The Will and Skill Behind Agent Productivity with Justin McLellan [Inside The Team]

Welcome to episode four of Inside the Lawton Team. You've already met the founder, the chief operating officer and the leader of multiple team leaders inside the organization. Today you'll meet Justin McClelland, the head of agent productivity.

I think I am a little bit of an in between on the operations side and what is the sales side of our org.

Productivity, according to Justin, comes down to two key things, the will and the skill, engagement and effectiveness. He breaks all of that down in great detail. You'll find it very helpful. He breaks down the multiple lead sources they have, how they invest in and distribute those leads across hundreds of agents in multiple offices. He was also a high school teacher for nearly 15 years before joining the team. So he talks about the shared passion that drove that work as well as the work he's doing today. Enjoy this conversation with Justin McClellan. Justin, an absolute pleasure to sit down with you. I love what you're doing with the team and we're going to get into what that is. But before we do, I want to ask you what is a must have characteristic of a high performing team?

Must have characteristic for a high performing team? I think a community that works well together and is willing to fail and then find the solution to overcome that failure.

I love that. It reminds me of my conversation with Billy as part of this kind of Inside the Lawton team experience. Um, the use of the language. Pilot really. And we talked about some things that worked great and some things that didn't work great. Like I absolutely see it and hear it within the team.

Yeah, I think, I think the pilot is definitely a term that we use frequently. And I think at any given moment we probably have anywhere from three to six to eight different pilots going on. And every single pilot helps us learn a ton. Whether the pilot was successful or not, it learns, we learn a ton to take on to the next challenge and ultimately continue that, the evolution. So pilot is a really good word of trying things.

Scope that a little bit because I did not ask that to Billy. Scope that a little bit. Like we identify a problem or an opportunity, we develop a thesis about it, we decide how we're going to go after it. We maybe define some. What is success, what is not success? Or like you like, like what is. Yeah. How long should it last? Like, what are some other factors if someone wants to start doing more piloting or experimentation to, to. To optimize the work that they're doing? A, this needs to be constant, I think, and B, like scope that up a little bit.

What's a pilot I think a pilot could be anything really. It could be something that's a massive investment or it could be even like a scripting that you're going to evolve to it. I think it starts with the idea of saying we don't think that we're maximizing an opportunity. So then what's a variation that you could come up with to create that and then you start moving through it. I think the size and scope and length of pilots changes quite frequently. I think about a lot of things that we did early on in some of my experiences where we just piloted even initial phone call script that prioritized getting a face to face opportunity completely get rid of all the qualification questions that are coming into and put the highest priority is that face to face, the belly to belly opportunity and how do you get that on initial call and working through that process. And then so I think that's some of that scope and working through that is then you have to get adopters who's willing to give it a shot and jeopardize a lead because the value of a lead is significant and then trusting the process to say like hey, we're going to continue to work through it and mold it and yeah, so I think that's some of that scope of that pilot piece and how we operate through it is just, it's just a version of a B testing ultimately. And did this one work or should we refine it? Should we take another evolution and keep going?

Yeah, I like that who layer that you added to. Like who should we include in this? Yeah, it's good. I think that's the nature of trust and relationship there. Before we get too much farther, I would love for you to kind of like define, define and scope your role a little bit and kind of who are your key connections inside the organization? Like who are you talking with every day, who are you talking with every week and who do you need to check in with every month?

Yeah, so my role within the team, I guess my existing title as it is is head of Agent Productivity. I think I am a little bit of an in between on the operations side and what is the sales side of our org. I have a lot of operation connections through whether it's Billy or Julia or having those conversations about tracking and reporting or ways that we can increase efficiencies and capacities to the agent. I also have conversations with George about what is our productivity and where our KPIs are leading to as far as our lead and our lag indicators. Michelle, all the way down to our Team leads and even individual agents to say boots on the ground. What's really going on and what is that true experience? That's. I would say that's a lot of my role is, is there's probably nobody within our organization that I don't want to have some kind of conversation with. Yeah, cool.

Do what. Am I characterizing a lot of your focus correctly? When I talk about lead sources and lead distribution?

Yeah, I think lead sources, lead distribution, yeah. And then I would say the efficiency of capitalizing on the opportunities and managing those KPI pieces of productivity.

Cool. Let's break those down then. What are some of your key lead sources? How diversified are they? Which ones are newer, which ones are older? You know, just set that scene for folks.

I think obviously all the aggregate sites we have opportunities from all those. I think in that opportunity that one of the key focuses that we have is like yes, we can bring in opportunities. One of the key focuses is how do we set an appointment or get that at bat to an agent. So they come in through a lot of different funnels. I think probably the most primary one is Zillow just because it's a top. Really top of funnel opportunity or not top of funnel operating but down funnel opportunity. That's top of mind for a lot of our agents, where we get them and how we funnel them in. And that's where some of the instruments of what our follow up boss helps to get them to that appointment opportunity for an agent. So all over the place but trying to put them into one similar funnel.

How if you were to categorize them because you know, I hear things like oh, these leads are great or those leads are terrible. And you often hear some of the, you know, aggregators names associated with like that doesn't seem like it's fair. Um, if you were to cat. Like if you look at all the different lead sources, like are there categories of. You know, you mentioned like these are a bit more down funnel. Right. Like higher intent or something. How do you categorize those in terms of bridging into the two other kind of buckets we mentioned how they get distributed out into the team and. Or whether they're held with ISAs. I'm not sure how that goes. We haven't had that conversation yet in this series. Um, and then, and then how you coach and train to different buckets or categories or you know, depths in the funnel by lead source. So that agents are being really efficient with those opportunities. So I know that I kind of asked a lot there but like are There types of leads that are kin. You know, this came from here, this came from here, this came from here. And they're kind of all. We coach to those the same. But then over here, these came from here, here and here. And we coach to those differently.

I think in my mind all leads are created equal.

Okay.

Right. I think on the other side of that lead, whether it got kind of direct push in and all of a sudden a notification popped up or it's a phone call coming in, there's a person on that other side that needed support and they were looking for an advocate. Like that's at the end of the day what it is. How do you get that connecting point? And a lot of that either it's, it goes into your site, you either have an ISA or it goes direct to agent and they're reaching out calls or it's through text or it's through action plans establishing those things. At the end of the day we want to get it as hey, we have a conversation. I think that's really where we have worked to create different automation systems and processes to get that actual conversation with an agent. And then that's that handoff to that agent is really where I think that magic happens that an agent has. Is in a position to really change somebody's life. Especially in the world of real estate, homeownership is like a gateway to generational wealth. So we really hyper focus on those initial conversations and then those next steps that follow up it. I think one of the things you talked about was we asked about is like how do you view those conversations? How do you evaluate, how do you see those conversations going? Getting really, really gritty with it. As a leader, to support agents within that process means that, that you're listening a lot and you're giving feedback a lot to opportunities. I think there's been months, seasons, quarters that I'll look at it that I'll probably listen to a thousand phone calls. That puts me in a really unique position to add value to agents because they don't get the opportunity to list to it listen to a thousand phone calls or 150 different agents, how they handle different objections or how they respond to different consumer questions and things like that. So I can take that from one piece and pivoted over to another agent that needed that support. That would have been really helpful and that allows them to help them to grow and take that next step. Maybe not on that initial call, but on the next call they get. So I think the success of those opportunities really gets, gets in the weeds of getting in there and listening to those calls and really getting side by side, those agents to help them take that next spot.

Okay, I listened to a thousand phone calls and here are some of my top observations. Because I assume that when you're listening to these calls, you kind of know the outcome as well. In some cases at least, like, you know, this resulted in an appointment or this didn't.

Or sometimes I typically go into the call not knowing the outcome.

Okay, cool. Well, regardless, if you were to. Because I don't think many people watching or listening to this episode could say, in my career, I've listened to a thousand real estate agent phone calls with potential buyers and sellers. And you're doing that like as part of your day to day, week to week. And so what are some things you observe, like things that you wish you never heard again and. Or things you wish you heard a lot more often and then how you, and specifically, I guess to turn into something tactical, how you kind of give that back to the agents.

So I think that to understand where an agent is developmentally, to see how you can better support them, listen the call. I think there's no better way to really assess where an agent's at and how you can support them, I think.

Except sitting behind, like hiding in the corner on a listing presentation.

Yeah, but then that's not, I don't think that's as authentic.

Correct. Yeah, because they're being observed because they understand that.

So I would say one, we, we created a playbook. I think initially there's old school, a lot of old school traditional real estate, that there's a lot of qualifying questions that go in with any client. I think we, we were able to get a small handful of agents to completely disregard the qualifying question and prioritize just meeting a face to face. So when, when, when you get somebody on the call, are you asking for an appointment immediately and are you doing it in a way of an excitement to say, like, oh, let me come along this journey with you or oh my gosh, what a great property. When's a good time to go check it out? And offering that appointment, because that's the end rank, that's the end game goal. And understanding that's the end game goal of every single call. Right. I also think about it in terms, you may not get a yes right away, but do you take a step back and kind of, does that dissuade you from your goal of getting a face to face and meeting this person? Or do you circle back? Maybe they have Questions. So then how do you work through those questions? How do you build trust, gain trust, gain credibility, become that figure of authority. And then how do you reintroduce the idea of seeing a property? And then at that point, if it's still not there, well, maybe we're not there yet. And listening to the cues of what that consumer is. And maybe it isn't about seeing a property. Maybe it's more about the questions on the real estate transaction process. Well, let's sit down and maybe put together a strategy session about what this could look like for next steps. I'm absolutely all about being your advocate in this scenario. Right. And I think those are things. So creating a playbook, I think is number one. So when we look at it is number one goal is understanding. It's all about meeting the person and it's all about being their advocate. I think about it not in sales, I think about more in social services. We're serving people. And then how do you do that? You got to build some trust. Right. And trust means that you actually care about what they're looking for. And it's not about the price point of the property. It's not about a commission coming in. It's about really what, what do you need in your life? It's a needs assessment piece. And then I think the other piece is being the professional, like what separates you from somebody else. And you got to be able to drop a couple of things and speak confidently and that's going to get you to actually have that face to face and then seeing where they are in the buying process and actually listen to be an active listener and listening and then providing some value that might come out of that. I think when you listen to the calls we have, we have a ton of agents that are absolutely amazing on it. And then there's some others that maybe go into more of like, ah, gosh, that property is under contract or all, you know, I'm not the listing agent or. Yeah, this is a, this is a timeshare or co op. Well, when they called, they may not. They didn't know that. They're just somewhere in their home journey.

Yeah.

So kind of pivot off of that and saying, where, where can I support this person? As they're looking for a home, there's a need there and you just gotta find it and you gotta be willing to ask a few questions to get there. Sometimes. Sometimes more than others.

Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting the, this advocacy piece makes me think a lot about asking more questions. So. And even in these dead end zone. They weren't all dead end zones, but like, you know, this one's under contract. You know, what would. I haven't done this before. But you know, you know, what was interesting you about this one, you know.

Yeah. We'll call your eye about this property. Right. Why are you looking? Is there something about this area that's pulling you to this location? Do you really appreciate this city? Is it, you know, you're, you're relocating and then all of a sudden you're getting into, is it the school zone? All right, do you have kids? So now you're building some rapport and you're interested more in who they are as people, not just about the transaction process and listening.

Yeah. So you're taking a lot of this knowledge that you're collecting directly and by observation, you're turning into a playbook. What is a playbook and how does it get shared and turned into real value in the Asian population?

So for us, we go through an onboarding process and we look at that initial conversation as being one of those key pieces of success. So a lot of our team supports the back end to getting them to an actual conversation and then handing that actual conversation over to the agent. The agent takes that. I think that's a key piece. I think when you meet them at the property, that's a very key piece to be like, hey, who you were on the phone, Are you actually that person in person in a live situation? And then working forward to actually finding them a property that they feel comfortable writing offer on. So I think the playbooks, those are the playbook, I guess gateways that you look at is the initial phone call, the initial meeting, and then ultimately getting them comfortable enough to write an offer. Each one of them has a playbook. So the onboarding process, we walk through that, helping agents understand each one of those pieces. And then we have consistent coaching and training that gives support to each one of those spots. We also do a lot of reporting so everybody can see where they stand. And then our team leads are really, really empowered to have those conversations to say, where, where's the, where are we tripping up? And then let's pour some more resources into there in that one specific spot, as opposed to just blanket statement like let's really identify where you're at and where you have the greatest need to get you where you want.

Yeah. So agent productivity, it's your, it's in your title. What are, what are like? If someone's like, gosh, you know what we really need to focus more on that. What are like, you know, if someone is going to start baselining to say, you know, is this new batch of agents more productive than the batch before them? Or, you know, if they were ever trying to discover anything about agent productivity and improve it. What are 2, 3, 4, 5 measures?

If an agent's only working or taking or creating two opportunities, then the level of engagement, it's like if I, if I go to the gym two months, two days in a month, probably not going to see much of an impact. So we want to make sure that you're engaged and doing the things to gain that momentum. I think the other piece is effectiveness, which comes down to conversion. Right. Are we converting? And then the way I look at that breakdown of the conversion is there's certain thresholds like what is your appointment rate, what is your met rate, what is your showing rate, what is your offer rate? And that's how I would say, is this agent productive? If they are engaged, so they're taking the opportunities, they're demonstrating the will, that's what's happening. But then their conversion is lower. All right, so maybe there's a skill piece. Okay, so now let's back into those skill piece because the conversion is a. Is that lag indicator. But what are those lead indicators that are getting there? Appointment rates. Freaking awesome, out of the park. So they're doing those things. They understand that playbook. Their met rate may be like insanely low. So what is that delta and what create is that? Creating that delta. Now you listen to call reviews and you see, all right, they're driving the appointment and then they're off the phone or they're too much of a driver, there's no rapport building or they're too assumptive language. And then at that point you give some coaching work through that, and now odds are and you got to set targets. I think that's another piece of. It is like when you look at it and saying, all right, met rate, I think is the biggest thing. Can we increase that by 6% by end of quarter or whatever's a reasonable piece. You got to take this many connections that'll move that lever and you just work down the funnel and that's ultimately going to get that agent productive where they want to be productive. And I think that's the will and the skill aspect of how I look at it. As long with the lead indicators.

Yeah. Interesting how who's. I assume you're looking at both of these. I mean, obviously you have these numbers in aggregate and These numbers by agent. And if you want to segment agents between those two things, you could do that too. Coaching is best one on one, but there's also, like the aggregate piece can help. You need both, you know, to run an organization of the size that you're operating at and to keep getting it better and better and better. Where do you spend most of your focus? And, or where do you, you know, do handoffs? And like, because I'm, I assume that you're not coaching 200 agents directly, you know, so like, you know, where's that handoff? Like, how are you taking what you're observing and, and, and how, like, what's. I assume there's some form of like a relay in this that's constant where, you know, someone's observing this stuff, someone's, you know, talking about targets and to get down to the agent level, like.

I guess within my role, I started in my position with 10 agents and it was the 10 agents that were kind of mixed about all our regional teams. So it wasn't like a core group and it wasn't my sole ownership. I kind of helped those 10 agents increase productivity in a specific area. And then as that, as we grew our lead flow in different areas that, that grew to about 35. And that's where I was listening to the housing call. So I had a lot of that. And that was the creation of a lot of these playbooks that we put into play that I think are somewhat timeless. I think it's interesting, the question between focusing on the individual agent versus focusing on the source, if you will. My, my belief system is if you can perfect the playbook for one source, that should be somewhat universal. There might be some tweaks about other sources about how you do it. But if you can get the core value of saying my sole goal is to help somebody and get face to face with them, and that's where I can be really, really effective. Whether it's an open house, an agent generated source, whether it's an aggregate site, or whether it's FSBOs and expired, it doesn't matter. Having those conversations and understanding the priority is getting a face to face. Let me walk you through that pathway. So for me, I think focusing really on the agent behavior is the absolute key thing. Because once you unlock that within an agent, then they can apply it to different things. And that's also where I think leveraging company opportunities and providing really, really specific KPIs to focus on and helping them grow allows them to leverage those company opportunities to perfect to science that then they can apply to their agent generated business. So I think those are things and then with those initial 35 agents at that point in time, to your point, not really scalable because there is a limitation in what you have. So we had the structure of regional teams and at that point I'd helped support the regional teams taking on that coaching piece basically utilizing the playbook. So kind of going through a team lead training of how you run that playbook, the expectations of the playbook and how to read, you know, different tells that, that you can see when you're looking at call reviews or different agent.

Activity, distributing leads across a population this large. I'm sure you know, it's, I heard George say this is a very local business and I assume that the, you know, the, the offices here across the valley are probably distributed in such a way that there's a geographic component for starters. But like what are the other key factors for figuring out quantity and you know, matching of, you know, opportunities across all these different sources? Yeah, company, company gen sources of course.

Yeah, we, we've been in a unique position where we have a lot of opportunities and maybe not as many agents and that's, that's saying something in the fact that we, we have 250, but we still have a really healthy amount of connection.

By the way, is there a ratio, a lead per agent per month number you're looking for?

The target for company generated pieces for me is at 8 to 12. That would be for a company target. I think also you have to take into consideration what an agent generated target is. So depending on how they want their blend of business, whether it's company generated agent generated like they're going to have different pieces. A brand new agent might be more leveraged into company generated opportunities where a seasoned agent might be looking to pivot differently. So but for a company generated piece I think the goal is 8 to 10 and that really continues engagement. Anything lower than 8, they may not be fully engaged in what that process is over 12. Then you start to think about what is the efficiencies and capacities of that service that they're providing to those agents. So that would be the goal. So within that I think that's one goal to have that. But how can you help an agent become really efficient within their time? Phoenix, if you, if you go corner to corner, you're probably driving in your car for about an hour and a half. I don't think that's the model of efficiency that we're trying to maintain. And it's A limitation and it's quality of life for agents that just is not ideal. And then also you're looking at it and saying like gosh, that's a, that's a big city that you are supposed to be the residential expert in helping somebody find their next home. So one of the things that we've created systems and structures on is we want to regionalize our opportunities. Our goal is to have every company generated opportunity be within 30 to 40 minutes of an agent's home. So we do everything by where they live and saying we're going to separate our regions into that, that function. The amount of leads plus the amount of agents that are in a region. Basically we map the formula to say is this an acceptable range between the 8 to 12 connections per age and per month in this defined region?

And that probably affects how you spend as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And where you want to hope, hyper focus. So then there becomes, I don't know, I think I would be gassing it up too much if I called it an algorithm. But we'll go through different processes of evaluating the zip codes that I think we're most effective in and that changes. So we'll do audits of what we feel are our most effective zip codes for us to be targeting. Right now we have 78 zip codes that we target and out of Those we have 18, I would say are like the higher echelon zip codes that we're really, really super emphasized in. So and then that's based off of our agents strength in those areas. But I think it comes down to too, the regionalization allows them to be that neighborhood expert of a 30 minute window around the home that they live in.

Yep.

So that really. And that's going to provide a better experience for that consumer.

Yeah. And it probably, especially for the newer agents, it probably gives them a lot more confidence. They know the street, even though it's only a two block, you know, court or something, you know, like. Yeah, I know that and I feel, I feel better about it.

They know restaurants, they know the high schools, they know they can speak to different things and that confidence breeds more confidence. And then at that point they can expand if that's something that they want to do. But it's really about advocating. So the same way we ask our agents to advocate for the client, our job is really to advocate for the agent to say how can we help them get to their spot?

Yeah, really good. I know you've spent a number of hours focused on Zillow Flex. I would love for you to Break down, especially for someone who doesn't have a lot of exposure to the. They just know the words. What's the benefit to this process? What is required of you and the Lawton team in terms of, you know, give back and like. Because it's a true partnership. But I'd love for you to kind of like, break down at a high level what this partnership is and what it takes and what it. What it provides.

So one of the things that I talk about agents as they onboard into our team, is that the average consumer searches on Zillow for 12 weeks before they actually press contact agent. 12 weeks is a long time for somebody to be mulling it over in their mind about what is that next step. I think when somebody presses that button, I think it's a moment of vulnerability. I think somebody could be guarded in that because for me, it's like going to a car mechanic. I don't know what they're going to tell me. I have no idea how to verify that. They're throwing it out to the Internet gods to say, connect me with somebody that's going to help me with the largest transaction of my entire life. I think about how scary that is, and they're going there for a reason. And if they had anybody that they trusted or respected in their life, they wouldn't go there. Right? If I had a friend of a friend, I would call that person. If I had a coworker, I would call that person. That's a huge responsibility for the person that picks up that call to serve that person. At a higher level, when I look at it and say that person not only got introduced, that agent not only got introduced to that one person, but they got introduced to an entire tribe of individuals that didn't have a real estate professional that anybody.