February 5, 2025Director of Sales at Fast Real Estate, Elias Astuto, joins the show to break down the missing link for scaling real estate teams to $500M+ in sales. Elias has a track record of turning struggling agents into top producers and is here to talk about why most teams fail, how standards—NOT LEADS—drive success, and the real role of a sales leader. He and Nick get into high-performance coaching, accountability, and agent retention, plus why raising the bar is the only way forward. If you want to build a team that actually produces, this is the playbook!
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 – Why Vision & Alignment Are Everything in Business
- 00:00:38 – Welcome to the Reside Platform Podcast – Let’s Talk Growth
- 00:01:06 – Meet Elias Astuto – The Man Behind a $500M Sales Machine
- 00:02:08 – From Corporate to Fast Real Estate – Elias’ Game-Changing Journey
- 00:04:50 – The Most Overlooked Role in Real Estate Teams (And Why It Matters)
- 00:07:04 – How to Build a High-Performance Sales Team That Wins
- 00:12:12 – Visionaries vs. Integrators – The Secret to Scaling Successfully
- 00:14:03 – Agent Recruitment: The Right Way to Grow Your Team
- 00:17:13 – Training Sales Managers: The Key to Unlocking Team Potential
- 00:20:39 – Role-Playing for Results – How to Lock in Commitment
- 00:21:10 – Finding the Gaps: Why Most Teams Struggle & How to Fix It
- 00:24:29 – Raising the Bar – How Standards & Accountability Drive Success
- 00:27:09 – Fixing Lead Conversion with Clinics & Real-Time Feedback
- 00:30:15 – High-Level Accountability – Why Soft Standards Kill Performance
- 00:35:03 – The Recommitment Plan: Who Stays, Who Goes, & Who Rises
- 00:39:34 – Final Takeaways & How to Connect with Elias Astuto
Links and Resources:
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Episode breakdown: standards over head count
Elias Astuto is director of sales and coaching at Fast Real Estate in California. In this episode with Nick McLean, he explains how the team reached $562 million in closed volume while running with 49 percent fewer agents than the year before. His answer isn’t more leads. It’s a sales leader who coaches the people, reads the data and refuses to move the standard.
Give the sales role its own seat
Elias describes his business partner Kenny as the visionary and himself as the person who turns the vision into agent behavior. The team splits integration into three jobs: one person for processes, one for compliance and contracts, and one who moves people. Elias holds that last seat. He runs about 95 percent of agent interviews himself, and more than half of the agents who joined this year came through referrals from agents already on the team or elsewhere at the brokerage.
His calendar used to be one-on-ones all day. Over time he moved agents into group sessions so they could share strategies and coach each other. If you’re hiring for this seat, he suggests looking first inside the team for people who already lead without a title, and then outside real estate for anyone with a track record of moving a sales team.
Coach the person first, then the numbers
When Elias trains another sales leader, he starts with an audit of relationships. How does the leader communicate, and what isn’t landing with the agents? Only then does he open the data: appointments set, appointments met and conversations. He asks the leader how they would coach an agent whose appointment-set rate is 75 but whose met rate is 20%.
KPI stats and figures are not going to move people if you’ve not connected with the human being.
Elias Astuto
Agents who want help commit to one hour a week for six to eight weeks, with no skipped or cancelled sessions. Each meeting covers wins, challenges, current focus and accountability from the prior week. If last week’s work isn’t done, they don’t move on. Elias asks to see the agent’s calendar, their CRM (every lead needs a disposition), their Instagram and their workout and personal time. Call recordings with coaching notes let him review the actual conversations instead of guessing.
Set a few standards and never move them
Fast Real Estate once reached 374 agents. Elias says the standards drifted as the roster grew, and once they move, you don’t really have any. The team then picked a short list and held it. Suneet Agarwal makes the same case in team culture is what you tolerate.
When the standards move or the rules move, then you have no rules and you have no standards.
Elias Astuto
The team standard is two transactions in six months. An agent who misses it but is visibly working, showing up to group coaching and script role-play sessions, gets a chance. An agent who isn’t doing the activity chooses between a 30-day recommit bootcamp with Elias, going solo, or leaving. Senior leadership audits the full roster every quarter, A to Z, and sorts each agent into keep, recommit or release. Every time the recommit email goes out, someone opts to leave.
Protect company leads with a conversion standard
Agents on the online leads program must hold a set conversion number. Below it, they attend two conversion clinics a month. Skip the clinics and their leads pause. An agent at 30 leads with no conversion is paused until they convert one from the leads they already have. A dedicated conversion coach now checks in at 15 leads, listening to calls so problems get fixed before the agent fails. Elias expects the department to finish the month at about 125 percent of budget.
Protect the asset, the asset is the company generated leads. We have a responsibility to protect that asset.
Elias Astuto
Keeping weak converters on for coverage is the mistake he sees most. His fix is to recruit agents hungry for leads, or ask the lead platforms to cut volume until conversion recovers. New agents must now pass a 13-step lead certification before they receive a company lead. It includes listening to calls, making calls, setting appointments, scoring at a set level on a one-to-five scale and completing a questionnaire. Certified agents form a bench, so a paused spot gets filled right away.
Offer an opt-in group for agents who want more pressure
A few times a year the team runs Intensity, a six-week accountability group for agents who are already doing well. About 50 to 75 people usually sign up and roughly 35 to 40% finish. Arrive more than five minutes late and you’re out. Each person gets one strike for a missed metric across the whole program. The program used to run four weeks, but Elias found agents needed time to plan, so week one is now spent putting every activity on the calendar with an accountability partner.
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Treat the sales leader as a distinct seat from operations and compliance. Someone has to own agent development full time.
- Start coaching with the relationship, then use appointment and conversion data to decide what to fix.
- Pick a few standards, such as two transactions in six months, and hold them every quarter without exceptions.
- Give agents below standard a clear choice: a structured recommit program or the door.
- Guard company leads with a conversion standard, an early check-in at 15 leads and a certified bench ready to step in.
- Give your strongest agents an opt-in, high-accountability group so they’re pushed by peers who want the same thing.
