You're closing deal after deal, your online leads are flowing in, you've got your CRM, marketing, and real estate scripts perfectly executed down to a T, but you're running out of time, you've hit max capacity as a real estate agent and it's time to scale.
First of all, congratulations! It's a big accomplishment to make it as a real estate professional as there are so many that don't, but you're not in the clear yet. You could still fall victim to death by a thousand cuts if you don't figure out how to systematize and scale not only yourself but your entire real estate business.
It's time to hire your first real estate Inside Sales Agent (ISA) and here's how.
The Role of the ISA
ISAs are typically unlicensed salespeople who are responsible for nurturing and converting inbound and outbound leads. This means that the ISA becomes the first point of contact for your real estate leads.
The leads you're already generating from Zillow, Realtor.com, BoomTown or Facebook are all immediately engaged by your ISA and continuously followed-up with until they're qualified and an appointment is set. Then the ISA-qualified lead is passed off to an agent on your team to close.
Sounds fantastic, right? Your agents can now simply spend more of their time closing deals and earning a commission split for the entire team.
But how do you know when the time is right to bring on an ISA?
👉 Read our FREE guide "The Definitive Guide to Real Estate ISAs"
When you should hire an ISA
Your ISAs should have plenty of lead volume to keep them busy. This usually means they're consistently working a pipeline of approximately 500-1,000 leads at a time. These leads can be a mix of old leads and new leads. Leads that are in the pipeline mean that they've been touched or activity has been updated through a manual or automated task.
You should typically be able to provide about 300 new leads every month to an ISA to keep them busy working top tier leads while consistently working older leads that are more likely to come to fruition after some time spent nurturing.
As you can see the real estate Inside Sales Agent pipeline process can be a scalable solution to consistently grow your real estate team.
How to hire and retain top ISA talent
Now that you know it's time to hire an ISA, how can you find the right one, what does ISA compensation look like, and how do you ensure they're getting the right training to keep them around?
Hiring the right ISA takes patience and a deliberate approach. Understanding your own personality, strengths, and weaknesses as a team leader, as well as the personalities, strengths, and weaknesses of your current teammates is the first step.
You should utilize the DISC profile methodology to determine the behavioral tendencies you and your team have.
You'll also want to ensure your ISAs are avoiding costly mistakes, such as not building rapport with your agents, or not being prepared to handle objections. There are many options available for ISA real estate training such as from Hatch Coaching.
Lastly, your team needs to adopt technology and a culture of accountability to stay within a framework you can always rely on.
As a team leader, it's your role to define a system and process for your ISA team. This means you need to think through your entire lead journey, such as:
- How to tag a new internet lead
- Which ISA a new internet lead is assigned to
- How to automate lead follow up for unresponsive leads
- What qualifying questions must a lead answer
- How to hand off a lead to an agent
Once you've established a conceptual system and definitive guidelines, answers, and checklists, you can then turn it into a reality - which is usually accomplished within your CRM.
Making sure your ISAs have the right systems in place to scale
Building out your system in your CRM can be a long, ongoing process that will take constant refinement.
Lucky for you, we've put together a few scripts, templates, and books where you can get a head start!
However, there are options available to outsource this entire role through real estate ISA companies such as yours truly here at Structurely.
A real estate ISA company comes pre-trained with thousands of conversations, scripts, and systems under their belt. Take for example, these real conversations that Aisa Holmes by Structurely has had with buyer, seller, renter, and investor leads from across the country.
Top producers like Steve Aust, a broker at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Journey, are taking advantage of an artificial intelligence ISA because of the benefits of a pre-trained ISA that fits seamlessly into their existing ISA team and systems.
Regardless of if you're looking to outsource your ISA to a real estate ISA company or bring them in house, knowing when and how to hire and keep the right ISA is becoming an increasingly crucial aspect to growing your real estate team.
