Posted by: Mitch Ribak
It’s been a pretty busy time here at Tropical Realty in Melbourne Florida since we got back from the HomeGain Nation Conference. Business is going great and my Realtors® are busy as always. Our system of creating all our leads for our agents is a true win in every aspect of my business.
However, there is a down side to this and if you don’t protect yourself while you build your team, it could cost you thousands of dollars!
So what am I talking about?
I’m talking about having a written agreement between you and your agents to ensure that you, the team leader or brokerage, own the leads.
This past week we dealt with a real estate Agent who left our office to take a full time job as an assistant for a broker. She did everything correctly by coming to me and letting me know she was leaving because she couldn’t afford to be a Realtor anymore. She was one of our less successful Realtors who had a lot of potential, but never really put the effort needed into becoming successful. I did like her and feel bad for her though so I kept her leads flowing (big mistake).
So lesson one is to never let your emotions guide your business.
It’s very important that you take all emotion out of any negotiation and run your business as a business. Be strong and cut leads off from Agents if they don’t produce. End of story.
When she came to let me know she was leaving she told me there were about 15 people that she had been showing properties to and wanted to know if I would let her keep those leads and pay my office a referral fee. Being as busy as we currently are and being a nice guy I said sure.
This should have been an easy transition but it has become anything but! My diligent staff put together the information on those leads for her and gave them to her. Unfortunately I was out of town and my staff, because we all trusted her (next lesson) to sign the referral form. After she received all the info on the leads she sent me an email and said that after talking to her new Broker, they were going to work the leads, but they didn’t feel they should give me a referral form. After all she went on, she had been showing them property.
The big lesson here was trust.
We trusted her to do the right thing. Unfortunately she disappointed us tremendously. I believe it’s called entitlement. When someone is given leads, they believe for some reason that the reason they got this lead is their hard work. In this case of course, she had nothing to do with the lead becoming a lead. Our marketing and our system was responsible for this lead.
So where is all this going?
Protect your assets.
We have a lead referral agreement that each agent signs when we put them in our leads system. We are currently preparing a much stronger form that my lawyer insisted I do after what’s happened this week. In the end I spend a ton of money on our leads and spent a ton of money on our 100MPH software and I own the leads.
What’s the old saying… fool me once?
If you are going to be building a team and supplying leads like I do, it’s important that you have a very strong exit policy for your Agents.
We met this past Friday and came up with a new policy in our office with regard to Realtors leaving. When it comes to money, something happens in people that turn them into a different person. I have seen this time and time again over my life time and should know better.
Moving forward, if any of our Agents don’t want to sign our new lead referral form then they will be let go immediately and their leads will be transferred to the next real estate agent.
When it comes to my money, it’s my way or the highway!
