November 11, 2023Jon Cheplak interviews Brandon Brittingham, the leader of the #1 real estate team in Maryland. Brandon shares insights into achieving high agent productivity without ISAs and emphasizes the importance of cutting non-essential elements in business. He discusses retaining agents, setting high expectations, and running an organization like a professional sports team. Brandon’s success is rooted in fostering a healthy culture, and he shares his perspective on property management as a valuable yet challenging endeavor. Viewers gain valuable insights into expanding business and managing a large portfolio of properties.
Video Contents:
00:00 – Introduction
03:00 – Brandon’s Team & Business Structure
07:23 – Leadership & Culture
14:30 – The Running Ship Model
20:30 – Expanding Your Business with Property Management
28:00 – Who will survive 2024?
Episode breakdown: lead shifts, cost discipline and a property management feeder
Brandon Brittingham runs a Maryland team of about 20 agents that was on track to close close to a thousand transactions in the year this episode was recorded. He also runs a property management business with about 2,000 properties under management. In this conversation he explains what he changed when the market turned, how he hands out leads without ISAs, and why he started cutting costs during his best quarter.
Cut lead sources down to the few that pay
After a month in which the team settled 120 transactions, Brandon decided the business had picked up spending it didn’t need. He went through what the team was paying for and kept only what made sense. That meant fewer lead sources, chosen for the highest return, instead of 10 sources competing for agents’ attention.
The team also pared back to its CRM and the tools that were working. Brandon’s view is that teams drifted away from the habits that built them while the market was strong, simply because they could. Getting back to a short list of lead sources and firm standards and expectations is what he says is working now.
Run leads in shifts instead of using ISAs
Brandon’s team doesn’t use inside sales agents. New agents are assigned to a leader, and each leader’s group works from its own room, painted orange, green or royal blue. The rooms take leads in shifts, so agents know when they’re on and can prepare for it.
He gives four reasons the shift model works. It keeps the load manageable, it makes activity trackable, it turns lead handling into a competition, and it creates scarcity. An agent who might not be on shift again for a week treats each lead with more intention. Brandon says he has tried it many different ways, and his data shows shifts work best for his team.
If you give an agent too many leads you put them in overwhelm. They shut down, they just don’t do anything.
Brandon Brittingham
I’m not a fan of the ISA model because it’s just too sticky in my opinion. I’d rather have my agent talk to the lead, have the conversation.
Brandon Brittingham
Tell recruits the truth and hold the standard
Brandon raised standards and accountability without the attrition many teams saw. He traces that back to recruiting. He tells candidates up front that joining will be one of the hardest things they do, that he won’t sell them the dream, and that the team will celebrate them if they make it through. People who can’t accept that don’t join.
Agents also need to know the accountability comes from caring about them, not only from profit. Brandon compares the team to a championship sports organization where the locker room is a safe space to talk through problems, and where team dinners and time together keep people close. When the accountability is high, he says, the right people stay and the wrong people get pushed out. Suneet covers the same idea in his piece on why team culture is what you tolerate.
Shift leaders volunteer for the role. Brandon gives them a career path and invests in their personal development, from teaming up on deals to taking them to a mastermind. That also gives newer agents a role to work toward. He sees a missing career path as one of the main reasons people leave a team.
Build property management as a feeder business
Brandon saw a gap between the national property management companies and small operators who didn’t do a good job. He applied the same principles he uses on the sales team to property management. The business now feeds the team listings when landlords sell, along with tenants who become buyers. He estimates it produces 20 to 25 million a year in sales volume, and one year it reached around 40 to 50 million.
Unlike sales, property management doesn’t start over on the first of the month. Seasoned investors hold properties for a long time, so a well-run portfolio keeps adding more accounts than it loses. Brandon calls it a tough business, but the predictable monthly income surprised him when buyers approached him about its valuation.
Cut costs before the market forces you to
Brandon started trimming his budget right after the best quarter the team had ever had. His leadership team thought he was wrong. He wanted to get ahead of a slowdown because contracts and memberships take time to unwind. He now reviews every line, down to how many G Suite and Dropbox accounts the team needs, and has someone else sit in the room so he has to justify each expense. The result, he says, is that units were down that year while profitability was up.
I started cutting my budget last year after we had the best quarter we’ve ever had in history.
Brandon Brittingham
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Keep only the lead sources with the best return. Ten sources can leave agents overwhelmed.
- Try running leads in shifts by group. It keeps the load manageable and makes each lead feel scarce.
- Tell recruits how hard the job is before they join, so the standard isn’t a surprise later.
- Give agents a path to lead, and invest in the people who volunteer for it.
- Look at recurring businesses like property management that feed the sales team.
- Review your P&L line by line in good quarters, not only bad ones.
