Coldwell Banker team leader Robynn Eccles has run a solo business and was a team member for years before launching her own team, so she has a lot of experience with different real estate models and says “compensation across the board has changed in the three years I’ve had my team.”
She’ll be one of several team leaders contributing to a panel discussion about team compensation in the Teams Track at Inman Connect San Francisco, taking place July 17 through 20 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square.
Eccles runs on an inside sales agent (ISA) model, and she’s adjusted compensation for her ISA from closing-based compensation to compensation hooked to held appointments. “That has been an excellent shift because it keeps the ISA’s financial destiny in their own hands,” she explained. “And as far as the team goes, I always wanted the numbers to be very clean,” so at first she didn’t change compensation according to brokerage fees or where the transactions were coming from — her leads or theirs.
Today, she takes brokerage fees out of each transaction before the split, and she’s bumped up the commission for closing leads from the agent’s sphere of influence so they’re more motivated to mine it. She’s also adjusted compensation so that agents get a little bit more for helping buyers than sellers, as showing buyers homes tends to be less automatable and more time-consuming for agents.
“There are so many different models out there, and the thing I’ve found that works the best is to find the team that most closely matches your personality, your market, where you see growing to (not where you’re starting out) — a personality profile and market you can align with,” she advises. Then model yourself after it as best you can.
Hear Eccles share more of her wisdom on the team compensation panel, taking place at Inman Connect San Francisco this summer.