Building a Successful Real Estate Team in 2024 and Beyond

Are you considering starting a real estate team or exploring ways to scale your business? Building a team can be a powerful strategy for generating consistent, high-volume business and creating efficiencies. However, it's crucial to get certain elements right for your team to thrive. In this post, we'll cover the essential factors to keep in mind when building your real estate dream team.

1. The Natural Evolution Of A Real Estate Team

For many successful agents, the transition into a team structure happens organically. If you find yourself consistently generating more leads than you can handle on your own, it may be time to consider forming a team. As an agent becomes increasingly effective at lead generation, a common progression is to retain listings while bringing on buyer agents to tackle the more labor-intensive, buy-side opportunities. This approach allows the agent to scale their business, create a more manageable workload, and leverage their lead generation skills to support the growth of their team.

2. Have To Have Enough Leads

The foundation of a successful real estate team is a consistent stream of quality leads. As a team leader, your primary goal should be to provide enough leads to keep your agents engaged and motivated. The quality and volume of these leads are key factors in attracting and retaining top talent for your team. Many agents struggle with generating consistent business, so the promise of a reliable lead flow is a compelling reason for them to join your team.

3. Crafting A Fair Commission Split

In a team format, buyer agents come onboard to work your leads and receive consistent business opportunities. In exchange for these opportunities and the team's support with marketing and lead generation costs, agents typically accept a lower commission split. A common starting point for real estate team commission structures is a 50/50 split, where the agent retains half of the commission per transaction, and the team keeps the other half. This structure allows agents to focus on working with clients without worrying about lead generation or marketing expenses while providing a fair balance between rewarding the agent for their work and supporting the team's ongoing expenses and growth.

4. Need A CRM To Make It Viable

Having a real estate team is all about leads and performance with those leads, making it essential to have a tool designed specifically for that purpose. Implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system is crucial for effective lead nurturing, as it allows you to track leads, automate follow-up tasks, monitor engagement, and leverage automation. Without a CRM, managing leads will quickly become unwieldy. To succeed, use your CRM to set up automated drip campaigns that provide valuable content, keep your team's brand top-of-mind, and for buyer leads, consider setting up property alerts that notify them of new listings matching their criteria – a powerful way to demonstrate value and build trust.

5. Deciding Who Handles Lead Conversion

When setting up your real estate team, deciding who will handle lead conversion is critical. You can either opt for an agent-driven model, where leads are passed directly to agents responsible for nurturing and converting them, or a dedicated inside sales representative (ISR) model, where an ISR focuses on lead qualification, nurturing, and setting up appointments for the agents. The ISR model typically yields higher conversion rates but requires more resources. Choose the approach that best aligns with your team's size, resources, strengths, and overall strategy to ensure optimal lead conversion and business growth.

6. Recruit Top-Performing Agents

The success of your real estate team extends beyond the quality of your lead generation efforts. A significant portion of your team's performance depends on your agents' ability to connect and convert leads they haven't met before at a high rate. Your agents must possess the skills to turn initial connections into appointments, nurture those appointments into clients, guide them to the under-contract stage, and ultimately close transactions successfully. To achieve the best return on your advertising spend and effort, you need top-performing agents on your team. It's essential to recognize that finding the right agents may require some trial and error. You may need to work with several agents before identifying those who can consistently and effectively work your leads, ensuring the highest possible conversion rates and maximizing your team's overall success.

Building a successful real estate team in 2024 hinges on a handful of key strategies: generating quality leads, fair commission splits, utilizing a CRM, effective lead conversion, and recruiting top agents. By implementing these strategies and continuously refining your approach, you can create a thriving, scalable business that delivers exceptional results.

If you find yourself consistently generating more leads than you can handle on your own, or if you're considering ways to scale your real estate business, building a team might be the perfect solution. By leveraging the strategies outlined in this post, you can create a powerful, efficient team that helps you achieve your goals and take your career to new heights.