I’d like to talk about the real estate team manager position. This often happens when a real estate team gets to a level where production from the other agents on the team — not the team leader — is at least even with the team leader. If the team’s other agents’ production is even higher than that, it makes this much easier to do. So you’re usually talking about a team of 10 agents or more. It just depends — price points, things like that. I’m giving you generalities so you can get the ballpark idea.

You should start thinking about it around there, and I’ve seen people go too long with 10 agents. The leader is still doing all their own production, and they’re having to recruit and retain on top of that. So they’re doing two full jobs at once. That’s the reason most small teams fail — they get burned out on it. They’d be better off with one buyer’s agent and an admin, getting rid of everybody, because they got stuck.

When we coach clients through this, it’s important we keep moving them through it, or that burnout will happen. It creeps up, and the agents become more of a hassle than they’re worth. You start keeping all of your production, you scale back slow, you’re not going to make that much less money, but you’re going to get rid of half of your job. All of a sudden you have freedom in life. But the problem is you’re going down the road so many people in so many industries have gone down, where they say employees are just headaches — it’s easier if I do it all myself. Now you’re putting yourself in the self-employed box rather than the business owner box. That dream of actually getting out of production and having someone run the team — you’re letting that ship sail. Not for me. I can’t do it.

That’s really when you get to a team of 10 agents, or a team with enough production coming from other agents, that you’ve already done the hard work. You’ve hired the admin, you’ve brought on the buyer’s agents. And now you’re fumbling the ball right at the finish line.

The finish line is tough to get across, because hiring a good manager lets you step out of two things: management of the team — recruiting and retention, which is a big piece — and generally, that agent also wants to get out of production themselves. That’s a lot. Trying to do both at once is very challenging, because getting out of production is hard in its own way if you’ve never given away your listings before. That’s a trick — don’t do that without a coach. But once you do it, it’ll feel like when you first gave buyers away. You’ll want to give them away again quickly, once you go through it and have to take them back. That’s how most people find it when they bring on their first buyer’s agent. It’s still very tough the first time.

So going through that mental stress, the additional time training listing agents, having them shadow you, and developing your system for letting go — that should be the one thing you’re focused on. You shouldn’t also be hiring, training, and onboarding a manager who’s going to oversee and win the influence of all the agents in the office. So, to me, hiring this person typically comes before letting go of production to listing agents. It doesn’t have to, but I wouldn’t do both at once.

So what does this person look like? Who is the person we’re going to bring on to be our general manager? I’d set this at a very high level — I would not call this person a sales manager. That’s not high level enough to me. I’d call them a general manager, or a CEO. I’m not that excited about “growth director” or “business development director,” titles that get used often.

Why? Because the biggest part of this person’s job description has to be recruiting. And recruiting without the title is extremely hard, because when you’re out there recruiting — especially successful agents, not just new licensees — you need that authority. Recruiting experienced agents is important if you ever want to step out of production, because for a team to get big enough that you can step out, you need a diversified agent mix. You’ll need some successful agents — and by successful, I mean agents who’ve survived in the industry for 10 years, even if they’re only selling eight or nine houses a year. I’m fine with that. You need some of those people to decide to join your organization, because it’s very hard to keep churning new licensees. New licensees are going to be very online-lead-focused, and they’ll have to generate and build their spheres of influence from scratch. They tend to be young and hungry.

Bringing on agents who’ve already received business from their SOI changes recruiting and makes it easier, because now nobody feels like joining your team is a public demotion into a group of telemarketers just converting leads. There are agents out there getting 10 leads a year and happy with that — a secondary income for someone who’s a doctor, say. There’s plenty of those, and they’re viewed with more respect than someone converting online leads like a telemarketer. Nobody wants to do that job — even the telemarketers didn’t want it when they got their license. So you’ve got to diversify your agent mix.

Make sure this person looks the part on the recruiting trail — meeting with agents and saying, “I’m not just the recruiter — that’s the worst title you can have. I’m the person who runs the thing. I’m the person who makes the decisions. I’m not the owner, but I’m in charge of everything.” That’s an important piece that can’t be overlooked. Having that title — general manager is probably the most-used and easiest one to reach for — matters, because if your point is to step out, and you’re hesitant to give this person that much responsibility, you may have the wrong person. The whole point is to step out. Your admin needs to become your COO, running a lot more, and your general manager needs to be your CEO. If you’re going to step out of team management, do it fully — don’t just have them run team meetings.

This creates a lot more credibility. You’re not going anywhere. Your current agents won’t freak out — you’re still around, still in the team meetings, you’re just focusing on your own production. And maybe you start giving them some listings, which will make them happy if you tell them that while this transition is happening.

It’s kind of like when the owner recruits — when the owner recruits, they’re usually very effective, because if they’ve grown a team to that size, they’re influential and people like them. People like that tend to be really good in recruiting. As you’re handing off management of the team, you can still recruit with them every now and then — that works well. But they need to be the primary laboring oar. Every now and then, if it’s a really good, influential agent coming over, get in there and help out. That’s probably your highest and best use as a team leader at that point — more valuable than going on a listing appointment. If someone joins and brings you 10 listings a year without you doing anything, I like that.

Now, the second big thing about this person: they need to really like coaching agents. We don’t want to overdo this, because recruiting is the number one priority, but if we recruit correctly, they’re coaching agents outside the office in every appointment they have. That’s recruiting done for the power of good. We don’t want a shark who sits down, pulls out a presentation packet, and starts comparing splits and costs. That’s not a good recruiter. We want someone who treats the agent population like an agent would treat their sphere of influence — meeting people, not closing them, getting into coaching relationships to demonstrate value over multiple appointments. That takes patience — it takes patience for the owner to see this person having a bunch of meetings and not landing anybody yet, and trust that as long as the meetings are happening, progress is being made.

It requires patience to slowly build trust, respect, and the relationship by delivering value and eventually getting into a real coaching relationship — where the agent trusts that meeting with you will help them sell more real estate. Once there’s value, getting appointments won’t be a problem. Using our agent management portal, giving prospects courses so they get a test spin of what it’s like to be coached in your office — going through courses on increasing production through sphere of influence, farming, agent financials, all of that — adds to the pitch.

So the person you find has to want to coach. But all of this is built on growth, which means recruiting has to be the number one, bolded item on the job description. Their success or failure is going to rise or fall on their ability to recruit.

We typically compensate this person with an override — something like 5% on production, though it could be 2% or it could be 7%. For every agent on the team (not necessarily including the owner), they get that percentage from the agent’s sales. Say your agents are on a 50/50 split: the agent gets 50%, 5% goes to your general manager who recruited and brought them in, and 45% goes to the team. You could also put it on the agent — for their first five transactions, maybe they’re at 45% instead of 50%, since they’re getting coached heavily during that period, which is your new general manager’s job. That way you make sure they’re getting through onboarding courses, attending trainings, building their sphere of influence — tight coaching until they get through their first year or first 10 transactions, so the team doesn’t take such a big hit. You can split it different ways depending on what you need to pay.

Here’s the key: this way, you’re not paying a huge salary for this person — and I do not want you to pay a huge salary for this position. Not because I’m cheap, but because there’s no incentive. If you pay a flat salary, they’ll end up just recruiting a little and solving problems in the office instead. That’s the biggest problem with this hire.

Don’t assume your first hire for this position is going to work — it very rarely does the first time. I’d say it works about 20% of the time on the first go-round. That’s fine — just like your first admin doesn’t always become your operations director. They’ll still move you forward. You’ll learn a ton, you might grow the size of the team. But you’re only compensating based on results.

For example, say they make $40,000 their first year, and you still let them sell real estate too, to help supplement their income — if they sell 15 transactions a year, that’s an extra $40,000 to them. But their real goal is to get out of production and run the team. A team of 10 agents might net them around $40,000. What does a team of 20 agents net them? Probably around $80,000. If they’re not making enough money, they need to grow the team — you can only move the needle so far by increasing your current agents’ production, which is why we can’t let them gravitate there.

That’s the number one reason the first hire doesn’t work — I’d say 75% of the time. It’s because they’re just not having the appointments. We’re not holding them accountable to those appointments, because they’ve always got an excuse — some operational problem, an agent leaving, something else going on — instead of getting out and having recruiting conversations. They need to recruit through those problems. Their skill development improves over time, and their conversion rates on recruiting go up — but it takes time to learn to recruit correctly. There are very few people who have real experience recruiting experienced, successful, influential agents. Most recruiters only recruit brand-new licensees and low producers, and they do it purely by split. Learning how to recruit experienced agents takes time, and they need help along that process.

The key question is: are they holding the appointments? If they are, I’m fine, even if they don’t land anyone for a year. I start to get concerned after a year — six months wouldn’t worry me at all. As long as they’re learning, still setting appointments, staying in relationships, that’s good. It takes some people longer than others. Some of it’s luck, some of it isn’t, some of it just takes time.

I can tell you — it took me an entire year to learn this process. I’m one of the slowest ever, and I’ve recruited thousands of agents across big teams, mergers, and acquisitions. The only person I got that first year was someone’s cousin who happened to be in the office. That was it. But I became one of the most prolific recruiters around, because people were patient with me while I did my job — having the conversations, learning, finding my way. Then it opened up: hundreds of agents a year for decades, because I played it smart, didn’t chase quick wins, and built real relationships. The next year, they all started coming. That patience is very important.

So they have to stay on recruiting — I emphasize it more than everything else — and they’ll become a better in-office coach by coaching agents outside the office before those agents ever join. They’ll need to learn all the different systems and productivity coaching tools, get comfortable with when to interject, when to say, “Have you tried this?” They don’t need to learn everything, but there are certain go-to moves. If you meet someone selling 35 houses a year who’s about to lose their spouse over the workload, you might steer them toward the admin course or the hiring course and coach them on next steps to solve that problem. But most of the time, it’s helping agents with their sphere of influence, farming a neighborhood, and similar fundamentals. Coaching has to be a big part of this role.

The compensation piece is entirely driven off recruiting, though. You can’t just try to get all your current agents selling more — that’s like squeezing blood out of a turnip. It’s not going to happen. They have to meet you halfway, and you can’t control their part. If you start trying to control their part, that’s the fastest way team leaders burn out — yelling at agents, getting frustrated that they aren’t producing, asking why they won’t do what you say. That means you’re squeezing blood out of a turnip. When one of our coaches hears that kind of frustration coming from a client, we quickly refocus that energy into recruiting, because that’s what we can control. We can bring in agents who already have production history — we can look at their track record and know this person brings 10 transactions a year — before you start straining the relationship with your own team.

The first thing I train them on is a needs analysis. We go through the agent’s full past, get into their present business and where they want to go, and their future pain — what happens if they go down this road and don’t hit their goals? Do they have to get out of the business, take another job? Then their future pleasure — what happens if it works? Paying for a kid’s college, buying a bigger house, saving up for rentals. That’s usually an hour-long conversation minimum, mostly listening.

I want them to practice that with every agent already in the office first. Go to every single agent, learn everything that makes them tick, build relationship, find out their goals, build trust. That’s what’s covered in our Recruit course, Module 7 — extremely popular. Even our own coaches have to do this — I meet with every one of our clients beforehand and run a full diagnosis just to build the relationship and trust. Very important.

Once they’ve practiced the needs analysis with the agents already on the team and built those relationships, I let them go out and start practicing it with agents outside the office. It’s a wax-on, wax-off progression — taking them through it step by step. Because if they can coach, they can recruit. And if they can recruit, I’m not really worried about anything else they do. That’s the hardest thing to do in this industry, and it’s the highest-dollar activity you can spend your time on. Good recruiters have no ceiling, especially once they can recruit talented agents.

That’s the play — that’s what covers the real estate team manager job description, duties, and compensation structure. Hope that helps.