When to Hire Multiple ISAs
So you’ve hired an ISA. That’s great. You’ve trained them up, you’ve laid out goals and benchmarks, you’re consistently measuring the progress they are making. And they are doing well—reliably calling, converting on their calls, and successfully setting appointments.
Now the idea enters your head that maybe you should hire a second ISA, or maybe a second and a third ISA. This is a smart idea if your business gets to the point where your existing ISA cannot handle all of the incoming leads. Putting off hiring a second inside sales agent can be just as detrimental to your business as putting off hiring the first one.
Just as solo agents plateau when they simply can’t do any more, so will your business plateau once your current ISA just can’t handle any more. Furthermore, having multiple ISAs means you are able to have multiple personalities and multiple skillsets at your disposal. This means you can better specialize your inside agents and gain insights from different perspectives.
Benefits of Hiring a Second ISA
There are many benefits of hiring multiple ISAs. Many of them are analogous to the benefits of hiring your first one—capturing more inbound leads, hunting down more outbound leads, having dedicated sales people who are trained to have productive phone conversations, and so on. But there are some benefits that you can only take advantage of if you have more than one ISA.
- Shifting Your ISA Team – In many cases, real estate teams are missing the majority of leads. According to some sources, only 45 percent of leads are generated during the normal business hours of 9am-5pm, which is typically when most real estate ISAs are working. That means that over HALF of real estate leads come in outside of business hours as people return home from work and have time to search for real estate online. Hiring a second ISA allows you to stagger their shifts, with one working in the morning and the other in the evening.
- Assign Different Lead Types to Different ISAs – With multiple ISAs you are able to specialize who works on what lead type. This could be with respect to lead value—having the ISA with more experience working with the high value leads while the one with lesser experience can handle low value leads. It could also be with respect to the type of lead. Maybe one of your ISAs is better at working with sellers and the other is better at working with buyers. The point is, having multiple inside sales agents gives your team more flexibility.
When to Hire a Second Real Estate ISA
Before hiring multiple inside sales agents, the most important thing is making sure your first ISA is properly set up for success and actually producing results. If you don’t have a solid process nailed down for your current ISA, then you should not be hiring a second one.
You need a successful and proven lead generation system, consistent and proven conversion, and tracking systems that measure every factor that has proven to be relevant. Do you see a pattern? You don’t want systems that sound good or look good on paper, but don’t have a solid record of producing tangible results. Without those positive results there is little chance your single ISA is producing much value for the company, let alone a second one.
In addition to performance tracking, by the time you hire your second inside agent you should have all the kinks ironed out of your hiring and evaluation process. You need to know who to look for and what to look for. Assuming your first ISA is successful, you should be aware of what skills and personality traits an inside sales agent needs to thrive at your business, working in your system.
If you systematize everything with your first ISA, then you have a foundation to hire all future ISAs. This makes it far easier for you to scale and virtually ensures that you’ll be able to bring on additional ISAs who can simply plug into your existing systems. In turn, that makes it easier for them to hit the ground running and experience success for themselves (and you) faster.
Conclusion
Hiring a second ISA might seem like a great idea and an easy task. But finding ISAs that can really add value to your business requires preparation, knowledge, and careful planning. Plus, even if you find the right second ISA, you have to have the right systems in place for them to be successful.
Building a sales team for your organization is a big undertaking and not one that you should take lightly. But if you do it right, you’ll reach new levels with your business.
