What NOT to do as an Inside Sales Agent

So you're just starting out as a real estate Inside Sales Agent (ISA). Or your team or brokerage has just hired a brand new ISA team. The office is buzzing with excitement and you're about to crush every sales record in existence Now all you have to do is hit the phones, right? Wrong.

Building the right ISA team takes patience, understanding and the ability to ask the right questions. There's a reason why the average ISA only lasts 6 months in the role. The last thing you want to deal with is high turnover due to lack of performance by either yourself, as a team leader, or the ISA.

Here are some of the costly mistakes most ISA teams make and how to avoid them:

1) NOT building rapport between Agents and ISA’s

Instead of smiling and dialing from day one, role play in the office to first build rapport between your ISAs and your agents or internally amongst ISAs.

There's nothing worse than not having rapport established between ISAs and agents. Handing an ISA-qualified lead off to an agent that drops the ball is a morale killer and building early rapport between ISAs and agents will allow for both sides to hold each other accountable.

2) NOT digging deeper into conversations with the lead

There's a fine line between talking too much and building a connection with a lead. The best ISAs walk that line beautifully by matching and responding to the important talking points in a conversation, such as a lead’s motivation for moving, but steer clear of time sucks such as personal opinions.

This is an increasingly important aspect of the ISA role. With more and more leads being pre-screened by services such as our Artificial Intelligence ISA, Aisa Holmes, at Structurely, or Zillow's new Premier Agent Concierge, ISAs can no longer get by just checking off the boxes of a lead's timeframe to move, financing status, etc. They need to spend more time on motivation and building the rapport that will ensure that lead chooses your real estate company.

3) NOT setting up the right systems or processes to scale

Even the best real estate ISA teams have a ceiling and the only way to break through that ceiling is by making sure your ISA team has the right systems and processes in place to scale.

Every ISA will need to know the ins and outs of your CRM, your calendar scheduling system, and lead providers.

But it doesn't end at technology. Your team leader and ISAs need to agree upon a pre-established framework for how to handle a variety of leads, so that when push comes to shove, you can look at your handbook to decide how a lead should be handled, tracked and ultimately converted.

4) NOT understanding your ISA's or lead's personality type

Not every ISA is created alike. Nor is every lead. Many ISAs take a scripted, blanket approach to communicating with every lead. This often leads to poor conversations and lower conversions. The best ISAs mirror the lead's personality while communicating with them, so the human on the other end of the call feels like they're being heard and communicated with in the style they prefer.

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Additionally, many ISA's don't know their own personality style. This makes it more difficult for a team leader to offer feedback on calls and communication. Understanding your ISA's "default" personality type will help them become more aware at the areas where they could improve or tend to slip into. Many teams use a DISC profile to understand where their ISA's and lead’s personality type. We will provide more details on how to use this DISC methodology to hire better ISAs and convert more leads in articles to come.

5) NOT being self accountable, reflective or disciplined

The ISA role isn't for everyone. As Steve Jobs once said, "Stay hungry, stay foolish" and there couldn't be a better phrase for an ISA to live by. Every ISA needs to have a chip on their shoulder to keep them motivated. More importantly, every ISA needs to be "foolish" in nature.

They need to abide by their systems and frameworks, but when it comes to self-learning and self-reflection, your ISAs should be constantly reflecting on their own performance to learn and grow from their past experiences.

The entire ISA organization needs to abide by their own self-imposed rules and regulations. Rigorous updating of the CRM, constant accountability checks with their agents, and constant role play and phone call audits promotes accountability and more importantly scalability.

ISA teams are the future of high-producing real estate teams. It's a model that's been proven successful time and time again by the top teams and brokerages across the industry.

By not falling into the traps outlined in this article, your ISA team stands a high chance of helping your real estate business grow by multiples.

If you're looking to get more valuable insights on using technology to grow your team read our FREE "How to Scale your Real Estate Team with Technology" eBook.