Seven Strategies to Build a Successful ISA Team

Eventually, you’ll reach the point with your real estate business where you need to hire an inside sales agent (ISA). Building a successful and productive inside sales team is how you will take your business to the next level. Your inside sales agents will focus on lead generation, which allows you to focus on the business as a whole and your agents to focus on closing deals.  

But hiring ISAs and building an inside sales team can be a daunting, and often intimidating, task. First, you have to hire the right people, and second, you have to have a system in place that properly sets them up for success. And, on top of that, it means handing off some of the reins of your business and trusting your team to successfully generate and nurture leads for your agents. 

Though this process may seem stressful, there are certain strategies and best practices that you can follow in order to set yourself and your business up for success. To make everything a little easier on you, I have compiled a list of seven strategies that will ensure you will build a productive, successful and reliable inside sales team. 

1) Evaluate your Inside Sales Candidates

First on the list is to make sure you are extensively testing your inside sales agent (ISA) candidates in the skills that are required for the job. And for an ISA, the most important skill is being able to have effective sales conversations over the phone. At the end of the day, the ONLY thing that matters is if an ISA can make hundreds of calls per day, have good conversations, and persuade someone to take ACTION. 

So the key thing to do is see how they sound on the phone. This means listening to them on voicemail, doing role plays, and having the candidate make actual calls and see how they do. If they can successfully make calls and they sound good on the phone, then you know that they are a very good potential candidate. Testing in this way before you make the hire will cut down on wasted time, money and tears. 

2) Set Clear Expectations for Your ISAs

Next, it is essential that you clearly set out your 30/60/90 day expectations for your ISA in their role. That way, if they turn out not to be right for the job, you will know MUCH sooner than waiting the 6 months it typically takes for them to ramp up. This means tracking things like number of dials made, number of contacts made, contact to appointment ratio, number of appointments set vs. appointments converted—and having benchmarks for where the ISA should be with each of them at each time mark.  

3) Use Numbers to Maintain Accountability

The third strategy tip for building an effective inside sales team is to have weekly accountability meetings with them, tell them what they need to do, then measure them CONSISTENTLY and CONSTANTLY. Developing experienced, productive ISAs is a cumulative process. You will find that they will progress from struggling to get contacts, to struggling to set appointments, struggling to get set appointments to actually meet, then get met appointments that turn into contracts. You need to work with them through these different stages. 

4) Get in the Pit

The fourth strategy is closely related to the third. Just measuring their progress is not enough, it is critical that you get in the pit with them, listen to calls, review numbers, and actually hear what they are doing.  

It’s one thing to roleplay, practice, and talk about theory, but you really have to hear how they are interacting with live humans. So in this part of the process you have to get more hands on and make sure that all the training is effective, as well as make sure your benchmarks and expectations are all being properly met.  

5) Use a Lead Conversion Training Program

So once you evaluate, hire, and lay out a benchmark plan for your ISA, now you have to effectively train them. And since you are busy running your business, the best way to train them is to use an awesome lead conversion training program. This will keep you out of the trenches using time you don’t have, and take the burden of making sure your inside sales team is getting consistent, uniform training.  

With a training like Smart Inside Sales’ Conversion University, you can be sure that your ISAs are learning much more than scripts. They will master overcoming objections and learn how to have enjoyable, successful sales calls.  

6) Give your ISAs a Variety of Leads

Next, in order to make sure that your ISAs are getting tons of valuable experience and becoming more and more effective, ensure that they are going on different types of calls. Mix up their lead types, giving them some hard and some easy.  

Harder is outbound cold, easier is inbound asking for assistance. Conversations are different depending on which type of lead you are speaking with, and building a successful inside sales team means that your ISAs can successfully convert in all types of conversations. 

7) Leverage the Different Strengths of Your ISAs

And lastly, remember that each ISA or agent on your team has a unique psychology. They all will have different strengths and weaknesses and will struggle with certain types of leads and people. Your job is to coach each of your inside sales agents based on that unique psychology. To have a truly successful team means leveraging each of their strengths and weaknesses in a way so that the different team members complement one another.  

Set your business up for success 

Scaling your real estate business is no small undertaking. By implementing these seven strategies consistently and systematically, you will be able to cultivate a productive and successful inside sales team. And with a successful inside sales team your business will grow into a powerhouse.