What I want to talk about is the listing manager position on real estate teams — when do we add this person, what their work capacity is, a little bit about the job description and the workflow that goes through it, and a lot of the issues we see with listing managers when it doesn’t work the way it should.

Before I start, understand this is very different. When you’re running a real estate team, I strongly recommend you do not just have a team full of agents and then pay some journeyman transaction coordinator $500 a file or whatever. That’s unfortunately a trend that occurs in down markets, because everybody cuts their costs. But if the team starts producing 60 to 70 closings a year, typically you’re cheaper if you pay them every two weeks anyway. That’s just the math. The fear of paying every two weeks through the slow season is what prevents people from doing it. It’s just fear — not looking at the business on a profit and loss over the course of an entire year.

There’s another problem with that too: if the agency is just paying a TC, that means the team isn’t providing agents any value they couldn’t get on their own. They could actually leave the team and pay the same TC. Those TCs also don’t take on nearly as much work from agents on a team.

A buyer’s agent on a high-performing team that provides mass value should be doing lead generation, buyer consultation appointments, showing properties, negotiating contracts, and maybe repairs. That’s it. Everything else, including client communication, should go to the admin. If you don’t have that piece, your admin team is weaker than other teams’ admin teams, and your agents will be stressed out through the busy season because they’re servicing all the time instead of lead generating — because the team isn’t providing the value it should on the administrative front.

There are really three big things a team provides to its agents. Number one is leads — that’s what agents care about most. Number two is accountability, coaching, and training, and culture. Most teams gravitate there but often leave out the accountability piece, because that’s hard to do without the admin piece — otherwise agents get too busy to lead generate and just rely on the leader’s charisma and mentorship to carry the whole thing. The third is admin, and most teams lack there. They lack it because they assume agents don’t want it, and of course agents don’t want it — nobody wants to let go, even the original team leader. Everybody would rather gravitate to servicing tasks than lead generation tasks. It’s easier to handle business than to go generate it. That’s where you have to be uncomfortable, get vulnerable, block time. Agents say, “No, my clients need me.” We as leaders have to coach them on letting go.

So many teams fail because they have journeyman TCs doing the bare minimum — just putting information into a computer while the agent tells them everything to enter, duplicating tasks. They’re not owning the admin side at all, because of leadership fear of having another hand to feed every two weeks.

I don’t mind journeyman TCs temporarily, while you’re looking to hire your first or second TC — but it’s not your permanent structure. Same with virtual assistants. I like VAs, but if a VA is your listing manager long-term, make sure you’re watching the value they provide. It can be done virtually, but it has to be a person capable of the high level of value teams provide, because as the team gets bigger, we need to increase the admin services we provide. Culture alone won’t hold a 30-agent team together the way it does a 5-to-10-agent team, so we have to keep increasing and demonstrating our value. This happens a lot with the listing manager role.

When you start a real estate team, you typically have one admin doing four categories of work: listing to contract (our future listing manager), contract to close (our future transaction coordinator), marketing director duties, and the administrative manager duties — scoreboards, dashboards, finances, and everything else. That admin is only doing small pieces of each because they’re wearing four hats, especially in the busy season, when transaction coordination work dominates and marketing around listings starts to slip.

I say you’re going to need a listing manager somewhere between 75 and 125 units closed a year. I go by units, not volume, because units create the work. Well before you hit that number, show your admin the path: “When we get here, we get help.” At 40 to 50 transactions a year, start talking about it, showing the path to growth. By around 250 transactions, you’ll likely have four people in these roles, and your original admin may be leading them.

A full-service transaction coordinator on salary, with good systems, discipline, and training, can handle 40 pending files at once. A brand-new TC going through their first busy season might handle 20 — they’re still building systems and mastering communication. A good admin who’s the primary point of contact with the client, not the agent, will actually move faster. When I go to my dentist, I don’t want to see him — I want to see the hygienist. She’s the one I see every visit, and I love that dentist because he’s got that hygienist. You have to think like a business owner. If your clients need you directly for everything, I don’t know why you started a team in the first place.

On the listing side, I want the listing agent lead generating for more listings, going on listing consultation appointments, and negotiating contracts. That’s it. If you’re doing more than that on your team, something is wrong — either you’ve been talking to your clients too much, or your admin doesn’t have the skill set yet to handle that communication.

Good teams are constantly coaching their agents to let go — just like I coach you. Think of the outfielder who tries to run down every fly ball across the whole outfield. Eventually that team loses, because he can’t cover everywhere. We need lanes. If we put everything on the agent, they won’t lead generate. They won’t receive this coaching well at first — just like my kids don’t love being told to do homework — but I keep encouraging them until it becomes a habit. That’s leadership on a real estate team.

Here’s the job description breakdown: listing manager (listing to contract) is job one. Transaction coordinator (contract to close) is job two. Marketing director is job three. Administrative manager is job four. When you hire a second admin, you split that first admin’s job in half. One way: one person handles both transaction roles (listing to contract and contract to close), and the other handles marketing director and administrative manager. That works, but it’s not my favorite.

My preferred split, once you hit that 75-to-125-unit range: combine listing manager and marketing director into one role, and pair transaction coordinator with administrative manager into the other. The marketing director and listing manager roles work closely together — there’s a lot of marketing happening around listings, and marketing requires creativity. The transaction coordinator and administrative manager roles are more clinical and precise — spreadsheets, exact processes, more knowledge-based work specific to real estate contracts, contingencies, and disclosure timelines.

The listing manager role, by contrast, doesn’t require real estate experience. It’s largely checklist-based — no need to navigate contingencies or disclosure periods. The marketing director and listing manager roles tend to attract a more social, influencer-type personality, because there’s a lot of client communication once you’re carrying multiple active listings.

The minute I walk away from a signed listing appointment, I want my listing manager calling that seller before I even start my car: “Hi, this is Janet with the Brian Icenhower Real Estate team. I wanted to introduce myself and let you know I’m your customer service — I’ll call you every week, email you every week, and I think you’ll find I’m a lot easier to work with than Brian. Brian’s good at getting your house sold, but I’m going to give you the highest level of customer service you’ve ever seen.” She’s the reason you get five-star Google reviews, and she’s the reason clients don’t call the agent directly — because if they do, that means the communication system broke down somewhere.

That listing manager and marketing director will work closely together even on a 250-unit team, because we’re marketing two things: the listings, and ourselves. Before the listing appointment even happens, the listing manager should have net sheets, CMAs, comps, and directions ready to go so the agent can focus on generating business and going on the consultation.

The listing-to-contract checklist is long because of all the marketing involved — just-listed social posts, reels, flyers, everything that needs to happen before the listing goes live on MLS, because sometimes homes sell fast and you don’t want to miss the marketing window. I want two open houses on every listing, in the first two weekends, and the listing manager coordinates all of it, pushing the agent for the content she needs — “Go shoot me a reel” — and she can’t check the item off her list until the agent delivers.

This is how the biggest, most profitable teams — the ones whose agents actually bring in business from their own spheres of influence — operate. Their agents aren’t creating their own marketing material or social posts, because if they did, it wouldn’t be as good, and they wouldn’t have time to close as many transactions. Teams have the opportunity to provide this value that solo agents simply can’t produce on their own, and it’s why agents on a good team should look more successful than solo agents — which builds credibility both with recruits and with the agent’s own sphere of influence.

The listing manager role is very trainable — it’s really a checklist of steps like ordering a lockbox, getting a sign installed, scheduling photos. I’ve seen it combined effectively with a front-desk role. It’s not as stressful as the transaction coordinator role, which requires far more real estate experience. A skilled transaction coordinator can handle 40 pending files. A listing manager can typically handle 60 to 70 active and pending listings at once, because the role isn’t as involved.

I want that weekly email going out every Thursday before noon to every active seller — here’s what we did last week on the checklist, here’s what’s coming up next week — followed by a call to confirm they received it. This prevents sellers from sporadically reaching out to the agent, because they always know the update is coming. It should also remind them of upcoming deadlines: disclosure dates, contingency removal dates, inspection dates, closing dates. Every communication should be proactive.

If your clients are calling you, that’s a customer service problem — not a compliment. It means someone hasn’t communicated clearly enough, and they got anxious enough to call. A team that runs its admin systems well will see clients call far less, and agents will start to realize just how much value the team is actually providing — value that lets them sell more real estate and generate more net income than they would have made on a higher commission split going solo.

A lot of agents don’t believe a team can provide that kind of value, because they’ve never worked on a team with real admin systems in place. It all starts with letting go of the fear — and it only takes one down market or one ugly winter to prove why that fear was costing you all along.