At Exquisite Properties, joining the team costs $600. Every agent pays it as an onboarding fee, from new licensees to agents with 70 closings behind them.
One of the biggest short-term wins from making that $600 investment is 85% to 90% of new agents make it through the team’s 90-day onboarding.
Micah Harper, who leads Exquisite Properties, explained how it works on a recent episode of the Stay Paid podcast with host Luke Acree and performance coach Dave Richards. The episode is part of a series Luke is recording with top team leaders in the nation for an upcoming book.
Here’s a snapshot of the team Harper shared:
- 59 agents in San Antonio
- 15 agents in Houston
- 720 transactions last year
- A little over $7.5 million in GCI
Plenty of team leaders hand out onboarding and coaching for free and hope agents follow through. Harper’s team takes another route. Every role on the team, from new agents to support staff, has something riding on their results.
The $600 Onboarding Fee Every Agent Pays
The onboarding fee covers part of what it costs to bring a new agent on board. Agents come in licensed, so the money goes toward onboarding and training.
Here’s how Harper breaks down the numbers:
- Fee each agent pays: $600
- The team’s cost to onboard and train one agent: about $3,000
- Share the agent covers: 20%
- Share the team covers: 80%
Harper explained the thinking behind the fee and the split.
“It costs us about $3,000 to onboard and train an agent. So, we tell them, we want you to pay 20% and we’re going to pay 80%, but if you don’t believe in yourself 20%, then we don’t believe in you 80%.”
When Acree asked whether the fee applies to recruits who closed six or eight deals the year before, Harper had a quick answer.
“All of them. I don’t care if you’ve done 70. If you’ve done 70 deals, what’s $600?”
The team learned this lesson when it expanded to Houston. It waived the fee for its first 10 Houston agents, and those agents skipped training and onboarding. In new markets, the team’s policy now is to have the first 10 agents pay the fee and then rebate it at their first closing.
Harper credits the fee for the team’s onboarding completion rate.
“I just want them to have skin in the game… the reason we have so many people make it through that 90 days is because they’ve paid $600. They’re going to show up to training, show up to onboarding, they’re going to do what they’re supposed to do because they have money on the line.”
Here are the results Harper shared:
- 85% to 90% of new agents complete the 90-day onboarding
- After onboarding, the average agent closes four deals within four months
His advice for the agents who drop out during those 90 days is to let them go and not chase them.
Paid Peer Coaches Who Only Earn When Agents Close
Every new agent on the team gets a coach. Coaches are experienced agents on the team who’ve chosen to take on the role.
Here’s how the coaching setup works:
- Coaches closed more than 24 transactions in the previous 12 months
- The new agent pays the coach $750 per closing for their first four closings
- The payment comes out of the agent’s side of the commission
- Coaches meet with their mentees in person at least once a week
- Coaches can see their mentees’ Follow Up Boss accounts
Since coaches get paid at closing, they don’t earn anything unless the new agent closes deals. Both sides have money on the line.
Each agent sets their own goal with their coach, and the goal ties to something personal, like paying off student debt or saving for a wedding.
Harper described how coaches use that reason when an agent’s motivation dips.
“Every time you get tired or you don’t want to do it or you forget why you’re doing it, we’re going to remind you of why you’re doing it and what you’re going to be able to accomplish with that goal that we set together.”
Richards pointed out that accountability works when agents give permission for it. When an agent agrees to a goal, they’re giving their coach permission to hold them to it.
Harper sees metrics as a tool for spotting where an agent needs help. He explained it with a bowling comparison.
“Metrics are like the bumpers on bumper bowling. They’re going to tell you where the problem is. You’re either hitting the bumpers too early in the lane or way down the lane or the very end and then that’s going to tell you what you need to work on. But if you coach to metrics and you live by metrics, everybody hates that.”
Commission-Paid ISAs and Company-Owned Leads
An ISA, or inside sales agent, is a team member who follows up with leads and sets appointments for agents. Harper’s team pairs its ISAs with a firm rule about who owns the leads, and agents hear that rule from day one.
“First thing first, company leads belong to the company. That’s an important standard to set. They are not your clients. If I take it away from you, it’s because I thought somebody else was going to do a better job, or you dropped the ball, and I don’t want to hear about it.”
Leads come into the team two ways:
- Zillow Preferred leads go to agents
- Leads from other sources, including Realtor.com, Google, Redfin and sign calls, go to the inside sales team
The team’s inside sales setup includes:
- Five ISAs and an ISA manager
- Appointments and showings booked on the agent’s calendar
- A three-way text with the agent to hand off each lead
Harper explained why the pay structure keeps ISAs invested in follow-up.
“They’re all licensed, and they are fully commission paid at closing. So they have a vested interest in the agent getting the deal done, following up. They are allowed to take the leads back from the agents. They have criteria that if the agent has neglected the lead depending on the stage for things, they take it back.”
Harper calls the ISAs’ role database hygiene. They go through leads, reach back out to the ones agents let slide, and pass them to another agent. He tells agents it isn’t a punishment. Keeping leads from going cold is one piece of the team’s lead plan.
The other piece comes after an agent works a lead, closed or not. Part of agent training covers turning company leads into referrals from the agent’s own network, or sphere.
Harper used Zillow Preferred as an example:
- 15 connections a month
- An 8% conversion rate, which he called doing well
- 92% of those people don’t convert and can send referrals
Those referrals become the agent’s sphere business, which Harper says brings in higher margins.
Staff Profit Sharing Tied to the Whole Company
Harper’s leadership bonuses are based on net company dollar, which is the money the company keeps after paying agents and referral sources.
Leaders earn two bonuses on top of salary and benefits:
- VPs earn a bonus on net company dollar across the whole company, plus a bonus on companywide profit
- Sales directors earn a bonus on net company dollar in their own market, plus a bonus on companywide profit
The net company dollar bonus keeps leaders paying attention to margins, which vary by lead source. The profit bonus keeps them thinking about the company as one team.
Profit sharing extends to the rest of the staff, including transaction coordinators and ISAs.
Harper laid out the formula.
“If we hit 10% profitability, and that’s actual profitability off of topline GCI, 10%. Then above that, 50% of the profit is allocated to staff bonuses up to 20% of their base salary.”
He told his staff why it’s set up this way.
“You’re going to ask them to do a lot of things that are hard… you’re asking a lot more from them than most jobs are going to ask from them. And I tell them, ‘Hey, look, the harder we all push, the more we all do, the better we support the agents, the more productive we make them, the more money we all make on our annual bonus.’”
Harper shared the numbers he aims for:
- Net company dollar: between 35% and 40%
- Profit: between 12% and 15% before bonuses
When he made a big investment like expanding to Houston, he treated it as a capital investment and kept it off the profit and loss statement.
The San Antonio staff’s bonuses didn’t take a hit for it.
Capped Agents Who Pour Back In
Every agent on the team works under the same fixed splits, with no negotiating. Harper said he might make a temporary deal on business a recruit brings over, since the team didn’t help create it.
Here’s how splits and the cap work:
- Splits improve on an agent’s second and third company-generated closings, since the team stops paying to get those leads
- Agents cap after paying $24,000 to the brokerage in a year
- After capping, agents keep 100%, minus a transaction fee
- One agent capped in January and several capped in February
Harper called a capped agent “kind of a net neutral to the brokerage,” since the $24,000 covers costs like Follow Up Boss. He asks those agents to help the agents coming up behind them.
“Now, come be a coach. Come help bring up the people behind you. Come help add to the organization that helped you get where you’re going. Make a ton of money as an agent. Great. I hope you do. But help pour back in. Do panels for us. Do trainings for us.”
Some capped agents choose not to coach, and Harper accepts it. He sees them as proof of what an agent can build on the team.
Pick One Thing and Attach a Cost
Acree closed the episode with an action item for team leaders, based on what Harper’s team does with onboarding.
“Look at whatever you’re giving away for free, your onboarding, your coaching, your leads. Add skin in the game to one of them.”
On Harper’s team, the buy-in starts with a $600 onboarding fee. From there, every role on the team has something riding on whether agents succeed.
