Hiring an ISA can be fraught with all kinds of danger if you don’t know what you’re doing. In fact, the US Labor Department estimates that making the wrong new hire could cost you as much as one third of that person’s salary.
A quick look at the study Harris Interactive research did shows the breakdown of where that overall cost is derived from:
- 41% less productivity
- 40% lost time to recruit and train another worker
- 37% cost to recruit and train another worker
- 36% employee morale negatively affected
- 22% negative impact on client solutions
Looking at this data you can see why there would be some legitimate cause for concern. However, when you look at the entire picture and take into consideration there’s a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things, you should see that your biggest fear in hiring an ISA should only be the fear of missing out (FOMO) on what an ISA can do for your business over the near and long term.
Here’s a look at how to ensure you get a killer ISA and what that ISA can do for you and your business once you bring him/her on board.
Win Before You Start
Hiring the right ISA starts long before that person sits down to make his/her first phone call. In fact, it all begins with having a process in place to identify and then produce the absolute best candidate for the position. The steps are simple, but they must be done right and in the right order for you to get optimal results.
Here’s a look at what you need to do to get it right:
The Talent Whistle: In much the same way that a dog whistle is targeted towards getting only a dog's’ attention, you need a recruiting ad and ad strategy that can appeal to proven, talented salespeople with strong phone sales experience. Doing this will help you start with a pool of the most qualified candidates for the job.
Talent Audit: You need to ask pertinent, probing questions that will let the cream rise to the top and ensure that you distill your pool of applicants down to the absolute top hiring opportunities for the position. A group interview to determine team fit is important for this part of the process.
Core Fit Analysis: Use your one-on-one interview and even stronger questions to properly vet your finalists for the job, ensuring that you leave no stone unturned on your journey to hiring the best ISA. Asking about objections and rejection and how they handle both of them will help you identify the more skilled sales people in the group.
Skill Assessment: Role play, one on one, with your top interviewees to determine if they how to properly navigate a phone sales call. That way, you know, without a doubt, they can do the job.
Success Agreement: Use a strong contract so you can secure a solid relationship - and properly manage expectations for the future - with the person you decide hire.
Fast Results Immersion Process: Get your ISA on-boarded and up to speed as fast as you can to leverage their excitement for the new position. They don’t need to know everything to start making calls and even to get results. Get them on the phone as soon as possible to start setting appointments.
Skills Mastery: Train, train, train. Give your ISA all the scripts and dialogues they need and then role play with them to help them master the skills necessary to convert leads to appointments with consistency. Have them listen to you call and vice versa to accelerate their results.
When you hire the right person – and it’s a when and not an if – the results will be well worth the investment of your time and energy.
A good ISA should be able to set you two to three listing appointments per week. Here’s what an ISA should be able to do for you based upon some conservative conversion numbers:
- 10 listing appointments set should yield 7 kept listing appointments
- 7 kept listing appointments should yield 4 listings taken
- 4 listings take should yield 3 listings sold
- 3 listings sold per month is 36 sold listings in a year
In addition to that, 10% of your sellers will likely buy from you, netting you another 4 buyer deals and bringing your total to 40 home sales from your ISA.
Again, these are not guaranteed numbers, but they are very real based upon our experience and the experiences of agents we’ve worked with before. And, if you do what we told you to do and apply the right steps in the right order, you put yourself and your ISA in the best position to succeed.
If you’re still afraid to hire an ISA, that’s cool. Bringing on an employee as an entrepreneur is a big deal and worthy of some uncertain thoughts. The important thing to remember here that you need to address the fear, acknowledge it and then keep walking with it. Otherwise, you’ll stop dead in your tracks and your life and business will never provide for you the business and life you truly deserve.
We’ll leave you with this thought: an ISA department is not a cost center, it is a profit center. What this means is not only will a good ISA cover the cost of their employment costs, they will provide you a handsome profit for the services they provide. Yes, you have to carry the ISA’s salary for a few months before their efforts pay off. However, as the ISA’s skillsets improve and they build their pipeline, you’ll hit the tipping point from cost to profit.
In the end, it’s well worth the risk. Just be sure you follow the steps we’ve laid out here to ensure you end up with a win in the end.
We’d love to hear your ISA hiring success stories or any questions you have about hiring your own ISA. Feel free to comment below.
