Is Broker Paid Marketing Making a Comeback?

The "100 percent model," where highly productive agents pay for all their own marketing, had edged out much of broker-paid advertising in some companies. This worked well for some agents, but many found they inherited overhead and tasks that took them away from selling.

Now reemerging in some brokerages is a new version of company-paid marketing. But it is not the traditional brokerage from yesteryear with the mahogany manager's desk and a bullpen of agents.

Frederick Herot, VP Customer Communication at realtor.com®, recently discussed newer concepts of broker paid-internet lead models with founders Luke Monroe, Lisa Sickman, and Dan Sundberg of Kendrick Realty. Their group fully pays for and provisions their agents with an abundance of leads and then coaches them to what is most often a six-figure income.

You have said you aren't afraid to invest heavily in your agents. How do you make sure you provide what your agents need to stay engaged and successful?

First, we put a lot of resources and experience into building a custom CRM to make sure they have technology tools to work as efficiently as possible. The CRM also helps them hold themselves accountable to reach their own personal and financial goals.

We align our brokerage's financial interests with our agents' financial interests to create an environment where agent and brokerage are really working in partnership. Because of this investment relationship, we as owners have a vested interest in being accessible to our agents and always helping them to the next level.

Lastly, we take on lead generation for our agents, period. We want them focused on high-return activities like following up with clients and running showing appointments, not prospecting for business. It is not that prospecting on their own is prohibited, but our lead gen is so successful there's no need.

If your agents are relieved from the need to prospect, where are you finding buyers and sellers to keep your agents selling?

We have updated the notion of prospecting. We elevated this from agents spending time finding people they can sell to – to meeting people who have already expressed an interest in a property. We shifted from door knocking, open houses and farming to working with warm leads.

Realtor.com® is the single biggest lead source for both our Florida and California brokerages. In our first year, we had 240 closings from Realtor.com leads.

That's a high number of online sales in a short period of time. Obviously, you have mastered closing internet leads. What training, resources and personnel do you provide to make this happen?

There are several things. We have a proprietary training program, which is free to all who join us. It starts with an intense, week-long training program on how to be successful at lead conversion, as well as real estate as a career, in the online age. We have also partnered with some very experienced and talented real estate coaches to provide ongoing training and work one-on-one with our agents to help them make the best possible use of these leads. All of our training is provided to our agents free of cost.

We also have a complete back-up system to help our agents. Our Client Concierge team works on behalf of our agents by following-up with leads; they also answer new leads when our agents are busy. Leads never get missed and everything's tracked so as a team we don't drop the ball.

But let me also say this about lead conversion. To manage this well there has to be a certain volume of leads before it can be effective. Scale allows the REALTOR® to build systems and play a numbers game where they start to get some wins and perfect their technique.

If you are only getting a lead every few days, you are not building systems and skills. Getting two to three leads a day creates a rhythm where closing becomes second nature.

How much has your company grown and how much of the growth is from your online program?

We have had very exciting growth. From a new startup brokerage just over a year ago to this month having 65 active contracts and a dozen listings. We started out with an internet leads focus. The first thing we did was go to Realtor.com to generate the kind of business it might take a traditional brokerage a decade to generate organically. This all happened quickly as we were transitioning out of other careers in January 2017.

What does the future look like for expansion and growth?

2018 will see a lot of exciting developments. We're rolling out a total update to our CRM, and a new corporate website. In the areas of the country where we already have a foothold, we will be deepening our presence. We're actively looking at opportunities to open our next 2-3 offices before the end of the year.

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