When Should you Hire your First Real Estate Inside Sales Agent

Real Estate ISA Radio - When you Should Hire your First Real Estate Inside Sales Agent

Nate Joens: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. This is Nate with Structurely welcoming you to our second ever real estate ISA radio podcast where we give you an inside look into the science and setup of building a successful inside sales team for your real estate business. I'm here today with my co host Robbie Trefethren as well as special guest Erik Hatch with Hatch realty. Robby would you like to get us started.

Robby Trefethren: [00:00:39] Awesome yeah I'm really excited today because the focus of today's calls is going to shift. Last call we really focusing on the role of the inside sales agents in our businesses. And today we're going to go down the journey of when are we going to hire one should you hire your first real estate inside sales agent. And I think there's no better person to talk about this than than Erik Hatch because Erik, I think it's fair ISA that when you really were first exploring getting in ISA it wasn't anywhere near what it is now in terms of popularity. It was maybe like the new shiny thing. Is that fair ISA at that point Erik.

Erik Hatch: [00:01:20] Yeah I I hired an ISA because I listened to a bunch of people who were top teams that I never thought I would ever even get a smidge of their success the rise of the copy my way to the end. And sure enough I saw the people that were having great success and they were using an ISA. I didn't even know what it meant when I'm outside of having somebody simply answer the phone and respond to leads passion. That's the only thing I knew about it and we fumbled our way to the top here.

Robby Trefethren: [00:01:52] That's probably a good way to describe it fumbling way to the top. Love it.

Nate Joens: [00:01:57] There you go. So Erik sounds like you've got it figured out now but when you know you it sounded like you were starting to build up your team. If if you're a new team leader of looking to actually build your team today should an ISA be your first hire onto your team.

Erik Hatch: [00:02:16] Boy that is a heavy laden question. I'm going to say no I don't think it ISA is your first hire. I think that people want to jump to having and ISA. Well what we have to figure out here and this is something that I have studied in great depth to try to figure out who to hire and when to hire and and then certainly how to hire what we think about is this is if you were the rainmaker for me when I started 2011 it was my first year in real estate. I sold 52 homes in 2011 as an independent agent. I had in the summer months I had a part time college student helping me up but otherwise I was a slow operator and I was just burning the candle at both ends and really struggling to stay afloat and so I did what any reasonable person would do and that was I hired a bunch of people that were my friends and I never regretted that I just brought them aboard. And we grew our team in 2012 from from 4 people to 13 people by the end of the year and how we hired Nate Robbie as we went and I hired two buyer agents and one admin and we just jumped out and I think that's a that's the easy desire is people want to jump in right away and they want to find producers and they want people that can help bring them an income. That year we sold 192 homes and up 182 I did 113 of the transactions and as I coach and as I mentor people throughout this industry I find out that that's usually the case is that the rainmaker even as they're growing their team are still the main producers because were traditionally hiring folks that aren't necessarily trained well and that we don't we haven't done our due diligence to teach them how to do it exceedingly well us a rainmaker know how to crush it in real estate.

Erik Hatch: [00:04:12] We think that that's just the natural progression is when you crush it as an independent agent then you go and you build the team and so I bring all that up to get to the root of the question. Here are the roots of the question depending on where you live in the country. It comes down to this. I think that your first hire should be an assistant somebody to take the stuff off your plate. The second hire should be an assistance. The first assistance I think is again giving you life back in your day they're freeing you up from all that people work and all the added stuff that is so heavy laden in this real estate industry. The second hire then is a growth piece. The first one is really bew. And so now you have more time to prettiest and if you spend that time producing you continue to be sick with coal we'll right. And so this second admin comes in and they help you with marketing support that marketing support is a really important piece of this because now you have to figure out how to market your sphere better. And at this point you may start entertaining purchasing some businesses are going out and using your dollars to create more dollars. The next hire usually say it's an say but if it's an ISA that means you're the producer. And think of the chaos that would create in your world if you now have leveraged yourself through assistance and dad and ISA it's doubling the amount that you're doing. Like that's just that's too much. And so I actually think that the next hire is a showing partner not a buyer agent a showing partner you need to as a rainmaker when you're built in your world.

Erik Hatch: [00:05:53] Spend more time training the people that are there instead of just giving them business and hoping that they can succeed. And you need to use a shrimper model as a way to get better service as a way to train the people that are coming aboard. And as a way for you to protect your bottom dollar. After those three hires I think the next hire your for hire which is your fifth team member. I think that person now is an inside sales agents because you now have leveraged out a lot of your time with buyers. You've leveraged out a lot of your responsibility with the administrative side and with listings and you now are looking again to grow and this and say sales agents is the best way to do so. I do think though and this may be jumping the ship a little bit here. I do think that when you hire one site sales agent you actually need to hire a second. ISA bringing somebody on board so that that one person doesn't get burnt out and that they have somebody to lean on is really important. But to summarize this again here would be how I would hire assistants assistants showing partner ISA and the hire after that is actually another showing assistants or shall we partner because that first showing partner will be graduating to be a buyer's agent who that was a long answer up.

Nate Joens: [00:07:15] I think that's awesome. Robby since you kind of lived in the same world do you think first of all do you have anything to add and second of all how. How important do you think that that piece of hiring two ISAs are one right after another is in terms of competitiveness and just overall team structure.

Robby Trefethren: [00:07:33] Yes. So I'll answer the two plus ISAs and I'm just kind of add some depth to Erik's answer request really won't. One big thing that that has to be happening throughout the hiring of admin one admin too and the showing partner is really this is your role as the rainmaker is to basically put it in shorts because I know Erik wi...