISA a set salary and go, “Oh.” There is another way to do it. It’s shakier when it comes to conversion rate, but you can use the ISA seat as a stepping stone to agent. And trust me, they will step.

For example, we get a brand-new licensee, and we want to teach them how to lead generate. So we say, “You’re going to be an ISA for the first six months to a year. In that time, you’re going to convert all these online leads, and if you hit certain benchmarks, you’re going to graduate to an agent.” That could be a buyer’s agent, or it could even just be a showing assistant. I’ve seen people start as an ISA for six months, then spend the next six months as both a showing assistant and an ISA. After that first year, they become a buyer’s agent.

That way, you’ve always got new ISAs coming in. They’re learning lead generation first, then learning how to be a showing assistant, so they’re learning those two steps of the role. They’ve got some income coming in, and they know they don’t have to do it forever. If they do a good job and hit certain benchmarks, they graduate into the agent role.

And typically, you don’t have to pay them as much that way. I know that lights everybody up. They don’t need big salaries, because what would they have gotten as a brand-new licensee anyway? They would have come in with no pay and hoped to get some business in their first year, and most agents don’t get much business in their first year. This is a way we can step them up and walk them up. Sounds great.

The problem with it is they will push, because they’re going to hate it. Most of those highly social people want to get out there and start working with clients. So you’ve got to be really clear about your expectations, and you need to track their process, like we teach in our ISA training courses, so we’re holding them accountable on a dashboard every single week.

Make sure their speed-to-lead numbers are below five minutes, preferably under three, so when a lead comes in, they’re calling back instantly. We must track that key performance indicator. We also need to track all their lead follow-up tasks, because the vast majority of online lead business is lead follow-up. That’s where 75% of the business is. After we make contact, are we doing all that follow-up? In our CRM, outstanding lead follow-up tasks need to be at zero every single week, and that needs to show up on a dashboard as well.

If we’re not tracking them that way, we’re going to have horrible results from our ISAs. Those are just the bare minimum of what we need to track. We always need a dashboard, and we need to put the Four Disciplines of Execution behind our ISAs more than any other position in real estate.

ICT Coach: What I like about what you just said, Brian, is that the hardest thing, and the one thing every agent has to do, is have real estate-related conversations. When you start them in a job that is nothing but real estate-related conversations, you can train out some of the reluctance people have. They’re so nervous. “What am I going to talk about? What am I going to do?” You force them to do it.

Brian Icenhower: Yup. You’ll see a lot of teams that, when they get a little larger, work in pods. You’ve got a senior agent as a pod leader. It sounds very space age, but you’ve got a pod leader and some agents on the team, and now you might have an ISA just for that pod. The pod leader holds that inside sales agent accountable. They might have a showing assistant, too.

What you’re doing is creating more paths to growth on the team. Someone comes in and says, “Okay, now I get to graduate to showing assistant. Now I get to graduate to buyer’s agent. Maybe someday I’ll graduate to pod leader.” Again, that takes oversight. It takes systems. It takes dashboards. Our pod leaders have to learn how to train and hold people accountable, which I like.

What it does is create a lot more paths to growth, so people aren’t stagnant. Stagnation in an organization is really bad. That’s where turnover comes from: “There’s nowhere to go. I’m going to be doing this forever.” A lot of people join big national companies for exactly that reason. “Look at all the places I can go with this. Look at all the options I’ve got.” Then they end up stagnant anyway. But putting all these different options in place really does decrease turnover, so that’s another way to do it.

I will tell you, I know this is the exciting way, and I’m probably selling it a bit too much, but it’s very rarely done, because it requires so many systems and so much oversight. It’s a lot of dashboards, a lot of training, and a lot of education on what ISA systems look like. That’s a deep dive into our ISA training courses. I know it excites people, but most top ISA teams hire on salary. They pay the money, and that’s how you get someone who stays in the chair for a long time.

Having one of those people as a backup to this onboarding process might be a good idea, too. If we’re using ISAs as part of an agent onboarding and training process, having a good, seasoned, salaried ISA around to help train them is smart.

So, hope that helps. That’s an overview of how the ISA role can work. It can work a lot of different ways, no doubt. But as one of our coaches said, having the person in the seat paid by salary has probably been the most proven and tested approach. I have seen the other ways work, for sure, but I think salary is probably the best way to do it. Hope that helps, guys.