Real estate agents love being busy, but a time comes when you need balance back in your life. When a real estate professional starts feeling like they’re working 24/7, it’s time to ease the burden and focus on really matters in your business. In other words, it’s time to grow your real estate team by adding a new hire.
Real estate team expansion is an exciting prospect. It’s nice to know you’ve reached the point you can’t grow anymore until you make your team bigger. At the same time, the prospects of hiring someone for the first time can seem overwhelming. Some people have never hired someone before.
When you’re new to the real estate business, you might be wondering who to hire first? Real estate teams have various roles, like:
- Inside sales agent
- Buyer agents
- Listing agents
- Administrative staff
- Transaction coordinators
Picking the right role to grow your team is crucial to successful expansion. Unfortunately, many real estate agents hire the wrong type of team member first.
Your first real estate team hire
The case for real estate administrative roles
Before you hire anyone, make a list of the things you don’t want to do anymore. Chances are, it’s tasks like answering the phone, replying to email, getting the paperwork ready, or maintaining their database. All these tasks fall under the administrative assistant umbrella.
Many real estate agents think that to do more sales, they need more real estate agents. What they really need is someone to handle the necessary but time-draining tasks. How much more work could you get done in a day if you weren’t answering the phone or putting paperwork together? An administrative assistant frees more of your time to get more clients.
Who to hire next?
Once your administrative staff don’t have any more free time, then it’s time to start talking about how to grow your real estate team by bringing on another team member. So who comes next?
What it all boils down to at this point has to do with your business. Again, go back to writing down the tasks that you no longer want to do. You may find that you would rather focus on listings, so it’s time to bring on a buyer’s agent. Or, it could be vice versa. Working with a real estate coach can help guide you on who is the best role to hire for next.
The skinny on the ISA position
Inside sales agents or ISA, can definitely add value to your team. The problem lies in people misinterpreting what an ISA will actually do for their team.
Your ISA is there to make calls on your behalf to put into your sales funnel. You only bring an ISA to the team when you personally are doing as much as you can possibly do but you have so many leads coming in that it’s impossible to prospect anymore. This ISA serves as your leverage to keep the pipeline buzzing.
Hiring for real estate expansion
There is a right way to hire people and a wrong way to hire people. To set yourself up for success, it’s important to set yourself up with a process and a hiring system that will work for the longevity of your business. Bring the right role on at the right time so everyone is being productive and contributing to the team.
