Ask the Coach: Hiring an ISA to Drive More Business

The key to doubling your business is to double the amount of appointments you and your team members go on each week, preferably with “A”-level buyers and sellers that are ready to buy or list. Having a full pipeline of ready, willing and able buyers and listing prospects is possible when you hire a team of Inside Sales Agents (ISAs), who stay in front of these leads and convert them into appointments for you and your team.

The best part is that you are staying focused on meeting with and going on appointments constantly with A-level prospects and maximizing your time. You will be filling your calendar with appointments and providing appointments for your team, which will create a funnel of leads to clients to sales in a truly systematic manner, leverage your time and scale your business quickly.

Hire your first ISA. This is a great way to train team members to become listing or buyer specialists, too. They will be learning from you how to provide value-added service to these leads and convert them to a showing or listing appointment for you or a team member. Once you have the ability, hire additional ISAs to make a team in your office. The success and energy will feed off the others and create a healthy competition among them.

Set expectations. Give the ISA team a guide and script with goals on number of calls to make, who to call and what the strategy is for making the calls. They can call FSBOs, expireds, online lead follow-up, past clients, and more. Let them know how many appointments they should be converting daily and the conversion rate of the phone call activity. Provide them with scripts to close and generate appointments for you, and track their activities daily and weekly, celebrating their successes.

Give incentives. Provide incentives for ISAs. They are salespeople, and they like to have goals and recognition for achieving those goals. Have a daily huddle or meeting to go over goals for the day, and at the end of the day, discuss the successes and results.

Remember, the goal is to leverage your time. You are having these ISAs make the same calls you would have made, but, instead, you’re out on appointments. They will convert the leads into a live appointment by adding value and respond to the lead in a much faster manner, ensuring your team gets a shot at the business. You will be able to capture more of the leads by instituting an Inside Sales Agent or ISA team to be following up and converting these leads into listing and showing appointments, and will create a funnel system that, when done correctly, can literally double your production and income.

For more tips and a FREE copy of my “How to Hire an ISA to Your Team Guide,” email yourock@sherrijohnson.com.

Sherri Johnson is CEO and founder of Sherri Johnson Coaching & Consulting. With 20 years of experience in real estate, Johnson offers coaching, consulting and keynotes, and is a national speaker for the Homes.com Secrets of Top Selling Agents tour. For more information, please contact coaching@sherrijohnson.com or 844-989-2600 (toll free) or visit www.sherrijohnson.com.