JP & Associates Realtors (JPAR), which requires its agents to close eight transactions a year, is the rare brokerage with a minimum production standard accompanying its 100 percent commission fee model.
The goal of that standard? To become the largest army of top producers in the industry, according to Mark Johnson, the CEO of JPAR’s brokerage operations.
Mark Johnson | Photo credit: JPAR
“Having a productivity standard, having a standard to serve the agent and the consumer at a higher level, benefits everybody,” Johnson told Inman.
Agents that come to the company to hang their license — and were not previously at that productivity standard — are set on that path by one of the brokerage’s 55 mentors, according to Johnson. It’s a requirement for those agents to meet with a mentor, whose purpose is to nurture, guide and train those agents over their first three transactions.
At the six-month mark, agents meet with management for a business plan review, to discuss what needs to be done to hit that goal. If they’re struggling to stay on pace, the brokerage provides them resources. Then, if an agent falls short, they have a few options.
Some agents can opt to join a team, where they’ll have a higher level of accountability and more support. A third of agents who don’t hit the goal in their first year opt to join a team, according to Johnson.
Other agents who fail to hit the goal can stay at JPAR by showing the brokerage that they are invested in receiving coaching. Finally, others can keep their license and get a job in a different industry, but refer people to the brokerage for a fee.
“We want to lift everyone up and support them, but we want to maintain that standard,” Johnson said. “If they don’t meet that standard, we want to give them options.”
Johnson declined to share the brokerage’s exact attrition rate, but did note that 70 percent of the company’s attrition comes from agents that are not able to hit that standard.
“What we’re creating is the home of top producers,” Johnson said. “We’re creating the place where people know that performance and execution matter.”
“The people that are already here and performing love it, because they know that we’re just not in it to build the biggest army,” Johnson added. “We’re building the biggest quality army.”
Johnson also believes that the company’s model of high accountability, coupled with significant support and a flat-fee, will be the best model to weather an economic downturn, which he believes is coming. He doesn’t believe there’s another flat-fee model with as high a productivity standard and as much support as JPAR, where agents can keep more of their marketing dollars and get broker support in under an hour, Johnson said.
JPAR, on both the own-brokerage side and franchise side, has ambitious growth goals, so it will likely need to be able to weather any economic tumult, in order to continue to expand.
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