How Teams Work
Who Does What on a Real Estate Team: Leads, Transactions, Showings and Marketing
Updated
Bottom line: A team splits one practice into roles. Buyer's agents run showings and contracts, coordinators carry paperwork, and larger teams can add ISAs for leads. The leader keeps generating them.
What makes a group of agents a working team?
Coach David Scott's team fundamentals, summarized by RE/MAX News, start with roles. In his description, every member fills one or more defined roles tied to a shared purpose.
His list of what a productive team needs is short: a goal, a plan, standards, and members who are willing and able.
The rest of a team's shape comes down to which roles it fills, and how large it has grown.
Who works the leads, and who follows up?
Scott notes that most team leaders know the job expected of them: generate leads, convert them, and serve clients at a high level.
HousingWire's guide, by broker Shannon Sharpe, says larger teams can include inside sales agents (ISAs) who handle lead generation and follow-up.
Order matters here. A RE/MAX News article profiling three team leaders advises building a big client base before adding agents. A team has to be able to offer them leads.
Who carries a deal from contract to closing?
On HousingWire's list, transaction coordinators run the administrative side of each deal: the paperwork, the deadlines and the compliance requirements.
Who handles showings?
HousingWire describes buyer's agents as the people who help clients buy: they run property searches, attend showings and negotiate contracts.
Sharpe's HousingWire guide also lists showing assistants among the roles larger teams can carry.
Who runs marketing?
In HousingWire's breakdown, a marketing specialist looks after the team's branding and its advertising.
At Keller Williams Atlanta North, our office at 925 North Point Parkway has a 10-person leadership team. It aids agents with building their brand, marketing, technology, a business coach and compliance.
What do you hand off first when your production outgrows your hours?
RE/MAX News profiled New Jersey team leader Robert Dekanski while he was pushing his limits as a solo agent. He began naming support roles that would raise his overall productivity.
The constraint that profile names is time: you can want more business and still lack the hours to take it on.
The three-leader RE/MAX News article puts administrative work first in line, so the agent's time goes to customers.
How does a team stay in step day to day?
Johnson, an eight-person team's leader, told RE/MAX News the whole group meets every other week. Between those meetings, the team stays in constant contact.
Filed in The team.
Questions & answers
What do Alpharetta agents ask about this?
How many people on a team are out in the field versus in support?
Teams differ, and the mix shifts as they grow. One team described in a RE/MAX News article on leaders in Texas, Québec and Kansas has seven members working in the field. Everyone else on that team holds a support position. Treat it as one team's shape, not a standard ratio.
Support seats keep files, deadlines and follow-up moving while the field agents are with clients.
Do agents actually see being on a team as an advantage?
Many do. RISMedia reports a Workman Success Systems study in which 85% of REALTORS® said team membership gives them a competitive advantage. The same RISMedia piece, by Tina Lapp of Colibri Real Estate, points to another draw: an agent on a team has clients from day one.
RISMedia describes the Workman Success Systems work as an independent national study. The figure measures what agents believe rather than measured results, so read it as sentiment.
Does a team's lead flow hold up when the market slows?
Johnson, who runs an eight-person team, told RE/MAX News that when the market turns down, many solo agents lack the constant lead flow a team has. He has led that team for nine years. Over that time he has tracked the reasons agents choose to join, and steady leads in a downturn is one he points to.
It is one leader's account, drawn from nine years running a team, rather than a market-wide study.