For three years, Byron Lazine‘s team was in the low 50s in agent count. Recruiting efforts were replacing the agents walking out the door, but not growing the team.
In March, he rebuilt the way his team recruits. The team is at 87 agents today.
Byron shared that system at BAM Camp Team Leaders in a recruiting session with Lisa Chinatti, whose team has over 100 agents, and George Laughton, who has 200 agents. Each of the three runs recruiting a different way, and each way fits the leader behind it.
Before you copy any of them, you need to answer one question about yourself.
Start With What Sits Above the Line for You
Byron borrows a term from EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, a business framework a lot of team leaders use. Work that sits “above the line” is work a leader enjoys and does well.
Byron explained the idea to the room with Lisa as his example.
“Lisa talking to agents who might be a right fit for her team is above the line for her. She enjoys doing it. This is where you have to figure out personally as you build out your model. You have to answer the question for yourself. What’s going to be above the line for you?”
Recruiting calls sit below the line for Byron. He sizes up recruits in Courted, a real estate data platform that shows agent production, and a thin track record tests his patience.
He told the room what happens when he sees one.
“If I’m talking to an agent and I’m looking at Courted and they’ve done two deals in three years, I have no patience. I’m going to end up in a place where I’m berating this person.”
An agent on the other end of that call won’t join his team, and Byron knows it.
“So it’s not above the line for me. And so you may resonate with that or you may think I’m insane, one of the two, but I’m not going to be the right person to lead that call.”
No matter which model you choose, someone has to make the first call and set the meeting. The three different models shared at BAM Camp: Team Leaders are:
- Employee-led: Full-time W-2 employee(s) do the setting and closing
- Leader-led: Make the calls yourself
- Delegated/VA-Led: A VA sets appointments, with a leader or manager coming in for closing
He told team leaders to weigh each option against their P&L and a management style they can keep up every day.
The Employee-Led Model Runs Without the Owner in the Room
Byron lives in Naples, Florida. His team is in Connecticut, and he has no plans to move back, so he built a system that doesn’t need him in the office.
His recruiting model copies his sales process. On the sales side, an inside sales agent sets the appointment and a team agent wins the client. Byron built his recruiting setter on the ISA role and swapped the A for an R. He calls the position an ISR, or inside sales recruiter.
For recruiting, he uses three roles:
- A setter, or ISR, who books and qualifies meetings with agents
- A recruiter and closer, who meets with agents and gets the signature
- An onboarder, who gets new agents trained and active in their first 14 days
Byron described how he staffs each seat.
“So my three positions, employee led, the setter’s W2, 40 hours a week. The recruiter closer is W2, 40 hours a week. And then our onboarder is one of our agents picking up some side change who would potentially long term want to grow into a leadership position.”
Bonuses are tied to how long a new agent stays:
- The setter’s bonus pays when onboarding wraps up on day 14.
- The recruiter’s bonus pays on day 60, with longer-term bonuses after that.
Byron walked the room through how his own role has changed since the launch.
“In the beginning, in March, I was doing a one hour call a week just with the setter and the closer on scripting and our integrator and everything else. Now I’ve pulled myself out of that. So outside of my weekly leadership calls, I’m hands off on our recruiting.”
He trains his agents every day, so they get time with him there.
The tradeoff with this model is who’s making the call. Byron said a setter can’t count on the agent knowing who they are.
“I have a setter, an ISR, dialing. They don’t know this person and they may not know the brand, just like I didn’t assume anybody in this room knew who I was.”
To get agents in the door, his ISR offers a free agent earnings game plan. It’s a custom plan for the agent’s business, built with the recruiter during the meeting, and the agent takes it home, whether they join the team or not.
The Leader-Led Model Runs on the Owner’s Conviction
Lisa Chinatti runs a top-25 brokerage in Massachusetts with over 100 agents, and she makes the recruiting calls herself.
She says nobody can sell her company’s vision the way she can.
“Who believes in your vision and what you’re building more than you? I promise you nobody. I’ve got 26 W-2 employees on my payroll right now and I love them all and most of them love me….But none of them believe in my vision more than I do.”
She gave two more reasons she likes doing the recruiting class:
- She can make decisions on the spot.
- She understands agents better than her W-2 staff does.
Lisa won’t ask an agent to join unless she believes the move will help them.
“One of the things that I’m capable of saying to an agent every single time that I sit in a recruiting appointment is if I don’t believe that by asking you to leave where you’re at and joining my brokerage, if I don’t believe that that opportunity is going to help you sell more homes, earn more money or have a better quality of life, I’m not going to make the ask for you to join my brokerage because I know that if I’m making the ask to the wrong person, I actually risk messing up their business and causing them to lose the things that have caused them to be so successful. And I can say that with a conviction that none of my employees are ever going to be able to say.”
She blocks two hours a day, five days a week, for recruiting. Her prospects come from Courted, and she tracks them in BrokerKit, a CRM built for recruiting.
Lisa compared the cost of her model with the other two, which is especially helpful for leaders who don’t have a big budget or are just getting started with recruiting:
“What I’ll also tell you guys is that what I do is free. There is the time that I’m taking away from doing other parts of my business, but when you compare the three different models, there’s no cost. It’s just my time. And I think we can all admit that as entrepreneurs, we can all always work an extra 10 hours a week. We may not want to, but if there’s the difference between being able to grow or not grow, it becomes a really easy decision to make sometimes.”
The Delegated Model Hands Outreach to VAs
George Laughton runs a team of close to 220 agents that does $1 billion a year, give or take. His model starts with virtual assistants (VAs).
He opened with a saying about discipline.
“…I heard a saying the other day that said the curse of being disciplined is that every day looks the same, but the curse of being undisciplined is that every year looks the same.”
George says he isn’t as disciplined as Lisa, so he hires people for recruiting outreach.
He explained who handles outreach to experienced agents.
“The VA is reaching out to these experienced agents, it’s not me. VA is calling, texting, emailing, and our best platform for experienced agents is LinkedIn.”
The VA sends LinkedIn messages from George’s own profile. He admitted that can get awkward.
“Reaching out to LinkedIn through my platform…and they’re getting really good communication back. So it is…an awkward situation sometimes when I’ve had long conversations and my VA’s had long conversations on LinkedIn, but it works really well. So I’m willing to overcome the awkwardness.”
The goal of that outreach is a 15-minute comparison call.
With new agents, a VA and the recruiter reach out by text and phone. They pitch a walkthrough of the agent’s first 90 days on the team, backed by case studies. George says the new agents who stay are the ones who start producing in their first months.
George handles top producers himself.
“I’m not as disciplined as Lisa is by any means, but I do have a list. I have the whiteboard in my office that has 10 agents that I am going to reach out to.”
For each of those agents, he builds a personalized Gamma site, a custom web page made with the AI presentation tool Gamma. Each site speaks to that agent’s pain points.
The team brings on seven to 10 agents a month.
Pick the Model You Can Run on Your Busiest Week
Before you hire a setter or start dialing, answer these questions for your own business:
- Do you enjoy recruiting calls, or would someone else run them better?
- How many hours a week can you give recruiting?
- Which cost fits your P&L?
- How well do agents in your market know your name?
Byron and George hand off most of the outreach, and each keeps one piece for himself. Byron trains agents every day, and George works his top-producer list.
Byron’s above-the-line question tells you who should make the calls. Lisa asked the room two more questions that shape what that person says on them.
“Why should an agent join your company today? Just give it a minute and think about it.
“And then the agent that’s going to join you, what is the thing that they value most?”
Have your answers ready before anyone on your team picks up the phone.
The full breakdown of all three recruiting models, including scripts, is inside BAM Boardroom, the new community exclusive to team leaders. Learn more here.
