What New Agents NEED to Know About Relevate Before Joining

This blog post is for new-to-real-estate agents, and for agents who are looking to restart their careers, and who are now thinking “You know what, I think Relevate might be the right place for me.” You will have reached that conclusion by watching our recommended educational videos, but in case you haven’t, I’ve put a link to our Learning Center for real estate agents in the description below, and you can start there if you’re interested. 

Meanwhile, for those who already know all about us and are saying, “I’m Pumped! Is there anything else I need to know before I jump in and get started with Relevate?” 

If this is you, you are at the right place.  

This video assumes you already know important things about Relevate like the fact that… 

• • • We focus on doing business by referral, and
    • We are designed for agents who have the ability and determination to become top producers, which means $10M+ in annual volume, which equates to 25 homes sold per year and at Relevate, $195,000 in take-home income.

In this blog I will explain four things:

1. 1. 1. what new or restart agents can expect from us
      2. how we will know if you are right for us
      3. What your revenue, expenses, and income should look like on the path to Top Producer, and
      4. what you’ll need to bring to the table to become a top producing real estate agent who also has a balanced life.

If you are an experienced or top producing agent, this blog won’t apply to you, because this blog is focused on high-quality new or restart agents. Instead, I’ve put a link to a similarly named video made just for YOU.

What You Can Expect From Relevate

1. Fully Developed and Efficient Systems

When you join Relevate, you should expect to be plugged into our proprietary and proven Business System that has enabled many new-to-real-estate agents to go smoothly from new to top-producing agent within one to three years. The goal is for you to have both maximum income and a great life balance. Our system is designed to get you there ASAP. That journey is not easy. It’s hard, but it’s doable.

In real estate, you need to get clients, and you need to serve clients. That’s it. Over the past 17 years we’ve used operations research techniques to determine the most efficient ways to do all aspects of both of these major activities, and all along we’ve been improving the details of every part of every process. We’ll actually never be finished with that effort because we think everything can always be done ten times better.

 

2. Learning How to Do Real Estate and Serve Buyer and Seller Clients

We start our training by teaching you how to do real estate and serve buyer and seller clients. That way you’ll actually know what you’re talking about when you touch base with your SOI and you’ll know what to do next when you get a referral.

You’ll do most of your initial learning by watching videos. Then, later, when you actually have a client, you’ll watch them again because you’ll be even more motivated to know the content and besides you’ll need to study everything again to have it really sink in.

This training will include how to use our custom CRM software that organizes and manages all parts of the process of getting and serving clients.

Also, you’ll have several coaches who will help you with how to apply all this learning to real clients in the real world, so you won’t have to worry about dropping any balls. The coaches will expect that you’ll know your stuff from paying close attention to those videos we worked so hard to make for you, and at times may ask you to re-watch a video or two, since naturally you may not remember every detail.

3. Learning How to GET Clients

Once you have a basic idea of how to do real estate and serve buyers and sellers, we’ll teach you how to get those clients.

As you know, we focus exclusively on working by referral and this starts with building a Sphere of Influence (abbreviated “SOI”) of at least 150 people (to start) so you will have people to market to who have already agreed to refer you to their family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. If you already know a lot of people in the local area, this will still require a lot of work. If you don’t, this will be the single most difficult part of your real estate career. This will take a lot of focus and work for at least a year. It’s hard, but it’s doable. 

Once a person has joined your SOI, you’ll send them a marketing piece each month. We’ve got this totally planned for you already. You just need to send it. 

The purpose of ALL our marketing is to set up an easy opportunity for you to call your SOI and ask for referrals.

For example, last month our agents sent their SOI this magazine designed and printed by our marketing department and customized to each agent.

The calls around this magazine might sound something like:

“Hi Bob, I just wanted to make sure you got my magazine I sent you! Oh you think I’m amazing that I knew all that real estate information and was able to put it together into such a professional publication? Well thanks, I’ve got a pretty great team and I’m an excellent leader. Hey, now that you think I’m even more of an awesome agent than you ever realized, do ya know anyone who is thinking of buying or selling a home, because I’m never too busy to help them 😊”

When you build your SOI, send them the marketing supplied by Relevate, and follow up with them, you will soon start receiving tons of referrals.

4. Serving your Referred Buyers and Sellers

Once you receive a referral, the first step is to meet with them and convert them into a client, meaning they have chosen you as their agent.

For buyers, you’ll have learned how to do Relevate buyer orientations and as a result you should be able to convert 90%+ of the buyer referrals you receive into clients. Typically new or restart agents will serve buyers themselves, with the advice of our coaches, until they get busy enough to need Client Service Manager help.

However, selling homes, also known as listing them, requires much more judgment, analysis, and expertise than helping buyers. 

As a result, new and restart agents are expected to work fully with our Seller Success Support Team to help you both convert and serve the client. This team helps you practice the listing consultation, does the analysis of the as-is price and improvement opportunities for the home, delivers the Home Preparation Consultation, provides project management for improvement projects, and stages the home.

You can expect ALL this support from Relevate.

 

5. How We’ll Know You Are Right for Relevate

Now, how will we know if you are right for us? There are four signs that you are likely to be right for Relevate:

1. 1. 1. You come to your initial meeting with us already very knowledgeable about how Relevate works and what makes us different from other brokerages, and you are convinced our approach is uniquely best for you. You know this because you’ve watched all the recommended videos (or read the blogs) on our Agent Learning Center.
      2. You are on time for every meeting we have with you, just as we’ll be on time for meetings with you, because we respect you and your time. And vise-versa.
      3. You don’t have another job you plan to keep working.
      4. You want to be on the fast track to being a Top Producer with a balanced life, and your personal production goals are significantly HIGHER than our production standards of $2M in annual volume the first year, $5M for the second year, and $10M+ for the third year on. You’re very confident you will exceed these standards because you’ve seen evidence of many other Relevate agents doing it, and your attitude is “If anyone else can do it, then I KNOW I can do it”.

6. What is it Like to be on the Path to Top Producer?

Now, let’s dig into the details of what it’ll be like to be on that path to being a Top Producer with a balanced life. 

First, at Relevate, selling higher levels of volume is the result of working smarter, not harder, each year; and in fact as you work continually smarter, you should expect to sell more each year in fewer hours each week.

That’s wonderful, because our system is about maximum take-home income and a balanced life… eventually. All that can and will happen for you, but… do not plan on a balanced life right away. To get where you want to go, you will very likely need to have an unbalanced life. At least for a little while, as you are getting started.

You’ll probably need to temporarily sacrifice other parts of your life to your business, in order to soon have a more balanced life than anyone else you know. Except your fellow Relevate agents.

7. What Are the Costs and Expected Take-Home Income on the Way to Becoming a Top Producer?

Here are the exact first-year numbers of a typical agent who learned our system and worked it as her full-time job:

18 transactions with an average sales price of $350,000

= Total volume of $6.3M

$176,125 total commission

-$65,120 paid to Relevate (36% of commission)*

-$21,930 paid in referral fees (clients referred to her by other agents)

+$4,938 in Compliance Fee income

+$1,450 in Relevate sales contest prizes

-$1768 for transaction expenses (measurements, photos, etc)

-$6,363 for CSM labor

-$1,593 for marketing

= $85,739 in first-year take-home income

Two things about these numbers:

First, notice that the volume this agent did in her first year was 6.3M, which is beyond even our second year standard of 5M. That, and the rest of these numbers are very typical for agents who truly bring the ability and work ethic needed to learn and apply the Relevate Business System.

However, you need to know that, as much as we explain our system and what is required to be successful, about half of the new-to-real-estate and restart agents who join us do not succeed because they either didn’t have the ability to gain the trust of their sphere of influence, or they didn’t apply themselves in a professional and mature way. 

You will have to determine if you have the ability. And you totally control the effort you make. If you’ve got both, you will succeed. If you lack either of those, you won’t. It’s not random luck. In a moment I’ll share a comprehensive list of the characteristics and mindset you’ll need to be successful.

• • • • To illustrate this even better, I made a video documenting real life case studies of five new or restart agents who succeeded brilliantly with Relevate, and five who did not. That would be a really good video for you to watch… I’ve put a link in the description below so you can find it easily.
      • When you watch that, it’ll be really clear for you. You’ll either think “No problem, I bring all the right characteristics to do great at Relevate, I’ll be another success story”, or you might think “Hmm, I don’t really know that I do have what it takes.” 
      • Again, everything I’m sharing with you here is not to SELL you on Relevate. The purpose here is to be straight with you so you can make the very best decision for yourself.

*The second point about these numbers is you’ll have noticed this agent paid 36% of the first year’s commission to Relevate. The standard long-term amount agents pay Relevate for the Marketing, Management, Coaching, and Software support we provide is 20%. However, at the beginning, most new agents pay an additional 30%, called the Training Investment, for a total of 50%. 

This additional amount partially covers the additional costs Relevate needs to invest in to get new agents up to speed about how to actually do real estate, and how to build a sphere of influence and get consistent referrals. Now, two more points about training investment

• • • • FIRST, this 30% training investment can be reduced quickly in your first year by doing the right things to grow your business. For example, memorizing three key scripts and growing your sphere of influence. So, that 30% is set up more as an incentive for you, the more you do the process that will make you successful, the faster and lower that 30% goes down, and the more of the commission you will keep.
      • And the second point about that 30% is that if you’ve had significant real estate or sales experience, you may be able to start at a lower training investment, because you may not need as much training and coaching and that will cost us less.

Most agents who are successful at Relevate do more than 5M in their first year, and they typically sell over $10M+ in their second year. The agent in this example did 13.3M in her second year.

 However, let’s look at the typical numbers for an agent at Relevate who sells right at $10M in annual volume:

25 transactions at $400,000 average sales price

= $10M in volume

= $300,000 total commission

Now, from here it gets really simple. Once you reach $10M, we guarantee you’ll keep at least 65% of your total commission, after ALL costs, including all your marketing and client service support.

So, 65% x $300,000 total commission

= $195,000 minimum take-home income.

The details of this guarantee are in another video you’ve already seen, which also includes a $5000 prize for any agent at any brokerage who achieves what we promise outside of the Relevate Business System. Nobody’s stepped up to claim that prize yet.

Final point on this: if 65% take-home income for a top producer doesn’t seem like a lot, be sure to read the articles “Which is the Best Team for Quality, Volume, Cost, and Income?” and “What is the Cost of Doing Business at Relevate?” Those blog posts compare every other way of organizing a real estate business as a top producing agent.

What You Need to Bring to the Table To Be Successful

Okay we’ll conclude by listing specific personal strengths and mindsets needed to be successful in our system, just to make sure we’ve told you everything you need to know, before we make a mutual decision about whether Relevate is right for you. 

A. What are the Personal Characteristics and Agent Needs to Become a Top Producer?

The key personal characteristics you need to succeed as a Top Producer are the following:

• • • • You must be able to get people to trust you with their reputation, which is what they’re doing when they refer to you.
      • You’ll need to be seen as a leader. If you’re seen as a leader now among the people you spend time with, great. If not, that could make it difficult to succeed.
      • You need to be very comfortable reaching out to people, calling them to check in, and asking for business. If you can’t or won’t do that, being a Sales Agent is not at all the business for you. Being able to do this requires you value being respected and achieving your goals, more than you value to be liked and not bugging people.
      • You can be an introvert. This means you can interact with people just fine, but it drains you and you need your share of “me time” every day. In fact, I’m an introvert and so are more than half of our top producers at Relevate. We’re not as excited about socializing, but we’re very good at staying focused on our goals.
      • You need to be self-motivated. We can teach you and coach you, but you have to bring strong inner desire and self-accountability.
      • You need to be professional. That means being on time for everything, dressing well during the business day, and keeping your social media free from immature material or political opinions.
      • You must be humble and coachable, and willing to get out of your comfort zone and just do it. And you need to be grateful for everything good you are surrounded by.
      • To get started, you’ll either have a good number of local people in your sphere of influence, or you need to be prepared to grind through the tough work of building a sphere in your first six months. This will be the hardest part of your real estate career, but once you’ve done it, you’ll never have to do it again.
      • Finally, you really need to earn money. If you are doing this as a hobby, you won’t be willing to work through the challenges along the way.

B. Time Management & Structure

Now, let’s talk about scheduling your day to focus on the most important activities. First, real estate must be your full time job, and until you are a top producing agent, you must be free to do it during all normal working hours, and part of Saturday.

• • • Monday through Friday, you’ll need to set aside two hours each day for learning and six hours each day to build and stay in touch with your Sphere of Influence. These should be regular hours on your calendar, interrupted only for true emergencies. Once you get busy with clients, you can reduce the learning to one hour and the marketing to three hours, but that’s the minimum for the rest of your career. Once you get so busy with clients that it interferes with learning and marketing, that’s when you know to start using Client Service Managers.
    • At Relevate, there is a group of Sales agents who meet at the office every day from 10-11:30am to do what is called “Referral Focus Time” during which they do 90 minutes of sphere building and client contact. Participation is not required, but we definitely recommend considering it. I did this myself for years and I credit it with getting me from 8M to 23M, during that time I also went from working 50 hours per week on my real estate sales business down to 15 hours per week, because of the marketing and client service support built into the Relevate Business System.
    • Smart agents understand that the way to get freedom someday soon, is to be disciplined and structured now.

C. Invest in Your Business

To be successful, you really need to send marketing material to your sphere every month, so you’ll have a reason to call them and ask for referrals. This marketing isn’t expensive, but it does cost money and you need to be prepared to make the investment. This is an example of “It takes (at least some) money to make money”. If you look at the real life first year financials we showed earlier, you’ll see that the agent closed $6.3M in volume, but only spent $1,593 in marketing. So, it IS possible to keep the cost reasonable, but it is not possible to reduce it to zero.

We will line up effective marketing campaigns for you to send to your sphere, and you need to be ready to do all of them. And remember, you do not pay for anything until you have a closing, so Relevate is taking the risk with you. 

We are totally comfortable with that, because we know the biggest risk is not investing in marketing.

CONCLUSION

That’s it! Assuming you’ve watched the recommended videos (or read the blogs) on our Agent Learning Center, you know how Relevate Real Estate works. The next step would be to sign the Relevate Sales Agent Agreement in order to officially be a Relevate Sales Agent, if we mutually agree Relevate is the place for you. I made a video explaining that as well.

Whether Relevate is the right place for you or not, I hope all our educational videos and blogs have been a really big help for you to decide what’s best for you. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below and we’ll reply ASAP.

If you are an agent in the Triangle Area of North Carolina area and you’d like to visit with us to learn more about Relevate Real Estate, click HERE to set up a time to talk with us.