From ISA to Director of Opportunities with Lisa Ryan | Ep 038

Back on episode 35 of Real Estate Team OS, I asked seven different team leaders and Team Ridge owners to name a person, process or technology that they could not have built their business without. And Micah Harper immediately went to his ISA team. I had a lot of questions for him on the spot, but then also after we were done recording and he said, you need to talk with our Director of Opportunities, Lisa Ryan. About four years ago, Lisa joined as an ISA on that team. She then became inside Sales Manager and ultimately Director of Opportunities. So she talks about that leadership journey. She also talks about the role in the function. What do their daily activities look like? How are they compensated, including commissions and incentives? How do they build trusting relationships with agents? What does the ISA to agent handoff look like? When and why is an ISA empowered to take that opportunity back from the agent? What are the key metrics that Lisa is paying attention to? What does ISA coaching and training look like? All that and so much more with Exquisite's Director of Opportunities, Lisa Ryan. Right now on Real Estate Team os.

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Lisa, I am so glad that Micah introduced us. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I love that you have embodied and now we're empowering the ISA role at Exquisite Properties. And welcome to Real Estate Team os.

I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

I can't wait to get into this ISA function that Micah gave us a glimpse of on episode 35. I think he shared like three or four minutes on it. You, I had a lot more questions for him even after we were recording together. He's like, you need to talk to Lisa. I was like, yes, I do. And we need to do it recorded. So we'll get into all that. But I'm going to start where we always do, which is a must have characteristic of a high performing team.

What comes to mind for you must have characteristic of a high performing team, I would have to say is a great leader. And Micah does a fantastic job of being, being present and in the office because we want everybody in the office. You know, I know agents are self employed, independent contractors, but when he's here, it creates this culture of this sort of presence, like, I'm available, come to me. And so leadership, you know, I manage the inside sales agents. And so it's when you have great leaders in place. You have a great high performing operating team.

I really appreciate this sensitivity to having people physically present with one another. It's a bias that I have and it's sort of my challenges with my remote job. I always loved being in the office with people. I know that you joined the team and we'll get into that in just a minute. I know that you joined the team somewhere in that, like, initial pandemic window. Was there a period when you were all dispersed? And if so, talk about that contrast between being like not together versus being together.

Yeah, you know, so I actually came in still during the pandemic. I'd say about. I just missed that window where everybody was not in the office. But I mean, again, like I said, I can't imagine. I hear stories all the time where people escrow officers are dropping things off at real estate brokerages and nobody's there. It's like a desert town. And it just, it's. I don't understand how a group. I would never personally be able to be successful if I wasn't surrounded by other agents who were successful. I see agents here in the office all the time and they're all feeding off of what's happening, what fires they're putting out in the middle of their contracts and they're able to help each other on here. Oh, I had that same situation happen. Here's what I did differently. And so it's definitely impactful on anyone's business.

Yeah, there's so much learning that goes on and some of it's formal, most of it's informal. Some of it is just. I call it like osmosis. You know, you're just being around other people and you learn things by the way they talk, by the way they handle themselves, by the way they handle unique situations. Perhaps sometimes it's a, you know, a moment of conflict between team members that needs to be resolved. And you watch the way someone does it and you're learning even if you're not saying, you know, I'm focused on conflict resolution today. You know, you're just learning these things and it. And it advances the culture internally as well. That's why I like that you mentioned the modeling that, that Micah does and the way that people follow onto that. So tell us a little bit about how you did join up with exquisite properties. How did that go?

Yeah, so I moved here from Chicago to San Antonio, Texas, post mid pandemic, and I was actually applying for what's called a showing partner position where you shadow one of our Top producing agents for a 12 month period. And when I came in they had asked me if I was interested in the ISA position. And I was like, the what? They kept saying ISA and I was like, I don't know what you're saying, what is an isa? And so I sort of googled it. What is a real estate inside sales agent? And I, and I thought to myself, this might work for me. No, I have no experience and I have no idea what I'm doing. And so why don't I take it slower and start out here. And so I fell in love with it. I loved doing the lead generating, being in the office Monday through Friday 8 to 4. And so what happened is I created this itch to actually go out and be in the field and do it on my own. And so I finally moved on to that showing partner role and I absolutely hated it. I said this is not going to work for my lifestyle. I have kids, I have a family, I cannot be grinding it out like this day in. And so I, I came back want the nisa. And that's when there was an opportunity available to actually be the inside sales manager. And so that's how I got into the role. So I never really asked to be in this leadership position. It just kind of fell in my lap. I've never been in a leadership role and I have turned it into an amazing team and I love what I do.

I know that someone just heard you say, I thought I wanted to be an agent. I had that itch. You know, you had been engaging with agents, you had been help helping them. You'd probably observed what the opportunity looked like from the outside. I would love for you to talk to whether it's an ISA who maybe has that itch or whether it's an agent who's wondering, are there other staff positions I should maybe consider? Because I don't know if I'm in my right seat. Talk a little bit about the contrast between those two roles and what was it for you that maybe was the initial itch and what was it about your experience that made you say, you know what? I think I would be better off in a variety of ways. Lifestyle probably included doing this other role. Like what sparked your interest and how did you weigh those two options?

Yeah, so that's a great question because you know, as an inside sales agent, you're the first impression on this lead. They talk to you first. They're so excited to be connecting with a real estate agent. For most, it's their first time purchasing a property and so to go from that excitement and usually, and typically there's some sort of follow up or nurturing involved. And so you become best friends and then it gets to a point where you have to let them go and you're sad to let them go. And so it got to a point I'm such a relationship kind of person that I wanted to actually see what it was like to be on the side of the transaction where they finally get to the closing table. And I wanted to be a part of that. But in a way, the ISAs still are part of that and they make it all. They're constantly following up with the lead and even sometimes the lead will actually turn around and call the ISA back and let them know like how their experience has been going. And it's just, it's the greatest feeling. But we do understand that a lot of times an inside sales agent takes on the position to get their feet wet before they just dive right into the business. And I never like considering this position an entry level. I don't like using that word because it's not an entry level position because I do have a senior ISA right now. She's been doing it for a little over two years. So this is a career path for some. But not everybody wants to be on the back end of the transaction and would like to. So we do ask that a lot of ISAs stay in it for at least 12 months. Because a lot of the work that you're doing in those first few months, you're not going to see those commissions until six to 12 months. And so it wouldn't make sense to just kind of dabble in it and then, and then step away.

Two things that we're absolutely going to get into. One is this idea of being part of the commission at close, participating in that directly. I know that's not totally unique to you all, but I know some people don't do it that way. In addition, this idea of how close you get to the client, I think that is somewhat unique to the way that you all are doing. I mean, certainly there's a lot of back and forth, but typically a lot of folks will use this as a vet and qualify the opportunity and hand it off maybe earlier than you all are if you're developing that, that nature of a relationship with somebody. So we'll get into that. But I would love for you to talk a little bit about exquisite properties, you know, market size, culture, structure, however you want to characterize the organization at large and then speak specifically about your ISA team. In the context of exquisite properties.

Yeah, exquisite properties. We. We have an entire team working together. So we have about 40 agents. About 30 of those are actually in production. The rest are just staff. We have a transaction coordinator, a listing coordinator, director of operations, an operating manager, and then we have our inside sales department. I currently have five inside sales agents. And we truly are the engine of the company. We do all of the lead generating, we vet all of the leads, and we follow up with these opportunities. So we don't just set appointments and then never follow through with it. And a lot of my role falls into that of following up on the leads to make sure that nothing, the ball doesn't get dropped and that nothing ever gets neglected. And I feel like the fortune is always in the follow up. And so I'm sort of that buffer between the ISAs in these opportunities to make sure that they get taken care of really good.

So your title, I believe you're the first person to be on this show with the title Director of Opportunities. I'd love for you to talk about that language. I think I personally have long been of the mind that language matters a lot. It affects, you know, it frames things a particular way, it sets an impression. There's a cultural aspect to it as well. Talk about opportunities. When did your title change that way? And what does opportunity mean to you and to the organization from a cultural perspective?

Yeah, so it happened recently. So I was the inside sales manager. I am the team lead. I'm the manager of the isa. But I recently started coaching some other teams across the country who were looking to develop inside sales program. And that's really when the word came to me because I had to explain, a lot of it has to do with agent adoption. And why should I have ISAs scrubbing these leads? Why should some of my commission be put off onto them? And so we came up with the word opportunities because we kind of went through a market shift just like everybody else did, where rates went from historically low. A ton of agents thought, well, let me get into the real estate industry. And now they're sort of falling off. But nothing really changed in real estate. You know, the market has just normalized. But once that shift happened, I felt a lot of the blame got shifted toward the ISAs and the fact that the quality of the leads were low and the, you know, we weren't getting enough opportunities when that really wasn't the case. And so I wanted to paint this picture that an opportunity is anybody who wants to make a move, they're either looking to Buy or sell. They don't have a commitment to any other real estate agent. And we don't focus on the financing and we don't focus on the time frame. Of course we'll ask that question to sort of give the agents a heads up on who they're going to be meeting and nurturing, but whether this lead is ready to go right now, which it's very rare that they're hot and ready, but it is for the agent to sort of build up their pipeline and database. And so if you want to be a part of this exquisite team and exquisite culture, we'll provide you with these opportunities. But they definitely are going to need some nurturing and some tlc. And so if that's not the style that an agent has been operating on, where of course my face is in my database at least an hour a day, like I have no problem filing up with these leads, then they're going to be successful. Some of our top producing agents here, they think of everything as an opportunity. So my ISAs probably think I'm crazy for this. But if a solicitor calls through and they're like, hey, we would love to power wash your clients driveways and they're like, no, sorry, we already have somebody. I say no. I thank them for thinking of us. But I also ask if they're a homeowner. There's an opportunity in everybody. If they're a homeowner now I can add them to my database and it just constantly keeps growing.

It's interesting. I've never been an ISA and I've never been a real estate agent, although I've talked with a number of both. When I think about teams that are operating at a really, really high level, they're putting people, processes and technology in place to keep real estate agents in their most dollar productive activities. In an isa, doing a lot of this legwork and a lot of the back and forth and getting answers to all those questions essentially like doing all the discovery and then handing off for, you know, kind of diagnosis and prescription and creating a partnership around that seems like such an easy and obvious win for agents. I would love to know whether it's you, you know, consulting other teams about how to build a healthy ISA function and, or maybe when you all have brought agents in from other organizations that aren't used to working this way, what are some of the concerns or what are some of the objections? To me it seems like a no brainer, like an administrator, great value add and a great partnership. Like it seems like an attractive thing. You could Recruit agents off a healthy ISA function, in my opinion. But I'm, you know, not that can't be completely true either. So I'd love for you to speak to that.

Yeah, and so I love that we're going to talk about this because a lot of the teams that I talk to, it's difficult to get the agents to adopt into this idea of having an isa. So I notice on my end, it's hard for the ISAs to not get that itch that we talked about earlier to go out in the field. And once they see that the follow up has sort of fallen off and that there may be neglect and that an agent may be dropping the ball, it's like they want to pick it up and feel like, I can do it, like I know I can do it. But at the same time, an agent is looking at an ISA and saying, I can do that, I can take the call. But they really can't. And the huge, the biggest difference is that an ISA on that first phone call meeting the lead is not as attached to the outcome of it as an agent is who has no deals in the pipeline, who can't pay their bills to them. They would approach that call much differently than an inside sales agent whose only job is to keep this person's excitement level up here, be excited that we got connected, reassure them that we have a whole team working behind them and that we're here to take them by the hand. And whether it's now, a year from now, five years from now, we're gonna, they're gonna be closing with Exquisite as well as their family, their friends, everybody but an agent taking those types of calls, they can't remove themselves from the situation that they're in right now. And agents typically will either talk somebody out of the appointment or talk about financing without even meeting this person face to face. And so, but our agents, everybody has adopted into this idea that we have ISAs working for them. And so of course there's always going to be these little kinks we work out, especially if the market's about to change here shortly. And so we're always going to constantly going to have to be growing and adapting to what's happening in the market. And you know, we have to, it's so crucial if someone's going to grow an ISA department, that agents and ISAs work hand in hand, that we are aware that the agent is doing their absolute best and hardest to get this deal to the closing table. Because the way we structure our pay, the ISA's income is dependent on it closing. And the ISAs have to understand that or the agents have to also understand that the ISAs are doing everything in their power to set them up on an appointment that they have qualified. You know, it's never the intention. Our agents know that it's not the intention of an ISA to send somebody out in the middle of rush hour traffic for a sort of iffy, risky appointment. They trust that the ISA has scrubbed this lead to their best ability and that we're not just wasting anyone's time.

One thing you said right off the top there that was very interesting to me is that, you know, an agent who's struggling and wondering when their next paycheck is coming is going to have a different conversation. It's going to look different, it's going to sound different, it's going to feel different than an ISA who's on a salary plus commission or a base pay plus commission type of situation. Talk a little bit about comp, because you also mentioned too early on like some agents wonder, like why would I give some part of my commission into, you know, the ISA's work. I think, you know, once you have a healthy partnership, it's a no brainer. I mean you just gave a great example. I'm not going to put you in a situation that's going to waste your time and therefore waste your money. Essentially I'm going to keep you in dollar productive activities and you need to trust me in that. Once that trust is built, it's a no brainer. But I think this financial incentive is a key part of building that up and starting to build that culture and build that trust. So talk about comp for your team and how that works.

Yeah, we typically when we hire an ISA those first six months, their base salary is going to be just a little bit higher than those after six months. And the reason for that is it's going to take some time to build up their business. So it's 90 days of training, it's a lot of training to work out a follow up boss, our main database. And so about the six month period is when they're going to start seeing their first few closings and on inconsistently. And so we typically will bring that base pay down and that base pay is structured whatever in our market it's just enough to pay the bills. And so we bring that down after six months and typically an ISA will get 5% of the gross commission of a buy side and then 10% on a lip sync. We're mostly buyer appointments and about 20% of our business is listing. So we comp the ISAs at 10% on the gross commission of those. But of course there's a ton of bonuses in play. So for some reason, the younger kids out here these days are motivated less by money and more by work from home days. And so I have a lot of lead sources that are sort of harder to catch and harder to engage the customers on. And so I'll run competitions. The first one to set up this many appointments, you can either get a work from home day or a hundred dollars. There's ways I give out gas cards. Whoever sets five listing presentations first will get a gift certificate to get their nails done or another gas card, depending on if it's a female or a male. So lots of opportunities to make extra cash. As soon as they hit 25 closings in a quarter, they get a work credit for new work gear. If they want a new keyboard or mouse pad. If they hit 50 closings, they get another credit. So a ton of different opportunities for them to make extra income. They're allowed to recruit as well, and they're allowed to bring in their own sphere deal. So ton of extra ways to make extra money on top of what they're already doing.

Really cool. I love how it sounds like you've made it fun and engaging and found ways to incentivize different people who are motivated differently. Talk about the activity. So obviously you have some lead sources, so feel free to break those down however you wish. And then you have what I think most people would agree, and I think you would too, that the database is the ultimate lead source. You know, you have, you know all these people at various stages of relationship. Some you've done business with, some you haven't. But just talk about, like, who are these ISAs engaging, kind of what does that process and flow look like? Do you have to earn your way into accessing some opportunities and managing and driving those forward? Who are we talking to and how is that structured?

Yeah, so typically when I take a new ISA on, they are calling out of a huge database. We have about a bucket of 35,000 leads that are sitting there from agents who maybe we've asked to leave or who moved on to do something else. ISAs that have come and gone and moved within the company. So ton of opportunities in that bucket. And I will typically have an ISA be calling out of there for the first 90 days and making sure that they can set what we call an outbound call, that they can pick up the phone and outwardly reach out to somebody and get them excited again and back in the market. It's not until that three month mark where I will allow an ISA to take an inbound call. So we are one of three partners with Zillow here in the San Antonio area. We have great working relationships with other lead sources as well as realtor.com is one of them. We call it the bat phone. So if you're in charge of the bat phone that day, you get all of the new incoming leads. And what's happening is you'll work on those incoming leads. And for those leads that maybe you weren't able to connect with or maybe they weren't ready or they're not in town or there was some sort of follow up, you'll be nurturing that lead. On those days that you're not on call and your database just grows and grows and grows. The more you have access to the inbound calls and the more outbound calls you make. I require an ISA to make about 1,000 calls a week, about 200 a day. On the days that they're not taking those incoming calls, they're working inside their databases, sending out action plans, batch emails, running searches for leads. They'll do that as well. Kind of nudging those nurturers that they couldn't get out looking right away to go and take a look at some properties over the weekend. We use Zillow a lot and so we can see their Zillow activity and we can see who's favoriting properties and who's been online looking. And so we're nudging those types of leads to get back out looking. And at the same time we're also following up with those opportunities that we sat with agents three months back, six months back, even 12 months back. So a lot of opportunities to call out of out of all the lead sources that we have, which is plenty. I still am a huge believer that your own database is your best lead source. All the gold is going to be inside of there. Whether you have. We have 50,000 leads, but it doesn't matter what the number is. We should be calling these opportunities, asking for referrals, asking if they have friends or families in other states, countries who are looking to move to whatever your city you're at. But I feel like that's so important. A lot of agents don't really push for more referrals and they don't have a big database as far as fear leads, when most of them are just sitting there in their database not getting touched.

Yeah, we're Calling into our existing database, we're looking to create conversations and relationships. I earn my way into accessing the bat phone that also helps build my databases, gives me more people to stay in touch with. I love the language you've used a couple of times now about, like, keeping that excitement level higher, rekindling that excitement. How do you coordinate which opportunities go to which agents from the ISA and what needs to be true of that opportunity for it to be ready for an agent. And then, then maybe after that, we'll talk into the opportunity to take that back if things don't go very well. But like, or, or, or the excitement level tapers off or whatever the case may be. But what do we. What do we know about the opportunity that says, okay, this is going to be handed off to an agent now? And what agents get those? Like, how does that work?

So at the point that a lead is ready to be handed off, there's a few things happening. There's either a meeting place, so whether it's at someone's house for a listing presentation, or this person wants to go and see the house. So we will set it up from start to finish and go as far as to dropping it on our agent's calendar, getting it approved in showing time, introducing them in a group text. But there's also what we call a contact in virtual tours. You know, we're in San Antonio, Texas, a very desirable part of the country right now. And so we get a lot of opportunities, call in who are sort of thinking about moving here. And so we will send out agents to meet virtually. But there comes to a point, too, where our inside sales agents are licensed realtors, but there's only so far. I want them to keep the conversation going. I want them to curb it at some point and let the agent step in and carry on that conversation. So a lot of times, opportunities will ask about any repairs done or any steps in the whole process, but I really don't want the Isaac sort of engaging with them. And so at that point, we'll hand it off as, hey, you know, the isds do a great job of really identifying who they are. I'm an inside sales agent here at Exclusive Properties. I'm going to be handing you off to one of my top agents. It's somebody that I work very closely with here at the office, so they know that we're not a third party or in another country. And we always let them know, I'm going to introduce you from my personal cell phone, integrate text. And from there, we send them off and the ISA will not re engage them until the point of maybe some sort of neglect. But we do a great job of identifying who we are and who they're going to be talking to next. So that way there's never any confusion or the lead is never coming back to the isa. Now we do hand it off, but we don't ever forget about it. And so a lot of my job plays into that. I am really the buffer between the ISAs and, and the agent. So a lot of my job has to do with following up on any opportunity that we set since the first. From the first of the year, even years back, I'll make sure that no agent is sort of dropping the ball and falling behind. And that way I don't want the ISA doing this because I want them setting it and forgetting it and focusing on generating more opportunities. The more dials that the ISAs make, the more conversations they have, the more appointments they're going to set and appointments, spring closings. And so that's what I want them to focus on. And I am the client relations manager as well. It's an umbrella under the director of opportunities. But I will come in two days after an appointment is set, and I will reach out to the lead and ask, how did it go with said agent? Is there anything that we can do for you right now at this time? And if I don't hear back from them, I'm still reaching out on the 10 day. And after the 10th day, I'll even reach out at the 40th day. And so that way, if something did happen, you know, everybody, we're human. Some people don't hit it off as good as other agents. If somebody didn't like who we paired them with, I can intercept that early on and hand it off to a different agent. So we keep these systems in place to make, to ensure that our conversion stays up.

That initial pairing is it that ISAs are matched up with agents, or are you as the, as the kind of buffer between the two or kind of like, you know, managing it? Talk about that process of which agents get those appointments.

One of the most difficult things for ISAs when I'm onboarding and training a new ISA is not how to make an outbound call, how to push through objections. It's how to schedule who is next in rotation. It's been something that has been so difficult for everyone to grasp because we have so many agents, so many opportunities, and there's probably a better system in place if anyone out there listening can help us figure this out, but we use a Google sheet and we have everybody's name in line and they have to go to the next person. If somebody wants to see a Property stay at 5, they're just going next on that line, who's up for one? And we're going to their calendar and we're checking to see if that agent is available. And if that agent is not, we're skipping to the next one. We're not pulling that first agent out of rotation, we're just skipping over them. And then it creates this chain of skipping if everyone's busy. And so it can be very time consuming and difficult on them. We don't, our agents work all across San Antonio, so we don't break it up in quadrants of any sort. They'll cover all areas. Now, we do have different rotations for buyer appointments. Agents have to prove themselves and keep themselves to stay on listing presentations because that's a different type of consumer. And we have a separate rotation for Spanish speaking agents because then everybody speaks Spanish and we're in the market for that. And then we have those, we keep it an option for those who want to take those contacts and virtual tours because it can be a lot. And so some of our top producing agents don't really want to get bogged down in those conversations and are just strictly working on the buyer and listing appointments.

Cool. I think you mentioned it, but I'd love to know, like, what circumstances would drive an ISA to take that relationship back and again, kind of like manage that excitement level. You mentioned one that, you know, maybe it's a potentially not a great match, like a, like it didn't work out that way and you're kind of vetting that. And certainly that would bring someone maybe back into the ISA who was handling them before. But what are some other circumstances where an ISA would say, you know what, I need to do more work here. This makes more sense for me to do than you. Like, what are some of those circumstances?

Yeah. So when do we take a lead back? This is one of the top aspects.

That's what I should have said.

Yes, I always get. Yeah. So we will take, we will take a lead back when we notice that there is visibly neglect happening. What is, what do you mean by visible neglect? So it's all out of the database. We require notes every 30 days. And so if we don't see a note indicating that, hey, I met them at their property. They wanted to sell, but they need to work on some renovations. It's going to take them a few Months. They ask that I check back in around fall time. I can read that and say, okay, maybe that's why I don't see communication happening every two to three weeks. But when we see a meeting, note that we met, I'm going to set them up on some properties. And a lot of time has gone by without a check in. The ISA will not ask no if, ands or buts. We'll just take the lead back. And that's where this all ties into. Opportunity. Here we gave you opportunity to meet with somebody who is looking to buy or sell and to nurture it in your database. And if we see that not happening, then we're going to take that opportunity back and we're going to continue working it and recycle it. Because maybe you had, maybe this agent had a lot going on in their life at that time and they did drop the ball and had fallen behind on their business. That's where we'll come in. Like, let us take care of it. We just don't want to lose the opportunity to anybody else, any of our competitors. We just want to make sure that they're getting taken care of at the end of the day. At the end of the day. And the agents understand that. They know that we're not here just hunting for opportunities out of their database. We're just here to keep a second eye on everything and make sure that we have this operating efficiently.

Really good. I would love to know a little bit about your own journey. And it's kind of on behalf of someone who maybe has one or two ISAs. They're thinking like, okay, it might be time to create more leverage for our agents. And this is one spot to really do that. For all the reasons you've shared over the past half hour. It's an obvious benefit, especially in a team environment. What was your journey like? Talk about the. I assume you were the best or one of the best ISAs at the time, which is a very common reason why someone gets, gets elevated to no matter what it is. This happened to me in my career. You're really good at your job. We need someone to run this team of people who are doing that job. So it's going to be you. But it's like this is a different job than the job I was doing before and I may or may not be good at it, frankly. It happens to real estate agents who start teams as well. They're like, oh, I actually really like being an amazing high producing agent. I actually kind of don't like this leadership thing. So I'd love for you to talk about your own journey. What was that like for you? What. What was maybe hard about it? What was good about it? And again, I'm kind of asking on behalf of someone who's looking at the one or two ISAs they have, wondering if they should build it out and what, what do they need to do to make sure it gets built out well. And certainly part of that is investing in and believing in a leader. So talk about your own leadership journey from ISA to ISA manager to Director of Opportunities, which you said earlier is kind of a hybrid role. You've got a lot of different responses.

Yeah, so like I said, I started out as an inside sales agent. I fell in love with it. I learned how to really win at this game, and it's creating relationships with people and making sure that the follow up is huge. So I had a very tight follow up. I never let anything slip through the cracks. I never let anything wait too long until I kept in contact with someone. And even when I went on to be a showing partner, to dabble in that, I still had opportunities when I was in ISA still reaching back out to me saying, hey, Lisa, I'm finally ready. And I'm like, oh, I can't help you right now. I'll get you with somebody else. But it got to a point where, you know, we were constantly doing a lot of lead generating and our relationship with Zillow has only gotten better and they've been wanting us to grow as a team. And so there gets to be a point where you're going to go through a lot of ISAs, and I have gone through a lot of ISAs. I'm sort of a sucker when I'm interviewing and anybody can tell me, like, I'm motivated, I'm hungry, I can definitely make phone calls in a room full of people. And I'm like, that's awesome. And then I take them onto the team and I'm like, you can't make phone calls in a room full of people. And so there can be a lot of turn and burn in the position. But once we have. It took us a while to get to five, because. And five is the most that we've ever had at any given point, including myself. And we still are looking to hire more. So it's going to take time and it's going to take a process because a lot of times the ISA realizes that this isn't the role for me or something happens in their own personal lives. But once you feel like you have a solid two or three ISAs, it's best that somebody steps up and use their experience in that position for some time to sort of help everybody else. Because, you know, the market's constantly changing and so somebody has to be there to say, hey, I'm going to throw it out there that we should be doing this moving forward or hey, I think that this isn't working, let's give it a shot and change things up. But somebody who can take a step back and look at how everything is operating at a high level while everybody else can just focus on what they're doing working out of their database every day. And so that's when it's important to make sure that we have somebody who's going to be that team lead, who can step in and help everybody push these objections that we're hearing and focus on all of the numbers. How many listings have we set? Where are we lacking? What could we be doing better? What's our show up rate right now and go from there? Because everybody can use coaching, I can use some coaching. Everybody has something to learn from. Once somebody can get that department up and running. It is important to eventually put somebody who's going to be a director of opportunities or a team lead in there.

If you have a dashboard, what's on your dashboard? Or you know, if you're making sure that you're on track, you know, halfway through a quarter, like, you know, what, what's going well, what's going poorly, like what are you keeping an eye on?

Yeah. So aside from measuring how many appointments we're setting, making sure that an ISA is consistent too, we don't want to have months where a lot of appointments are set and then not so many and then a lot. So we're looking for consistency as far as number of calls made, appointments that. But at the same time we're measuring their show up rate, we want to make sure that they're not throwing a bunch of stuff out there, hoping that it sticks. I love risky appointments, but we try to keep risk to a minimum. And so we have one of the highest show up rates in the country. We applaud ourselves on that. We're sitting at just under 90%. So of the just over a thousand opportunities that we set for our agents, almost 90% of those have shown up. And that's important because whenever I see somebody and it's typically a newer ISA who I've taken on because they're excited, they're getting access to the bat phone, they're setting appointments, it's like they're almost setting up everything a little too much and not asking the questions that we should be. And so I like to step in and take a look at that and say, okay, there's some red flags that we're missing and I'll go back and follow up. Boss will allow you to play back those calls. Zillow has the capability to go back and listen to those calls. And so there's a coaching opportunity for the ISA for me to listen to that, catch those red flags and bring it to their attention. Like this is what we're hearing right there at minute one and eight seconds. That's the red flag right there. We're going to correct that. We're not going to do that moving forward. And then I also like to measure inbound versus outbound rate. We had talked about that a little earlier on the call, but it's very important that an ISA isn't dependent on the bat phone and just taking Zillow calls. Look, my 10 year old son can answer a Zillow call. When I was in isa, he almost got the script down to Zillow's AI Alex. In the beginning, he used to mock it in the backseat as they used to yell at him like, shush, shush. So anybody can take an inbound call. Somebody coming in saying, I want to see 123 Main street at this time, great. But I need to make sure that you can follow up with these leads, nurture them, stay in front of them, and actually set an outbound appointment for somebody that you hustled and stay on top of. Because being a great ISA and an agent as well, a lot has to do with hustling. You have to understand that you're not bothering these people. They inquired at some point, whether it was yesterday or whether it was a year ago or two years ago, you inquired through us and we want to make sure that we follow through. And so I like to measure that the ISA has a good ratio for inbound versus outbound. Now, of course, our inbound volume is pretty high, so realistic number, I'd love to be at 50 50, but if that ISA set 20 appointments, that would be me asking them to send 20 outbound. But I want to make sure that they're also doing what they need to every single day when they're not on call. And then of course, you know, Zillow has a lot of metrics as well. They're measuring ALM answer rates. I want to, I need to make sure that the ISAs are not just working here at the office, but that when they go home, they're with their friends and families. That they're also, I mean, it's real estate. We all, we're working 24 7. And that they're working on the weekends as well?

Yeah, that's. I mean, that's a key. Again, that trust and mutual respect between agent and isa. I think that's part of it too, is like, man, this person's really on top of it. Give me a quick snapshot of like meeting cadence. It sounds like you're doing small group training, you're doing one on one coaching, you know, you're doing call playback. I assume you're doing that one on one. And in group settings. What, what is like a, a month look like in terms of meetings for an isa who's making these calls? Are, you know, are you meeting with them weekly or are you meeting with them monthly? One on one? What small group look like? And is there like a larger all agent, all ISA meeting? Like, what does the meeting cadence look like to kind of keep everyone on the same page and kind of manage some of this communication and correction and feedback and, you know, patting each other on the back and again, lighting fires when necessary.

Yeah. So I manage a training every single Wednesday. And then Micah, our broker, will take care of Friday trainings. And my broker focuses more on everything contractual when it comes to negotiating and how to build your database and get asked for referrals. So I focus a lot on scripting, you know, how to make a phone call, the ins and outs. I'll even make live calls in front of the agents so they can kind of, you know, everyone's scared, phone calls are scary. And so I try to ease their worries when it comes to that. Recently we just shifted into follow up bots from a different database. So a lot of my attention right now has been focused on managing that database, working your smart list best practices, how to stay on top, not miss an opportunity, how to engage leads that are actively looking online. And so those sorts of trainings have been very relevant, especially to our team right now and what we're going through. Recently I just started this really cool training series. It's a spoof of the show Love is Blind on Netflix. And I called it Sales is Blind. And we've been doing it once a month and I just had my best turnout yesterday. Essentially what we're doing is sitting back to back to each other and I'll have an agent paired with an ISA and they'll role play a different scenario in front of everybody. And the scenario is very relevant to what's happening in the market right now. So with recent changes with the NAR settlement, we've been having an agent talk defending their commission, you know, defending their, just talking about whatever, whatever we're seeing, whatever agents are seeing out there, we're working on. And so for more of an internal Aspect with the ISAs, our meetings are more what could we be doing better? This is, you know, we keep, we keep hearing that your mat that your, your sellers are saying that they want to wait until after the election. You know, there's all this election talk. So it's like how are we going to overcome that? So like let's role play. Every single Friday we sit as a group and I have scorecards and we grade each other Zillow calls. So I'll pick at random somebody's recorded Zillow call. And the point of it is not to, just to give constructive criticism. You know, we'll ask each other how many open ended questions to decide if they ask, did they ask for the appointment? What was the follow up, did they give it a deadline? And we'll, we'll do this for each one of them and sometimes the agents will sit on it. They love when we, when we do that and we'll do it actually every single week.

I love it. I again this reminds me of your kind of incentives and, and contests and things. It's like clever, engaging, fun, but all oriented around the end goal. So smart. You're, I mean I just feel like you're in the right seat and, and I really appreciate you sharing all this really practical stuff. Obviously there's some, I creep into this zone with regard to like the calls themselves. I mean some people are leveraging like bots essentially to make some of these calls. I have my own thoughts and feelings and opinions about it. You know, ultimately I guess the data will be the arbiter of, of truth. But like how do you think about that? Is anything interesting or exciting about that? Is there, do you have any concerns about it? Are you like, now my humans will smoke those machines. Like, like where are you at with this?

Yeah, and it's, I feel very strong about AI and I'm, I'm not the biggest fan and sorry to those that we've, we've dabbled with a few different platforms that are super successful and have helped other people's businesses. But we have a system in place, have real humans here and able to do the work. And I just, it's hard for me to understand how that can actually work how that engagement is really there. And so when we dabbled in it, yes, of course we have, we've used AI to send out messages to sort of see if there's a pulse. But once we get a pulse, we have to get them back on the line because nobody is going to talk about what happened or their motivation or, you know, they're not going to talk about their feelings in a text or an email. But if you ask the right questions and you can get somebody on the line and you do it the right way, they very much so will open up to you and divulge this sort of information that can help you either overcome this obstacle that's holding them back or figure out a game plan to get them to the finish line. But it's been very difficult to do that with AI and I think a lot of people are catching on to this AI and we have the ISAs here. And the whole point of it is, like I said, I've been so successful at this position and the ISAs that I have right now because of their personalities and their capability to engage with these opportunities on a personal level. You know, when I hear them laughing in their offices while on the phone with them and sort of relating to them even on, you know, you know, my parents have gone through a divorce or I understand my grandpa's sickness as well, but AI cannot do that. And so we've, you know, we've dabbled in it. Not a huge fan, but I do know that it works for other teams and so if it's working for you, I'd say continue to do it.

Yeah, really well said. I mean, one again, one of the themes, I already called it out before, but this idea of like maintaining an excitement level, it speaks to this in what you just shared there at the end. There's an emotional aspect of it in particular, there is an empathetic aspect of it in some situations. And you know, I feel like the machine at this point and probably for the near term at least is perhaps good at a fact finding mission. But some of these, like the richer human side of it. And by the way, for folks watching and listening, episode 36 I did with Taylor Hack, we talked in depth about great uses of AI in your business. But one of the things he called out about an excellent, excellent customer experiences go out into the audience. You know, you've got this experience designed with people and machines and if you can see the wires, essentially, if the machines draw attention to themselves, you need to go back and do it differently. So you need to see it from the customer side. And you kind of just spoke to that as well too. I mean people are catching on to and it's like I'm sharing a lot of personal stuff with you. This is an exciting or scary or important or sad. Like sometimes listing is sad bad. Like I need to. I have to sell this house versus circumstance that has a lot of emotion attached to it. And so I don't want to see the wires. I want someone to understand me, to care about me. And as you already said too is like, give me a plan to make this better. So anyway, I'm with you on that. Appreciate you sharing that. And again, episode 36 with Taylor Hack for people that are like, yeah, I don't know how I feel about this. He gives a lot of really thoughtful stuff there. So this has been an absolute pleasure. Lisa, I appreciate you so much. Before I let you go, I would love to know what your favorite team to root for is. Besides exquisite or the best team you've ever been a member of. Besides Exquisite.

My favorite team to root for. This is going to be embarrassing, but it's actually my fantasy football team every single year. I. I'm from Chicago. I can't say I'm. The Bears are in a tough spot and so I got into fantasy a few years ago and and I'm always rooting for myself and my fantasy team.

I love it. That's really good. By the way. I mean the skill positions like the Bears, there's potential there. I feel like they got all of it. Anyway, what is one of your most frivolous purchases or what's a cheapskate habit that you continue to hold onto?

Cheapskate habit that I continue to hold onto. And I know my husband would probably love if I can drop is. In college, my go to food was ramen. Not like the good ramen, but the 10 cent. I think it's actually up to 30 cents now. The little hard packaged one that you boil in water and I continue to use that on my cheat days. I continue to eat it almost once a week and so I'd love to drop that.

That's funny. Those come like wrapped up in like a 20 pack or something.

Don't even know what it is. I've never.

I mean it's a lot of calories for. For a very low cost. It's a very practical decision. When you are investing time in learning, growing and developing, what are you doing? Or when you're investing time in resting, relaxing and recharging, what are you doing?

This position requires a lot of my time as real estate in general and so it's important that we all take care of ourselves. And so I always take time to put my phone down and I have two little ones and so I really enjoy spending time with them. Rolling around on the floor, going on walks with the family and of course reality tv. For some reason it's like adult cartoons and it helps me kind of just recharge. Even if I'm not honed in on it, just having it in the background, I can sort of forget about everything else and that helps out.

I love the language of adult cartoons. It's so good. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. If anyone has gotten to this point, they may want to learn more about you or about the business that you all are building. Where would you send someone to follow up on this conversation?

Yeah, so we are on Instagram and Facebook as well. Everyone should follow ISAs of SA on TikTok. The ISA team does some really funny TikToks on there. But most importantly we do a six month myself, I teach a. We offer a coaching program, a six month mastermind. And if somebody is interested you can email me@Lisa exquisitesa.com I'd love an opportunity to either help you develop this ISA department or even we can. I can coach your ISAs and get them all set up on the roll or if you just want to talk more about it, you can email me there.

For folks watching and listening, I always write these episodes up. Whether you're on the website realestateteamos.com watching or listening. I embed that video and the audio there. Whether you're watching in YouTube or you're listening in your favorite podcast app, there's a description down below of this episode, all the things that we kind of COVID But I also link up all the things that are mentioned. So all that stuff is right down below including your email address. I appreciate you so much Lisa and I hope you have a great afternoon.

Thank you so much.

Ethan, thanks for checking out this episode of Team os. Get quick insights all the time by checking out real estate team os on Instagram and on TikTok.