Dominate Your Market—Without It Dominating Your Time

For real estate professionals, driving from community to community and personally nurturing each client from the initial meeting until close has long been the bread and butter of the business. And if you're like most brokers, you get frequent requests from agents on your team looking to somehow multiply their time and effort. They usually have their minds stuck on one way to do that—with the help of an assistant. Next time you hear this request, give agents a counterproposal. Tell them there is a staff of nine highly qualified, motivated salespeople eagerly waiting in the wings to help them reach their goals.

The key to this process is new construction. Brokers can take advantage of the way many of these communities operate to help their agents close more sales and exert a lower level of effort.

This is how the business model niche works. Select agents focus on new homes and leverage new-home salespeople to multiply their efforts. These agents don't drive around, taking individuals to endless properties. Instead, they find three markets (ZIP codes) in which to specialize, and develop a team of new-home salespeople in those markets. In each one, they work with a salesperson in an entry-level, mid-level, and luxury home community. The agent's job is to find new clients and determine which area, community, and home is most appropriate for the client. From there, the agent hands the client off to the appropriate member of their team and let that salesperson do all the legwork (and of course, the paperwork) from there.

By using a support team, agents get to spend 100 percent of their time finding new business and setting up the pre-sale. They will never need to tour a house with a prospect again. After selling clients on the area, qualifying them, and closing them on one or two floor plans, the agent makes the hand-off by validating the new-home salesperson and setting up an appointment for the clients to visit the community. While sending the clients on their way, the agent reiterates reasons he or she believes the plan and community are best for the customer. The salesperson will need to possibly narrow the customer down to one floor plan and then pick the lot. The new home salesperson on the other end will be quite happy to have a partner consistently sending qualified leads. Strong salespeople will become a positive extension of the agent's brand.

The math is pretty impressive. Agents get paid 3 percent for bringing the deal, so on a $200K home, they get $6,000 in commission. So agents can work nine prospects a month, farm them out to nine different salespeople, and make $54,000 a month. There isn't time to complete that many sales on their own, but there is time to do the up-front nurturing before sending clients to the on-site partners.

Your job is to identify your best agents for this business model and then teach them the following steps:

1. Identify three target ZIP codes with new-home communities.
2. Find the best new-home sales professional in three different price points in each of those zip codes and have them teach you and your agents about their homes, so that you have enough knowledge to presell the product.
3. Follow up with these agents on a monthly basis.
4. Find nine new prospects a month to presell and hand off. Note: If clients truly do not want new-home construction, refer them to someone else who's focused on existing-home inventory (and get a referral fee, if applicable).
5. Let the new-home salespeople do all the handholding and paperwork.

For agents, time is the most valuable asset. This approach allows exponential growth as opposed to organic growth, increasing overall broker and agent success. This way, you and your sales associates can use valuable time to play smarter and make more money.

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