Should you join a team? Here are the pros and cons. This blog is excerpted from my 10 critical trends new agents (and all agents) need to know to thrive in this fast-moving real estate community.
These trends are from my new 5th edition of Up and Running in 30 Days.
This month, I’m featuring excerpts from this book.
{Click here to see the updates in my fifth edition of Up and Running in 30 Days.}
What is ‘teaming’?
It is affiliating yourself with a “rainmaker” agent, an agent who will deliver leads to you, for which you’ll pay a portion of your commission. You’re teaming up with that agent to do the work that the rainmaker agent doesn’t have time to do. First, teaming doesn’t mean partnering—two agents working together. If you join a team, you are working for that rainmaker agent.
Generally, agents who grow teams have been in the business at least a few years. They’ve developed a large business. To grow their businesses, they need to “duplicate and delegate.” So they hire assistants and buyers’ agents—agents who work with buyers the rainmaker agent has generated. Many times they hire new agents and train them in their methods.
How Joining a Team Can Help a New Agent
Teaming helps agents obtain leads as they start up business. While agents earn the most in commission dollars when they generate their leads themselves, a new agent may need to pay for someone else’s lead generation to begin to develop business. There is a downside to this approach, however. Agents can become complacent and sit and wait for leads. They won’t generate—until they get tired of paying for someone else’s leads.
Questions to Ask the Rainmaker
1. How many leads will I get per week?
2. How do you manage the team?
3. How will you train me?
4. How much turnover has the team had?
5. Can I sell homes from my own leads, and what will you charge me?
6. Do you expect me to generate my own leads? How many?
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Positives of teaming:
- You may be able to jump-start your career with leads given to you.
Watch out for:
- Be careful to choose a rainmaker who really has enough good leads to distribute to you.
- Sit in on her team meeting to see how she manages the team.
- Find out if and how the rainmaker will train you. Find out how much turnover there has been on the team.
- Find out whether you can sell and list houses outside the team—and how much the rainmaker would charge you if you did.
- Read the contract the rainmaker asks you to sign and be sure you understand the consequences of your involvement.
Is he or she a leader?
Evaluate how good a leader that rainmaker is. Some rainmakers are great salespeople but lousy leaders, and so their team never gels. Most team leaders ultimately expect their team members to generate their own leads, in addition to team leads. If you can’t meet the rainmaker’s expectations, you are terminated. Be willing and ready to take the responsibilities of team membership seriously.
* Big Idea: If they aren’t your leads, you’re starting the real estate business all over again when you leave the team.
Question: Have you thought about joining a team? Or, if you joined a team, how did it work out?
Are You Using the Best Start-Up Plan to Launch or Re-Launch?
Does your plan have the detailed, prioritized checklists needed to assure a great start? Does it have built-in inspiration and motivation? Does it have dozens of tips to control the attitude? If not, you need Up and Running in 30 Days. Just out in its 5th edition, it’s the most successful book for new real estate agents ever!
Click here to see the updates in my fifth edition of Up and Running in 30 Days.
