Real Estate Broker Tools: The Self-Employed Agent

by Harper Thorpe | 0 comments | Posted Wed, 2011-10-26 09:08

I spent much of my sales career selling to Fortune 500 companies where the users of the solutions we provided were employees. One of the first ah-ha’s for me in the real estate industry was selling to companies where most of the users were the independent contractors. Generally-speaking, the agents that represent residential real estate brokerages, are the face to the customer, and earn the bulk of the revenue, are independent contractors.

On a lot of levels, this is a tidy solution that eliminates the burden of an employer-employee relationship in favor of commission-based compensation. Self-employment is not a new concept in the United States. Our country is founded on the entrepreneurial spirit of self-starters. At its heart, America is the new land.

According to author Tom Peters in his book In Search of Excellence: lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, 50% of Americans were self-employed in 1900. Those were the pioneer days when citizens had to eat what they killed and produce something of value for others to buy. We were a society of specialists, hunters and gatherers.

After industrialism took hold in America, the concept of employment and business rules evolved – along with Unions to protect workers. A new balance was struck. According to Peters, by 1977 only 7 percent of workers were self-employed. Citing the 2009 census, Peters notes that today 13 percent of workers in the United States are self-employed and about half of the workforce is employed by small businesses.

Real Estate offers a great opportunity for the self-employed. People needing part time jobs or those having a penchant for self-directed work habits thrive in the broker-agent work environment. However, this creates challenges for brokers which are not insignificant.

Successful brokers have created a formula for getting the most out of the self-employed agents under their umbrella. The cornerstones of that success are inspirational leadership and infrastructure that supports best practices. Since there’s a fine line between providing guidance and making demands of the self-employed agents, we observe brokers focusing on building a business culture supported by technology and training. Brokers that provide state of the art tools to their agents reap sales and retention benefits. Agents appreciate tools such as Real Estate CRM tools, Real Estate marketing tools, and a Real Estate broker intranet.

It’s no accident the evolution of AgentAchieve at CoreLogic is based on supporting the goals of both parties in this relationship – the broker and the agent. For the broker, it leverages your brand and your knowhow, and the intuitive workflow makes it easy for your agent to follow. What is essentially technology-based infrastructure supports the dissemination of methodologies and plans for successfully guiding buyers and sellers through transactions.

For the self-employed agent, self-accountability is supported through alerts and reports that guide daily activities to maximize time effectiveness. As importantly, AgentAchieve provides the flexibility the true agent-entrepreneur requires to personalize processes and communications that nurture client relationships.

It’s a lofty goal, but in AgentAchieve, we’ve attempted to provide the technology “venue” that gives both the broker and the self-employed agent access to the best each has to offer the other. Long live the broker-agent partnership.

Learn how to lower costs and boost profits