There are many benefits to joining a team, but it’s important to know what your needs are first. If your business is consistently growing, there will likely come a time when you have to choose between quality of life or adding leverage and assistance to your business. Some of the immediate benefits of joining a well-established, well-run team can be pivotal in an agent continuing to grow exponentially vs. being stressed and stagnant in their growth.
Here are five key things a team can do for an agent
1) Admin: The team should take on all paperwork, data entry and admin tasks. This can include writing up contracts, offers, preparing listing paperwork, managing a transaction and keeping all parties to the transaction updated on what is next. All admin tasks should be handled so the agent can focus on his or her most important activities: Lead generation, lead follow-up, negotiating and getting contracts signed.
2) Coaching/Training: While there is a ton of info online, and even though brokerages provide training for their agents, a team should provide an agent with a more tailored and hands-on business coaching platform. This training may include weekly one-on-one coaching calls to track business, hold agents accountable, and help manage any challenges for the week. A good team should be able to grow an agent’s production through high-level coaching immediately.
3) Lead Generation: While leveraged lead generation has proven to be difficult for teams to nail consistently, if you join a team, you should expect to get leads and appointments. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to do lead generation, but it does mean you should become an expert in lead follow-up and conversion. You may have the best admin and support in the world, but if there are not a lot of good leads consistently coming in, there is nothing to support.
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4) Team Compensation: There are dozens of variations on team commission splits and models, with the majority of them averaging out at 50/50 split between the team and the agent. Some variations would include more favorable splits to the agent if they generated the lead. Some teams pay the agent 30-35 percent of the commission if it is a listing lead the team provides. It is also common for teams to have a tiered commission split, which increases the percent to the agent as their production increases.
5) Culture: It is common for agents to feel like they are on an island as they build their business. Teams can provide a strong culture of support, sharing, collaboration, and the excitement of being a part of something bigger. Being part of a happy, productive, accountable team can make a huge difference in how you grow your business.
