Blog Real Estate Teams How to Build a High-Performing Real Estate Team

How to Build a High-Performing Real Estate Team

Key Takeaways

1. Evaluate Readiness: Before building a real estate team, ensure you have the transaction volume and experience to support and lead a team effectively.
2. Set Clear Goals: Define a clear vision and set measurable goals for your team, aligning them with your overall business mission to ensure everyone is working toward the same outcomes.
3. Choose the Right Team Structure: Select a team structure that aligns with your business goals, whether it’s a traditional small team, mentor-mentee model, or a hybrid structure.
4. Hire Strategically: Start by hiring administrative assistants to handle operations, then build out your team with buyer agents, ISAs, and other specialized roles as needed.
5. Foster Team Strengths: Use tools like the DiSC Assessment and ongoing development programs to understand and leverage each team member’s strengths, ensuring a cohesive and high-performing team dynamic.

In the past, selling a home or commercial property usually meant working with just one real estate agent. The agent’s job was to show the property, set up the contracts and other paperwork, and handle negotiations — they handled everything from the time you decided to put your property on the market to closing.

As you build your real estate career, the competition and complexity often become too much to handle everything on your own — that’s where building a high-performing real estate team comes in.

When you build a strong real estate team you’ll transform your business, leading to increased efficiency, improved client satisfaction and higher profitability.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to build a real estate team that you can count on to close sales and earn money.

Assessing Your Readiness to Build a Team

Before starting to build a team, you first need to have the volume of business to sustain it. If your current volume is not quite high enough (<40 transactions per year), you may want to postpone building a team until you reach the necessary level.

Before you dive into building a real estate team, ask yourself these important questions:

• Are there more leads and clients than I can handle on my own?
• Do I have a consistent income that would allow me to hire and pay for additional team members?
• Do I have enough experience and knowledge in the industry to successfully coach and mentor other agents?

If your answers are mostly yes, then it’s likely time for you to start building your real estate team!

Defining Your Vision and Goals

Just as a house requires a solid foundation to ensure its stability and longevity, a successful real estate team is built on a clear vision and set measurable objectives.

Here are some common goals that can help guide your team’s success:

• Increasing Sales Volume: Target annual sales growth to stay competitive and financially stable.
• Enhancing Client Experience: Focus on improving client satisfaction and boosting repeat business.
• Expanding Market Presence: Aim to enter new market segments and increase local brand visibility.
• Fostering Team Development: Prioritize ongoing training to enhance team skills and performance.
• Strengthening Your Online Presence: Build a strong digital strategy to attract and convert leads effectively.

Aligning your team’s goals with the overarching mission of your real estate business ensures that everyone on the team is working towards the same outcomes.

Choosing the Right Team Structure

Before you can build your team, you need to decide which team structure you want to follow.  There are several structures to choose from, including:

• Traditional Small Team: Ideal if you want to maintain a traditional broker/agent relationship while still delegating some tasks
• Mentor/Mentee Model: Focuses on developing agents to improve their real estate skills
• Team Leader Model: Revolves around the brand identity of the team leader, which is helpful if you’ve already made a name for yourself in the real estate industry.
• Lead Team Model: Focuses on generating inbound leads and is ideal for those with strong marketing skills
• Hybrid Team Structure: Combines elements from different models to create a unique structure tailored to your team’s needs.
• Large Traditional Model: Better suited for larger teams with specialized roles for each member

We recommend choosing the structure that best aligns with your goals and vision for your real estate business.

Hiring the Right People

Once you’ve nailed down the right team structure, it’s time to start building your dream real estate team!

You want to look for key qualities in potential team members, such as a strong work ethic, cultural fit, and relevant experience. To enhance your team’s capabilities, we recommend a diversity of skills and backgrounds.

When you’re first building out your team, we recommend this smart hiring order:

Administrative Assistants

While you might think hiring buying agents first is a good move, we recommend hiring administrative assistants instead.

These individuals are essential for managing the day-to-day operations, freeing up time for you and any future agents to focus on client interactions and closing deals.

Look for candidates who are highly organized, proficient in real estate software, and can handle tasks such as scheduling appointments, managing correspondence, and processing paperwork efficiently.

Their support will significantly boost your team’s productivity and streamline communications, ultimately leading to better service for your clients.

Buyer Agents

After establishing a solid administrative foundation, the next step is hiring buyer agents.

Buyer agents are the ones on the frontline working directly with clients. They handle showing properties, drafting offers and negotiating deals.

When hiring buyer agents, look for strong interpersonal skills, solid market knowledge, and a knack for building client relationships. Effective buyer agents should not only be adept at identifying potential properties but also possess strong negotiation skills to advocate for their client’s best interests.

Helpful Tip: Each buyer agent you hire should be able to handle up to four transactions per month. When you start to exceed that number, it’s time to consider hiring another buyer agent to help carry the load.

Inside Sales Agent (ISA)

An Inside Sales Agent (ISA) plays a crucial role in the real estate team by managing incoming leads, making outbound calls, and setting appointments for buyer agents. This position primarily focuses on lead generation and nurturing, ensuring that no potential client falls through the cracks.

An effective ISA must have excellent communication skills, a persuasive personality, and a strong understanding of your local market to engage potential clients and convert leads into appointments.

As your team grows, investing in a dedicated ISA can significantly increase your sales opportunities and efficiency allowing your buyer agents to focus more on closing deals rather than generating leads.

Listing Agents

Listing agents focus on attracting sellers and managing the listing process. Their primary responsibilities include preparing homes for sale, conducting market analyses to set competitive prices, and marketing properties effectively.

A successful listing agent should possess strong negotiation skills, an eye for staging properties, and a deep understanding of market trends. When hiring listing agents, look for individuals who are proactive, detail-oriented, and capable of building rapport with sellers to instill confidence throughout the sales process.

Create a system that lets listing agents share insights and collaborate with buyer agents, making the experience smooth and enjoyable for clients on both sides of the transaction.

As your team expands, having dedicated listing agents will help you maintain a balanced workload and enhance your overall service offering.

Additional Roles to Consider

As your real estate team continues to grow, we recommend adding the following roles to further enhance operational efficiency and client satisfaction:

• Marketing Coordinator – Responsible for developing and executing marketing strategies to promote your listings and brand
• Transaction Coordinator – Oversees all aspects of the transaction process from contract to closing
• Real Estate Analyst – Provides valuable insights into market trends and property valuations
• Client Care Specialist – Serves as the primary point of contact for clients throughout their journey focusing on engagement and satisfaction
• Showing Assistant – Assists buyer agents with showing properties and gathering information for potential clients.
• Personal Assistants – Can handle administrative tasks for team leaders or busy agents.

Expanding your team to include these additional roles can help create a well-rounded organization, improve service delivery, and ultimately achieve higher client satisfaction. As you consider these positions, reflect on your team’s specific needs and the unique market you serve to make informed hiring decisions.

Building a Strong Real Estate Team

Building a successful real estate team takes time, effort, and strategic planning. Once you’ve built the initial team, we’ve found that focusing your efforts on creating a strong, cohesive dynamic leads to greater achievements and long-term success within your team.

Here’s how you can build a strong, successful real estate team:

• Self-Assessments: Start by identifying your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. Delegate tasks that don’t align with your strengths to team members who excel in those areas.
• Team Personality Assessments:
  • DiSC Assessment to categorize team members into Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, or Conscientiousness.
  • Myers-Briggs for communication insights
  • CliftonStrengths (formerly StrengthsFinder) to identify top strengths
  • MCode Personality Assessment for insights into individual motivations
• Role Alignments: Match team members to roles that fit their strengths and personality types. Ensure everyone knows their responsibilities and how they contribute to team success.
• Ongoing Development: Reassess roles regularly as the team evolves. Encourage continuous learning and professional growth tailored to each member’s strengths.
• Communication & Feedback: Keep communication open. Use feedback from assessments to guide mentoring and coaching, helping the team continuously improve.

By leveraging these tools and strategies, you’ll build a cohesive, high-performing real estate team that plays to each member’s strengths and drives success for your clients.

Remember that continuous communication, collaboration, and nurturing relationships with not only your clients but your entire team as well are key elements to success in any real estate business. Keep evaluating your structure and team members to ensure they align with your goals and vision, enabling you to provide exceptional service and achieve your long-term objectives. 

Keep honing your leadership skills, nurturing a positive team culture, and investing in your team’s growth. With these steps, you’ll take your real estate business to new heights!