Speaker 1 (00:00):
The top three reasons real estate agents leave their team or brokerage and join another one when during the year they're most likely to do it, what the three Cs are and why they come before the details of your agent avatar. The one question that tells you most of what you need to know about someone. If you listen for two things in particular, why two conversations should be your max before making an offer to an agent and the structure and goals of each of those conversations, you're about to get all that and much more with Chris Anos, who's personally recruited hundreds of real estate agents at times at a pace of 20 to 30 agents per month and whose company humanize built a 2024 recruiting data set informed by more than 30,000 real estate agents. Improve your recruiting process and results with insights informed by that data and experience right now on real estate team os

Speaker 2 (00:53):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to T os, your Guide to Starting, growing and Optimizing Real Estate Team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Chris, quick one, just to open this thing up, about how many agents have you personally recruited?

Speaker 3 (01:13):
If I look back over the last, I dunno, six or seven years that I've actually been on this side of the business, right? Probably 3 50, 400 cumulative and that includes me sourcing a candidate, screening a candidate, and actually ultimately making the decision to bring that person on board. So probably three 50 or 400.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
Awesome. And you're doing a lot more than that these days and we'll get into all of that. That's just my quick welcome to real estate team os

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Awesome man. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. I've watched every episode pretty much you've created at this point several times and now I find myself referencing them when I'm trying to figure out sometimes problems in my business or about how people think or how do these team leaders operate in X, Y, and Z. So it's an honor to be here, man.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Awesome. Well it's an honor to get that feedback and to get your time and attention, especially knowing that a bunch of these guests personally as well. So quick shout out to the team bot@realestateteamos.com slash bot. I put all of the content into a little AI overlay. You can talk to me, it sounds like me. It's weird.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Oh, that's so

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Cool. Or you can type back and forth and query the collective wisdom of all these guests and that now includes you too. Chris, our standard opener on the show as you probably know is what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
I would say accountability, but I would stack it with a very important thing that I was just thinking about before we actually started recording, which is like candor, right? So direct real accountability, but actually caring about why you're holding an agent accountable I think would be the hallmark biggest thing in my brain, which I know sounds complex, but

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah, well speak a little bit more to that gap.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Back up five seconds just in terms of how I formed a lot of these opinions. So I worked at Zillow for five years and sold premier agent. I started working there when I was 19 years old, so I kind of grew up in the space. I then left, I built some real estate businesses myself and now I'm more on the software side. So how I form these opinions isn't necessarily just pulling things out of thin air. It's usually from my own experience and having held lots and lots of agents and now team leaders and stuff too accountable for a lack of better words. I've come across sometimes where team leader cares more about the numbers than they do a person and you could make the argument that it's business and I would make the argument that businesses don't run without people. And if you really want to create leverage in your real estate team, that candor part of accountability and actually caring and finding ways to meet people where they're at.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
I wish it was as simple as I'm going to hold an agent accountable. You have to make 50 phone calls a week and that's it and everything's great. Getting someone to do that is way more complex than just giving them a target. You have to understand why they're in the business, why they do what they do, what gets in the way of them finding success and how can you help them overcome that. So that candor part is I think you could swap out candor with genuine curiosity and looking at each individual person as an individual unless there's a number and figuring out how to help that person move forward. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Absolutely, it does. It triggers two big zones that I don't know that will dwell in that much, but first there's a lot of talk about culture and the best teams know that part of their magic and it plays into recruiting as well. I'm sure we'll hit on it. Again, it's like that intangible thing is culture and it's not necessarily like you can't put your hands on it so much. It comes down to what you said, which is genuine curiosity and actually caring about the person and caring about what they care about in order to collectively get to where you both want to go versus caring about the outcome itself. When we're over-focused on the outcome, I think we're less likely to actually achieve it, which seems ironic, but I've seen it over and over and over again throughout my own career. And the other thing I would just note is that people can tell the difference. People can feel the difference. They can't necessarily describe it.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Nope.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
They can't put their finger on it. They're just like, I don't know about her, I don't know about him, I don't know about this. I'm not sure if I belong here. And these aren't necessarily even conscious thoughts. They just feel it. They can feel the difference of whether or not you see them and care about their success.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
I always tell team leaders specifically that culture is what happens when you're not in the room. And a lot of team leaders now that I talk to when we ask about, Hey, why should an agent join your team or brokerage? And a lot of people love to say, oh, we have a great culture and in my experience trying to convince an agent to come work for you because you have a great culture, it's intangible, they can't feel it, they can only experience it. So what you're talking about that it's almost intangible, it's not real. It's this concept of a thing, but you're a hundred percent right in thinking about how it actually gets developed and how it actually comes to be and it starts and ends with the team leader, that culture of accountability. You can't have a culture of accountability if you're not accountable. You can't have a culture of transparency if you're not transparent. So unfortunately, and fortunately the puck starts and stops with the team leader. So I think it's really important that everyone remembers that

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Great setup here to the conversation. Anything else you want to add to your background or do you just want to dive right in?

Speaker 3 (06:34):
From a background perspective, I think that having a well-rounded approach to this whole thing kind of gives me a weird experience and a weird perspective. A lot of this stuff that's I think very unique. Having spent time at Zillow at the mothership when I was so young, I got to see real estate teams weren't really a thing, they were a thing, but they were just kind of getting steam. And this whole real estate 3.0 I call it, which are teams and brokerages that provide agents tangible value by way of leads, training and support. Those three things, when I was working at Zillow in 2013, they were in their infancy of starting to happen and then watching and leaving Zillow and getting into the actual real estate business and selling real estate myself and building teams and brokerages and all this stuff, it's given me a really weird perspective having seen it from three sides of the coin now. So when I say that some of these opinions and things we talk about today, I might sound abstract or out of the box, but it's because I see it from a completely different lens, you know what I mean? So some of 'em might be a little unique for a lack of better words,

Speaker 1 (07:38):
But the one thing we can acknowledge or that I'll acknowledge is that it's in a reality that has been viewed from multiple perspectives, which is about in general as close to the truth as we can get, which is walking around something multiple times and hearing multiple voices from multiple perspectives on it. So let's start with a fill in the blank. Fill in the blank, Chris, you should be recruiting more agents if blank, if what? Who should be recruiting and who can get buy on every now and then? One of my agents brings me an agent.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
I would say when I hear recruiting, my brain goes to growing and scaling a team or brokerage pretty quickly. When I think that filling in the blank, my brain goes, when you have a standardized duplicable scalable model, right? Before you think about adding a single agent, you got to get clear on a couple of things. One, what is my value proposition and am I equipped to accurately communicate it right? The second thing is does my value proposition align with what my agent avatar looks like? Which is something that we frequently encounter where I'm like, these don't line up, you're going to not be able to actually get traction. And then lastly, I think where a lot of people forget is recruiting is great onboarding training, getting agents into production is a completely separate thing that I'm sure you've had tons of conversations about. If it were as simple as hire agents, give leads, make money, I'd be retired and probably a lot of your guests would be too

Speaker 1 (09:13):
And it'd be a much more competitive

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Environment infinitely. So there's some complexity to the difference between recruiting, onboarding and getting an agent into production that getting an agent into production thing then creates its own unique set of problems too. You now have to have systems and SOPs and managerial things in place for that so that those agents can actually, if they start producing, then you've got the systems and backend to actually support them in growing. So I think people should seriously think about recruiting when they have a standardized duplicable scalable model. And that starts with those three things in my brain.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Really good. I was thinking as you're laying these pieces out before you locked 'em all down like that at the end we often talk about the messy middle and typically we talk about it mostly from a financial standpoint, just a general complexity standpoint. But the complexity is in this, which is I'm still figuring out my systems, I'm still figuring out who I'm best for. I'm still figuring out my value prop because part of building those systems is actually bringing the value prop to life so that I could promise it and then actually deliver it so that I'm not

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Creating a revolving door that six months in people are like, I don't know about all this, and then a year later they're out. So that there's a messiness there. But to your point, I love the idea of let's harden this thing a bit and then welcome people into something where we can deliver on the promise, but getting all those things lined up is probably a pretty big challenge. Let's start at the beginning there and move through it pretty quickly. I have a couple more nuanced things that I'd love to ask you about, but give us a quick go on the relationship between value prop and agent avatar. Besides that they need to be aligned like a couple tips for developing those because those come up, but I haven't really dived into it in this show very deeply, especially with someone with your unique perspective.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
So I would be thinking about from a value proposition perspective, we've surveyed tens of thousands of agents at this point and gotten really good data on why people are leaving certain models, why they're joining other models and migration. Everything you can think of. We've tried to figure out, I can't tell you confidently that I have it all figured out, but I have some hypothesis and some kind of conjectures I can gather from this. The way I think about it is agents, at least in 2024, the last full data set we have for a year, they joined a new brokerage or team for three primary reasons in order of importance. We know last year transaction count was down dramatically. So thinking about what agents were seeking out as the number one reason for moving was what leads, right? People wanted to get closer to a transaction.

Speaker 3 (11:49):
If I was a team that was trying to get really, really clear on what my value proposition is, I would follow this kind of data set of what we found out is most important to agents. We call it LTS, leads, training and support. Those are the three primary values that most teams or brokerages provide. You have to get clear on how you communicate those things. And when I say leads, I don't mean it's not a hey, we give you leads and all you have to do is show up. It can be, Hey, we teach you how to generate your own leads, right? We're going to teach you how to do open houses really, really, really well and we've got a standardized process for that. And you generate your own business. So it doesn't have to just be we give you leads, it just you have to figure out if an agent comes to me knowing that that's the single most important thing to them, how am I going to help them with that? And if the answer is you don't, I would probably argue that you should think about how to, and that can be by way of training or support or whatever it may be. So if it were me, I would get a piece of paper, I would write down LTS, and I would list out all the things that I'm going to help those agents figure out from a leads perspective, from a training perspective and from a supports perspective what I actually offer. That would be a fantastic starting point.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
And then on the avatar side, I mean this is the alignment piece because there are some people you're not really designed to help. And I think the more people you shoehorn into a model that's designed to deliver in a particular way, people who don't fit that particular way, you're threatening a variety of different components there including to go back to the beginning of the conversation culture potentially if you're bringing in people that don't fit what you have designed. And so agent avatar, just one general observation, I'd love for you to support it, beat it up, add to it, or just go deeper on it, which is I hear essentially three avatars in general, at least superficially, which is agents brand new to the industry. Another one is been in the business for six to 18 months and are doing one third of the production that they thought they were going to be doing or want to be doing.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
And now I can help them five x their production and get from the four homes they sold in their first nine months to 25 homes in their first full year with me kind of thing. And then the other one is I want people who have developed established businesses and they either want leads or they want to fight loneliness or something and they want to come in from the storm. They've hired an assistant and lost them three months later, hired another one and lost them six months later. And they're like some of these things that a team provides they just don't want to provide for themselves. But two things. One, are there slots in between those that you see very commonly? And then two, this is the big question, what is the second or third layer behind that? Because that's not enough. That's like saying, I created a product or a service and I'm targeting women between the ages of 25 and 54 in the upper Midwest. Great everyone, but that's like step one of a 20 step process of actually having a legitimate go-to-market plan.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
So I think when we think of avatars, I have an overarching avatar that's really important to me beyond any type of agent demographic experience, anything. There's one thing that's more important to me than anything. I call it the three Cs and I know I have a lot of three things, but it helps me remember not, yeah, lts, I already remember it. When I think about bringing a person into any business, and this isn't just for real estate, this is any business. I look for culture fit, character fit, coachability fit. If they don't have those three things, I don't care if they're a perfect avatar. I've made the mistake before of hiring someone that I thought was perfect, that wasn't necessarily a culture or character fit. And every single time I've done it, Ethan, it ends up biting me in the butt and coming back to haunt me in some way, shape or form.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
So when we're thinking about avatars before you think about anything, the three Cs, that's your filtering layer before you do anything, that's the single most important thing. In thinking about these different types of avatars, I guess it depends on the model specifically as to who you should be looking for. I'll probably get some heat for this one, but my favorite avatar to hire ever, no matter what, I like people that have, because I was running a flex team, so my avatar was a little different, B2B or B2C, customer service or sales background first, real estate experience. Second, and I'll say that again slowly. I want someone that has a background in selling something first or interacting with customers at a high level real estate experience. Second, because I learned very quickly in 20 20, 20 21, 20 22, we were onboarding 10 to 15 agents every two weeks going really, really fast.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
I got a lot of exposure to different types of people and I ran into one of two problems. Problem one was I've got an agent who has sold five or 10 houses, so they've learned on someone else's dime. They're not coming to me completely fresh, they don't have any experience with online leads or actual tactical sales background. This is their primary career. I gave that person 10 flex leads and they would come back to me and say, Hey Chris, one of them's eh, but nine of 'em are complete tire kickers, not really my speed X, Y, and Z. Then I would have an agent who had a B2B or B2C customer service or sales background. One of the best agents I ever hired worked at the Ritz Carlton Hotel and had that really, really high level of customer experience and sales acumen. You give that person 10 leads and they come back to you and they say, Hey Ethan, eight of these people are going to buy houses. Two of them are ready to buy right now, but I don't know how to write a contract, right?

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Which problem

Speaker 3 (17:24):
Do you want? Yeah, you get to pick your poison. Do you want to light leads on fire or do you want to teach someone how to write a purchase agreement? And in that scenario, I choose that one all day. So I think it's important when you're figuring out your different avatars and stuff, you should have multiple, A lot of these teams and stuff that we encounter. Typically what I find is that the bigger and more successful team is the wider the avatar is. And I'm not talking about just from a headcount perspective, I'm talking about from a production standpoint. Usually the more production a team does, the more flexible they are on who they're actually bringing in from an avatar perspective, sometimes smaller production, you see it a lot more narrow. So I think it's important to have several different types of avatars. I think it's important to be honest with yourself and put yourself in the agent's shoes.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Sometimes people will get into positions where they think they want a specific avatar because it sounds easy. I think that the idea of hiring producing agents that are burnt out and want to be around people is great. That sounds like the greatest person on the planet to hire, but realistically, what are you bringing to them value wise that they couldn't get themselves? And the culture thing is an intangible, so that can't really be something. They don't experience that unless they actually join. And when I hear team leaders talk about for example, like, oh, we have tons of back office support, there are probably tens of thousands of TCS that you can hire as contractors to do your files for you, that will give you white glove level of service. So it's like is that actually your value? So I think multiple avatars is important and I think that getting clear and honest with yourself more than anything on does my value proposition meet my avatar? And sometimes that conversation isn't fun because you do that and you look back on the last year of not getting a whole lot of traction from a recruiting standpoint, you go, oh man, this was a me thing, not necessarily a market thing.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
And three C's again really quickly for everyone.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Culture, character, coachability

Speaker 1 (19:29):
Very good. And this doesn't mean that you need to be top shelf on all of these. You might actually be running a team where you want people who don't require a great deal of coaching

Speaker 3 (19:42):
With the three C stuff. You're not going to find someone if someone's perfect at all three of those things. I would argue that a really, really talented real estate agent might not be the most coachable person on the planet, especially if they've got some traction and they're crushing it and they've got a way that's working. The thing I guess that's important to me when I say those three things is they exhibit those characteristics in some way, shape or form. They don't have to be a 10 on all of 'em. It's a sliding scale and you're going to find varying levels, but if someone's completely closed off to trying something new from a coachability perspective, it's probably not going to work. People like you and other high performance people, I don't care who someone is, if they've got something valuable to tell me and they've done something that I haven't done, I'm going to listen to all ears just because that's how I've gotten to where I'm at. So I think that's important for everyone to just seek that out because if that's the way we want to be, we need to hire people that are the same way, right?

Speaker 1 (20:37):
Yeah, appreciate you roping me into that group. You already mentioned why agents are moving. Any other interesting data points that'd be to heads of growth or to team leaders on when agents are moving, what they're moving toward, any other trends that you've seen across all of these

Speaker 3 (20:58):
Agents? Q4 is by far the biggest agent movement time by far, and it kind goes counterintuitive. And when I say by far, by 25 to 30% far, that's when a majority of the moves actually happen, which is sometimes counterintuitive to I think the way a lot of team leaders and brokerage owners would like the way the world to work because in Q4, a lot of us are thinking, okay, transactions slow down a little bit. I am going to go on vacation. I'm going to relax a little bit. It's Thanksgiving, it's Christmas, it's new. There's two types of people that we typically see in Q4. The people that go, all right, holidays slow down X, Y, and z, I'm actually going to slow down pump the breaks on recruiting for example. And then people that say, Hey, I'm going to pin it right, I'm going to downshift and really go for it. Knowing that a majority of the agent moves happen in Q4, it's people getting ready for the new year. If you think about the psychology of agents looking

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Back on the year

Speaker 3 (21:55):
That they were underwhelmed by, that's the important part. So when we think about the psychology of agents being an agent, I can say this because I've had these thoughts before. You're sitting there in Q4, right around the holidays is usually where people's expenditures usually start to go up. You've got holidays, you've got Christmas shop, you've got all this stuff. Thinking about the psychology, if we're talking about that second avatar that you mentioned that a lot of teams are interested in, which is this agent that's done some production but not a lot, that person intrinsically has external things that are driving them to make changes. Thinking about Q4 and what they're actually observing, it's either they're experiencing like a slow year, they're looking at their finances in Q4 going, oh man, I got to buy Christmas presents and there's not a whole lot of dry powder in the bank or whatever that looks like Tax season is also coming up.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
And they're probably thinking about that. If they've only done 5, 6, 7 transactions, they're going to meet in a spot come April where things are going to be different. So it puts agents into a mindset where they are being introspective, they're thinking about what the last year looks like and they're going, I don't want to be in this same position next year. And what happens is I call it a disease unfortunately, but all agents do this and I've done it myself before in the past where when our production slips, and this is good for team leaders and brokerages, and it's something that all agents should be super conscious of when our production slips, we're not getting the results we want. We as agents have a natural tendency to look in the mirror and say, my production slipped. I'm not selling as many houses as I would like. I should switch brokerages. That's going to solve all my problems. Is it going to solve all your problems? Probably not, right? Maybe no,

Speaker 1 (23:40):
Some of your problem is you, I don't care what the situation is. Some of your problem is you, but some of it could be environmental and circumstantial.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Ethan, 70% of it is usually a them thing. And I know that because I've been there and I've made this mistake myself,

Speaker 1 (23:54):
But they might be, as we've already talked about, they might be that square peg in the round hole where I'm in a model that isn't designed to support business the way I want to do business, therefore I'm creating friction and it sucks for everybody, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Yeah. So knowing that Q4 is a historically very good time to have conversations and keep engaged because there's historically, according to the data that we have, there's a lot of agent movement that happens during that time. Another stat I would say that's interesting agents that we've surveyed again on what people are looking for. Just something to consider and we'll probably get into this, the actual interviewing of agents and how to actually have conversations and explain to them value. Just remember that out of, let's call it 20,000 agents surveyed in 2024 in order of importance, what they said they were looking for that what caused them to actually make a change, leads training support. I hear a lot in order of importance, I hear a lot of teams not wanting to lead with leads because it creates this kind of funky culture paradox thing. If you knew that that's what agents were looking for, would you still be apprehensive about talking about it?

Speaker 3 (25:07):
And I would be conscious of, I think a lot of those team leaders that have felt the pain of leading too much with leads is because they don't have that second part of what we talked about very early in this conversation, which was accountability with candor and grace. They've been burned by that conversation and strategy because they don't have the accountability part down. You can lead with leads all day long, as long as there's some sort of loop with accountability that the agent understands that there's expectations to stay on that train. Those two data points, I think at least for that part of it, what agents are moving for and when they're moving. Those are the two most valuable points I think.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
So we should be thinking about if we're looking to grow our team for 2026, we should be working on that right now. As you're listening, especially if you're listening in the release window of this episode, this is something we're working on right now. So let's go to what you just alluded to in general, and if there is any separation between these two groups, let me know. But I would love for you to give an overview of, I don't think we're going to have time to get into how to develop the pipeline of generating conversations, but give a quick sketch before we dive into the first conversation, whatever that is. Hopefully it's not even a formal interview per se. I'm sure you've got some guidance on that too, but speak a little bit to that person who is in the six to 12 agent range who wants to be at 25 or 45 by mid-year next year come. Let's say they're in a peak summer type of market versus like a, I'm at 51 and I want to be at a hundred by that time, or I'm at a hundred and I want to be at 200 by that time. Is there a difference between those two teams in the way we structure what the touch points look like from this could be a good fit to this person is now in my organization. What are the main, how many touches, what period of time and is there a difference between those two sizes? Let's say?

Speaker 3 (27:05):
I don't think this is actually really interesting. I've never been asked, should my recruiting process change team by team? I think it will team size by team size. I think it'll change a little bit with leverage with a larger team because you'll probably have someone, their responsibility is more recruiting versus a team of 12 to 15 might be doing a little bit of wearing all the hats. So I think that's the variable there. But in terms of conversations with agents going from stranger to actually hired, again, I'll probably get some heat for this, but I think that the ideal number of conversations that you have with an agent, especially if it's coming from a warm source, meaning you've got someone that's raised their hand and said, Hey, I want to come work for you. Having any more than two conversations is overkill in my brain and a lot of teams that I've experienced and encountered mistake complexity for effectiveness in all things.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
So not just recruiting but in a lot of stuff. And I'm guilty of it too in my business, and I'm sure a lot of people are too, where I think just because I put time, energy, and resources into making this process really complex that it's going to work really, really well. And I always think back to some mentors of mine that kiss analogy. Keep it simple, stupid. The reason I think that two interviews or two conversations before giving an agent offer an offer is the max is because we have to be considerate of what's happening in the rest of the market. So when we think about, let's say that I run a team of 12 agents and I do a post on social media letting the world know with my followers that I'm hiring three agents and I'm looking to conduct some interviews and want to talk to someone, and I get a person that reaches out and raises their hand.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
That's a follower of mine. That person comes in knowing that the average agent, this is another data set that we have that's pretty interesting. The average agent talks to three different brokerages or teams before they make a move. That's the average. Do some people go above that? Yes. Do some people just talk to one? Absolutely. But the average number of people that they speak to is three. If I'm a team of 12 and I've got a five step interview process, which I've heard of recently where it's an initial interview, and I'm not saying this is wrong, I'm just giving you, let's lay out this out subjectively and look at it, right? If I'm talking to an agent and I have an initial conversation with them just to get to know 'em a little bit and then I meet with 'em face to face and then I invite 'em to a team meeting and then they go out to lunch with my team and then we have a final interview, how long could that take?

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Two weeks, maybe longer knowing that the average agent is talking to you and two other people, you have to be considerate of who else are they talking to? And I can almost guarantee you they're not just looking at similar exact models in the marketplace. They're probably talking to some legacy brokerages, they're probably talking to some cloud-based stuff. If somewhere else there's one interview, a face-to-face meeting and then an offer and they've still got five things to go through with you, do we think that we'll start to experience some leakage in the hiring funnel? And the answer is, yeah. And I know that because we see the data coming into our platform where an agent will reply to a message like, Hey, I decided to make a move somewhere else. Or, Hey, I wanted to thank you for your time, but we've decided to go with X, Y, and Z.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
You have to be conscious of just because you want to put someone through five steps to make sure that they're perfect doesn't mean that they're not going to do something somewhere else and go through the funnel way faster. And does that mean in the argument from a team leader, and I've heard this before, could be, well, if they didn't want to go through all my stuff, they really didn't want to come work for me. And that's an argument that could be made. But what happens if you could shorten it a little bit and they were a really good fit and they were a culture fit and everything worked out awesome and they ended up selling lots of real estate and you both made lots of money because of that. So I think it doesn't matter if it's big team, small team, if someone was asking for my direct advice two-step interview process, max, if it has to stretch to three, I get it. But two is ideal it exploratory call just to understand where the agent's at and make sure that they fit the three Cs, some sort of face-to-face interaction, explaining what you do for them, not how you're going to do it, and then make 'em an offer, invite 'em to come work with you.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Anything in particular besides checking your own box on what you feel like the three Cs, what is sufficient across those? Anything else that should be asked or gathered by the team leader in that first conversation in your experience?

Speaker 3 (31:42):
It depends on if you have specific things that are non-negotiables for you. So I'll give you an example. A lot of team leaders I encounter, we want full-time agents, right? Is like the single thing I hear most. If that's important to you, then you have to ask it, especially if it's going to be the decision maker if you put this person through to the next step or not. So during that initial interview, my opinion is 15 to 20 minutes. It's like we call it a screen. Don't call it a screen externally because no one likes to be screened. We call 'em opportunity calls externally, which is just a, Hey, let's talk about what this looks like. I have two objectives on that call two and two only qualify to see if they fit the three C's. And I'll tell you what the magic question to figure that out.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
One question that answers all three for you. And number two, if they fit from a value proposition perspective and it aligns, I need to explain to them what coming to work for me would look like in 15 minutes or less, right? With the idea being that I want them to be excited about the opportunity and not just if we think as team leaders that we can just qualify someone and spend 20 minutes Spanish inquisition style, just grilling someone and expect them to be excited for step two, we're lying to ourselves. It's a little bit of qualifying and a lot of bit of get them excited about coming to work with you. Explain, and I'll get to this momentarily, but explain the how, not the what, and I'll get through that, but I have Zillow flex or I have realtor.com leads that's explaining the what not the how of stranger on the internet goes to live buyer on your phone.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
That's the value, right? So the qualifying part, I ask a singular question that pretty much tells me everything I want to know, and I might've gotten to this point from just doing 10,000 of these, but you can kind of learn to infer and read between the lines a little bit. I'll briefly explain what the agenda of the conversation is going to be. I'll let them know that I'd like to spend a little bit of time getting to know them. We'll have time to talk about the value proposition and you'll have time for questions at the end because I don't want them to interrupt me the entire time I'm explaining the question. I ask them to qualify them. Ethan is strangely simple. I say, Ethan, so tell me a little bit about your real estate life over the last 12 months and how it's been going.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
And then I shut up and without fail every single time they're going to word vomit for three to five minutes and they're going to tell you what you need to hear. There's only one or two things you need to listen for. The first is what I call negative. They're being negative about their real estate career. And what I mean by that is, Chris, this last year's been really tough, man. I've been working super hard. My broker told me that he was going to give me all these leads and nothing's materialized and it's been a complete waste of time and interest rates suck and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What you're listening for is any type of personal accountability for anything. We call it broker shaming. If they broker shame in any way, shape or form or use a name, there's a difference between being constructive with their feedback and blaming someone else for their shortfalls.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
If there's any type of broker bad talk in my brain that's a non-negotiable because guess what they're going to be doing in six months? They're going to be talking about you to the next person regardless of how good you are. So we're listening for negative sentiment. The other angle that you'll hear is positive sentiment, but you have to listen very closely between those two. It's a very fine line. Positive is Ethan. So I've been working super hard this year, man. I've been doing lots of open houses, but I'm getting my butt kicked to be honest with you, right? I'm putting in a ton of effort. I'm trying new things you're listening for at bats. Are they actually trying things and making positive momentum? So that tells me what I need to hear. You have to listen for it because they're not going to just tell you, Ethan, I'm not coachable.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Hey, I signed up for coaching and I never listened to my in x, Y, and Z. You can probably infer and assume that that didn't work the way they wanted it to. Right after I've asked them that question, I've already made the idea up in my head within usually three to five minutes if they're a good three Cs fit. We're getting now into explaining to them our value proposition. What I would say is the single most important thing is remember that feature dumping. For those of you guys that have been on in corporate sales environment or whatever, that doesn't work. People don't care about what you can do for them. They care about how it's going to impact their life. So I'll give you an example that a lot of your listeners probably can resonate with telling an agent. So for example, if we're going to break down LTS, and we're going to explain it in that process, explaining leads.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
So Ethan, I have leads coming out of my ears. We have a Zillow flex relationship. We have realtor.com, I've got Y lopa, I've got paper, I have every lead you can possibly imagine. There's 50,000 of 'em sitting in a database. An agent. Let's think about psychology for a second. If they have spent money on leads before, they spent money on some pay-per-click lead source a decade ago and they didn't have a return on it because they didn't know what they were doing, they didn't have the systems, they didn't have X, Y, and Z, and we tell them that that's our value. Do we think in their head they're jumping out of their pants going, this is awesome, I'm so excited about coming to work for this guy. No, they're thinking back about their past experiences going, oh, I did that before and nothing happened. So we explained the what if we were to explain the how instead.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
So when you're thinking about your value proposition, if you're trying to remember how to explain this stuff, explain the how, not the what. For example, let's say I had a Zillow flex account, Ethan, how leads work here at ABC Realty is really simple. We're one of a handful of partners in the entire state that are actually partnered with Zillow in this program called Flex. The way this thing works is Zillow is entrusted not just us, but our agents to represent them and their client's interests here at a local level. And the way it works is really simple. Consumer goes online, they find a house that they're interested in seeing, they can look at a hundred before they ever speak to a single person. And when they find that one house, they can go, Ooh, that one, I like that one. They can request a specific date and time that they want to see that house.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Imagine a world where your phone then rings and on the other end of the phone is a buyer who is asked to see a specific house at a specific date and time and that they're ready to speak to an agent. You know, explain that the right way. When the agent is kind of quiet and they go, oh man, I didn't know that's how that worked. And their jaws kind of on the floor. The important part there when you explain that, because in their brain they're thinking, these are lay downs. I don't have to work. This is the easiest thing on the planet. The next part of that conversation, what we were talking about earlier, if you're going to lead with leads, you have to have the accountability part conversation early, immediately following that type of talk track. It's really simple. So Ethan, as long as you're converting those leads at a baseline 10% conversion rate, I will give you more of them than you know what to do with.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
But that 10% conversion rate is required to get more. You don't get 10 without converting another 10. You don't get one without putting one into escrow. So as long as you're converting, I will make it rain or however you're going to say that. That's Chris from California talking. So it's one of those things where when you're going to explain your value, just remember how not what and sell it not. This is a persuasive nature conversation. Recruiting agents. It's not like interviewing an assistant or a listing coordinator or something. You're not giving them a pile of gold on the backend by way of a W2 paycheck. This is a persuasive nature conversation where you are competing statistically with at least two more people. You have to remember that it is a sales conversation and you should treat it as such. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (39:32):
Absolutely. Really good Run through. What is the core interview if that goes well, and we're going to follow up ideally in person. So that first one, you could do it in person if you wanted to. You could do it Zoom, you could do it phone. Most of the time

Speaker 3 (39:52):
I recommend phone 15 to 20 minute phone screen, just you don't want to waste time. And sometimes, unfortunately Ethan, you will get on the phone with an agent and within 30 seconds you're like, Nope, this isn't going to work. You're still obligated to pitch that person and run them through the full interview process purely because you care about your reputation in the marketplace. But depending on how that call ends, the most effective thing that you're going to have is getting face-to-face with them. If that's not possible, zoom, but ideally get in person with them for a 45 minute long more structured conversation where essentially what you're doing is making sure that the same person that showed up on that phone call is the person who shows up in person, right? Because sometimes that doesn't match either, right? I've had that happen.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Is there a format that you like, just high level sketch for that time together. How much time do you preserve for their own q and a? Because I'm sure I would come with a lot of questions of let's say 45 minutes or so. I assume you're going into deeper detail on LTS. You've already qualified the three Cs, you're probably doing more question answering and kind of closing than you are inquiry. How is that structured?

Speaker 3 (41:07):
It's a 45 minute call. I want to save at least 15 to 20 minutes on the backend for them, and I want to lead them into what I call objections You can expect. I think that a lot of team leaders will shy away from talking about brass tacks, like splits and talking about accountability and expectation and stuff. The sooner you can have those conversations, the better right In the interview before you make them an offer is the ideal time. So the first 20 minutes of that conversation is usually just a little bit deeper of a dive into the qualification and explaining LTS to them. So the qualification stuff, I'm going to ask more intentional, deliberate questions about why did you get into real estate? What are you hoping to accomplish? What does goal look like for 2025? Just trying to dig a little bit deeper into their psyche of what motivates them and why they're actually doing this.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
The LTS stuff, usually what I like to do if I'm in person with someone is let 'em look under the hood. So I'll pull up for example. Nothing is more powerful. You want to talk about getting someone excited, pulling up your Zillow inbox and playing a recorded call for them, just picking a random one and showing them like, Hey, here's a call that came in yesterday, let's listen to the first 30 seconds of it. That is powerful. So the pitch continues. What I like to do is back half of the conversation, just completely pivot it and go, Hey Ethan, so I've kind of talked at you for the last 20 minutes. I want to make sure that you have time to ask any questions you have and dig deep on whether or not you think this is the right fit based on what we've talked about. So what kind of questions do you have for me? Usually at that point in time, they're going to start asking the prying deep questions that are important. They're going to ask about splits, fees, accountability, how often they need to be in the X, Y, and Z. My opinion is rip the bandaid off and be completely transparent with people. And I know that sounds like common sense, but I hear a lot of trying to dance around things sometimes and not

Speaker 3 (43:06):
Clear. Rip the bandaid off because you get to choose. Do you want to be super transparent with someone and have to sell 'em and fight 'em a little bit sometimes on some of it, or do you want to have them not clearly understand, come to work for you and then be in your office when they get their first commission check giving you the Spanish Inquisition? So I think what's most important to agents right now, most Team Ridge or team models kind of align around two things. They have a team split on leads that the team provides and they have a personal production split. Those are the two kind of things. I think it's really, really, really important when you're going to talk about specifically, don't assume that agents are exactly like us and know two or 3% of every number on the planet.

Speaker 3 (43:53):
You can't assume that, and I say that because whatever you tell an agent, they're just going to jump in their heads. So I'll give you an example. Let's say they're a legacy brokerage and they say in their brain they're on a 80 20 split now and they come to you and you're on a 50 50 on team leads and a 70 30 on personal production. You tell them it's 70, 30 or 50, all they're going to hear is the number. They're not going to actually do the math to understand what's at the bottom of the line. So if you're going to explain comp, have a scenario ready. So for example, on my team, 50 50 split on company provided leads. The way it works, Ethan is pretty simple. Let's say you do a half a million dollar transaction at a 2% GCI. So that's $10,000 gross that comes in.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Zillow takes a 35% referral fee off the top. So that's the success fee for actually getting the lead. And then you and I split the proceeds 50 50, right? The 50% that I keep brokerage keeps, that doesn't go in my bank account into my pocket. That's what we use to keep the lights on. That's what we use to pay for the CRM and the support staff in the office and X, Y, and Z. That's what keeps the machine running that scenario versus telling them 50 50 is exponentially more effective, right? Because then they're not guesstimating, they actually get it

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Because a slice of that 50 is a reinvestment in you. You're actually getting more than the 50. You're just taking your 50% in direct comp. Some of my 50 is also going to you through these other investments in you and your success.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Often it's a lot of the 50,

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Yeah,

Speaker 3 (45:25):
A significant amount of the 50. But that second part is what the most team leaders miss, right? Agents assume that when we take 50%, it's like going on my wrist, it's not. It's going back into the business. And usually of that 50, 38% probably is going back into things that are going to make your life better. But it's these little tweaks, Ethan, are what add up that make a significant difference in your conversion rate and actually getting people all the way through the funnel.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
You mentioned conversion rate at the end. That's actually what I wanted to ask about is what's the high end, what's the low end? If I'm looking to bring on three agents about how many initial opportunity calls am I going to need to have and what have you been seeing just in the numbers in terms of second step to close, just share any standard ratios, high end, low end, and any key variables that would close some of those gaps.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
Last year, the sample size we have is about 35,000 agents and of 35,000, about 22% went from candidate to actually hired. Right? Meaning if I was trying to hire two agents, you need to have at least 10 conversations, give or take is what most people should be going for. Now keep in mind that will change with model. So some brokerages, pulse, real estate license you're in, others I don't recommend that model. Others more picky looking for culture, character, coachability. They're looking for tangible sales skills, X, Y, and Z. So I would say two out of 10 is a good benchmark for most teams to stick to. And just keep in mind that this industry churns at a very high rate, very high, 85% over five years knowing that if I was a 10 or 15 person team and I was trying to get to 20 or 25, assume that you're going to experience churn on an annual basis and don't think if I hire three agents or four agents, I'm good. You have to assume that you're going to churn it around 30% annually. So it's something to consider as you kind of do your calculations on where you want to go.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
This has been great. I got a ton more questions. I'm sure people watching and listening have a bunch of questions too. So we'll get to how to connect with you and learn more about you and what you're doing with human eyes. But I would love to know first, this is either or you can answer one or the other or both. Some people like to answer both. What's your very favorite team to root for besides humanize or what is the best team you've ever been a member of besides Humanize?

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Dude, I got to give it to Zillow. I'll even name the team. Tenacious Z was the sales team at, I know a cool name, right? It's

Speaker 1 (48:03):
Pretty

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Good. Tenacious Z. There was two of them, tenacious Z and then we had another one called Varsity with a Z, right? All the sales teams at Zillow had Zs in them. Those two teams, it was like the heyday of when Premier agent was new and there was in Orange County, our sales office, there were, I don't know, a couple hundred people broken up into 15, 20 person teams and you want to talk about electric? You walk into that office at 9:00 AM beat tired with 150 people all on the phone vibing with music going, it was impossible to not get fired up. And I had the leader that we had there, the manager of that team back then. It was a lady named Jamie Thomas, who's still at Zillow, incredible leader and taught me so much about being a leader at such a young age. It wasn't even funny. So tenacious Z Zillow 2014, I would say is my favorite team of all time so far.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Love it. What is your most frivolous purchase or one of your most frivolous purchases, or what's a cheapskate habit you hold onto even though you probably don't need to?

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Alright, I'll give you a cheapskate habit because I just did it in California. So I go back and forth between California and Dallas pretty regularly, and there's this really crummy Mexican spot in California called Del Taco, and they don't have 'em in Texas. So every time I go back to California, it doesn't matter if I'm there for 24 or 48 or what little amount of time, I will find a Del Taco. And I ate Del Taco at 11 o'clock on my sister-in-law's couch when I flew in last weekend and they were like, you are a dirt person. And I was like, yes, I am. This is my guilty pleasure. So

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Is this one of these, you're getting a whole sack of food for five bucks?

Speaker 3 (49:42):
Oh yes, a hundred percent. It's incredible. And it's bottom of the barrel and my wife's family is Hispanic, so they just look at it as just complete trash, but it's incredible and my guilty cheap

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Pleasure. Really good. What does it look like for you, Chris, when you're investing time in learning, growing and developing, what are you doing or what does it look like when you're investing time in resting, relaxing, and recharging? What are you doing

Speaker 3 (50:06):
For learning? I'm spending a lot of time right now as I'm sure a lot of people are with ai without trying, losing myself in it, I guess is good way to put it. I spend a good amount of time now. I know this sounds crazy, but talking to these models. So I like to use the voice interface just because it's way faster for me than texting to the point where my wife will walk into my office and she's like, who are you talking to? And I'm like, whoever you want my virtual CFO, this person, this person, whatever it is, right? So I'm spending a lot of time asking it to teach me about things. I think a lot of people use it for knowledge intake specifically where they're just reading or I'm not asking it for knowledge, I'm asking it. Once I figure out what I want to learn about, teach me about this, explain it to me like I'm a novice and I have no clue what I'm doing. It's like having a tutor in any subject you want. So spending a lot of time on that resting and recharging I probably could do a better job at. But recently the cool thing about where I'm at in Dallas is right next to downtown Dallas, the Trinity River runs and there's lots of trails that go 20, 30 miles in each direction that are off the beaten path that are super cool. So I've been riding my mountain bike on those and that's been super enjoyable and fun and probably why I'm kind of tan right now.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
Quick promotional plug. If you want to learn more about both generative AI and ag Agentic ai, we just came out of Tech 10 on real estate team os, and it comes up, I think in all five of those episodes. I don't think anyone will be disappointed. Chris, this has been awesome. I'm so glad we connected through the show. Again, it's a privilege to have you invest time and energy in them both as a guest and as a viewer, listener. If anyone wants to learn more about you, get more of these recruiting insights, go farther than we could in these 45, 50 minutes together. Where should they go? How can they connect with you?

Speaker 3 (51:59):
I think the easiest way to get ahold of me would probably be through social media. I'm chronically on Instagram. My handle is really simple. It's my first name.my last name, so Chris dot Ganos. If anyone wants to chat, recruiting team, building anything, just ping me and obviously make sure to follow. We've got tons of content we're putting out on all things recruiting and agent training and onboarding and all sorts of cool stuff in the funnel. So happy to connect on social.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Awesome. He's a great fellow, Chris Ganos, that's linked up right down below in the description, wherever you're watching and listening. Chris, thank you again.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Likewise brother. Appreciate the time.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Thanks for checking out this

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Episode of Team Os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team Os on Instagram and on TikTok.