026: Agent Commandment 6 - Thou Shalt Not Join A Team That Requires You To Give Away Your Sellers

Published: Dec. 7, 2016, 6:30 a.m.

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If you\'re a new agent, you will likely be approached fairly quickly by an experienced agent who wants you to join his/her team.\\xa0 They pitch it to you as a great deal for you because they have a steady flow of leads from all of their existing marketing efforts, and for a cut of the commission, you can almost immediately start making some money and learning the ropes.

All of that sounds great, and it would be great if that were the whole story, but sadly it\'s not.\\xa0 Frequently, your responsibilities under this team agreement begin to sound like a job description.\\xa0 Okay, that might be fine for people who need a little structure in their business.\\xa0 If you\'re in to that kind of stuff, knock yourself out.\\xa0 But the one thing that is common in these team agreements is something I simply cannot condone:

On top of the requirements for you to spend a minimum number of hours prospecting for leads for the team, if your prospecting does turn up a qualified home SELLER, you are required to hand that lead over to the team leader for him/her to handle.

THIS IS NEVER OKAY.

While it does take a lot of work to help a client sell a home (which you can learn about in Episode 10), it\'s far more\\xa0time intensive to represent a buyer because of all the driving to showings (and working around your buyers\' schedules) that you will have to do.\\xa0 The team leader\\xa0will try to justify this by telling you they\'re sending\\xa0 you all the buyers listings, but wait a minute,\\xa0 you\'re paying\\xa0the team leader a cut of all of your commissions in exchange for those leads, you don\'t owe them your sellers too!

Why is this bad?\\xa0 There\'s a damn good reason the team leader wants to represent sellers (and only sellers).\\xa0 After selling their home, what does a seller need immediately after?\\xa0 That\'s right!\\xa0 A new home!\\xa0 Typically sellers provide their agents with two transactions, a sell followed by a buy!\\xa0 Sellers are also typically much lower cost clients to acquire, especially if the seller comes to you because you represented them on their original purchase.\\xa0

DO NOT GIVE UP YOUR SELLERS, FOLKS!\\xa0 A seller that comes to you as a repeat customer is your reward for doing a great job for them the first time around and for continuing to be in touch with them after the sale.

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