When expanding your team through buyer’s agents, there are a couple of key questions you need to ask yourself before you embark on this path.

1. Do I have enough leads to currently support a buyer’s agent?

You will need to have enough leads to support and feed the production for your new buyer’s agent. The most inexperienced the buyer’s agent is, the greater the burn rate on your leads will be. The burn rate is the number of blown opportunities with viable leads the buyer’s agent has in the learning process. An inexperienced buyer’s agent’s sales and conversion ratios on leads will be significantly lower than a fully trained, successful agent’s.

If you have a reasonable inventory of listings that the buyer’s agent can hold open (somewhere in the high single digits), you should be willing to consider increasing your marketing efforts to increase the leads. Adding an IVR system will usually dramatically increase the number of leads in most markets. I have seen a few markets that are the exception, but there aren’t many.

If you are generating thirty to forty buyer leads per month per buyer’s agent, or if you could increase your marketing to create that number, you have enough leads to adequately support a buyer’s agent.

2. If not, how am I going to increase the lead sources or the lead volume?

You must pause and create a specific plan to execute. You also must be willing to carry out the plan for around six months until you have collected enough data that the plan needs a change. Agents are famous for trying a new lead generation strategy for thirty days and scrapping it for the latest gimmick they heard about. Thirty days (even ninety days) is usually not long enough to determine the sales ratios of a marketing strategy.

You can also create a plan to increase your number of sources, meaning where the leads come from. A new source might be adding an IVR system or home buyer seminars. The lead volume increase would be investing in your current sources. You could increase the frequency, quantity, or quality of the marketing to drive up the leads in your sources.

3. What percentage of their income do I expect them to produce themselves?

You must establish production goals or expectations for a new buyer’s agent. They need to be hired with the expectation that they are responsible for producing some leads themselves from their contacts and some from working your inventory. Most lead agents are not clear with their expectations to the buyer’s agent.

4. Do I have the sales skills of this business dialed, so I can teach others?

You really need to evaluate this one honestly by taking off the rose colored glasses. Do you really have the sales skills down, so you can teach someone else? Would your broker hire you to teach the sales team in your company? Would I hire you to teach sales training to other agents representing me and Real Estate Champions? If you can’t say yes affirmatively, there is work to be done.

5. How much time am I willing to invest personally?

It will take you time to make them a success. One of the biggest mistakes I made early in my agent career and even early in building my company was assuming that, because the real estate agent or salesperson had experience and documented sales success, they had sales skills. I never make that assumption anymore, even when they come with impeccable records of success in sales . . . it doesn’t always mean they know how to sell. You need to know what you are willing to invest to make them a Champion.

6. How much time will this take each week?

There is only a finite amount of time you can invest weekly. Working with them an hour a day should be enough to help them become successful in less than four months.

7. What is my expected return in these areas?

A. Quality of life

B. Income

You need some goals in terms of money, time off, reduced stress, and consistency of income. What reasons or factors are leading you to consider a buyer’s agent at this time? The clearer you have crystallized your expectations, the higher the probability of success. You can’t hit a target that you can’t see, and neither can your buyer’s agent.

8. Is the timing right now for me to do this?

Timing in adding staff is everything. All the other factors can be perfected, but with the wrong timing, you will fail. You could hire a future Champion Agent as a buyer’s agent for your team. If the timing is not right, the whole thing will implode.