Brian Icenhower on why 95% of small teams fail and his matching standard fix

Brian Icenhower00:00

I’ve never met one agent that says, “I just wanna be a telemarketer and convert leads from people I don’t know all day long.” We’ve gotta teach them to fish rather than give them fish. So I’m gonna make sure that you are building your business. I’m gonna make sure that you’re getting your contacts together, letting them know you’re in real estate, putting them in the CRM.

00:17We want to put the most reward and congratulations around the teams that are growing their sphere. They’re moving on, they’re growing their own business and they’re building it within the team.

Loida Velasquez00:34

What’s going on everyone? Welcome back to a brand new episode of Vulcan7 Coaches and Mentors, where we bring you some of the best in the industry and they share with you their best tips and strategies so that you can implement them in your business immediately. Now with that being said, I’m just gonna go ahead and bring on today’s guest who has a jam packed session.

00:53Brian Icenhower, welcome.

Brian Icenhower00:55

Hey there. How’s it going? Great to be here.

Loida Velasquez00:58

Yes, we’re so excited that you’re on today’s episode. Before we get started on today’s topic, which is gonna be about real estate team lead distribution and all of the unique ways and approaches that you guys do it, I’d love for you to share with the audience a little bit about your background so that we can get to know you a little bit more.

Brian Icenhower01:19

Sure. Yeah. I’ve been in the business about 35 years. I mean, my dad was a broker for 50 years, and I have to go way back to when I was in production and selling, but I sold a lot, ran a pretty big real estate team in the ’90s before they were kind of a big thing.

01:37And then ultimately got into brokerage management and ownership and have opened many different real estate brokerages, still own some. Have a lot of mortgage companies, title companies, insurance companies, all integrated services around brokerages, and I’ve done a lot of coaching and training throughout my career.

01:57And along the way, I started a coaching and training company. And we generally specialize in coaching, we look at each other as kind of the graduate school of coaching. So we tend to coach a lot of high performing agents and how they start leveraging and forming teams, how to take small teams to big teams, and a lot of brokerage owners.

02:21So we coach a lot of brokerage owners, even national brand leaders that have offices and companies in several states and things like that. So we tend to be leadership coaches, and we love that. We get to kind of coach the cream of the crop, the most dynamic, and help people get there that aren’t quite there.

Loida Velasquez02:38

That’s so awesome. Yeah, it sounds like you have a lot of experience, you’ve worked with a lot of different companies and so many different things, but one thing I love to ask all of my guests is what did you do before real estate, or have you always been in this business?

Brian Icenhower02:51

No, I got my license when I was 18.

02:54My dad made me. It was right before I left for college. And then I did take a brief stint, a very brief stint when I was very young in my 20s, and I was a lawyer. So I went to law school, did that kind of fast on an accelerated program, and practiced law for just two or three years.

03:13Other than that, I went right back into real estate. That wasn’t the gig for me. And so nothing before real estate other than just school, really.

Loida Velasquez03:22

Okay. So when you did do law, was there a point that you’re like, “You know what, this is not for me?” Like, what was the turning point that you’re like, “You know what?

03:29Let me just go back to real estate because I don’t know, I like that better.”

Brian Icenhower03:33

It was two things. Number one, I realized it wasn’t what it looked like on TV. I was in real estate law, so it was a lot of reading and writing. I felt like I was taking a test every day. That was number one.

03:44And then I was at a very successful firm in the city of San Diego, California. And I saw the senior managing partner of our firm, and we were on, I don’t even know what floor we were on in the skyscraper, but I got to look over Coronado Island and I’d have to come in on a Saturday to work to keep up with all the work.

04:00And all the senior managing partners that were 65 years old, they’d be in there working Saturdays and Sundays too. And that’s when I said I’m out. If that’s my path, I’m out. There’s no flexibility. These guys work so hard and they never stop. And I’ve seen that to this day. All my friends that are lawyers and stuff, man, they work really, really hard.

04:18So not that I don’t. I just don’t work that hard. And it’s just a lot of reading and writing. I didn’t realize it wasn’t Law and Order all the time on TV. So that’s what did it for me.

Loida Velasquez04:31

That’s awesome. No, thank you for sharing. I love to ask because everyone has a different path that they used to be in or did before real estate.

04:38So I’m sure that someone watching this might be able to relate to your story and be like, “You know what? This is exactly what I used to do and I need to listen to Brian because what he’s doing and what he has accomplished is exactly where I wanna go to.”

04:49So with that being said, obviously you guys are very successful with your coaching and the agents that you teach, but what makes you unique when it comes to real estate team lead distribution?

05:01If you wanna just go ahead and get started with that.

Brian Icenhower05:04

Yeah. We kinda have a secret sauce for that. It’s kinda neat. We’ve had a lot of success with real estate teams, especially, where I really see a big problem with lead distribution is smaller teams. And they get stuck, they get stuck with three, five, six, seven, eight agents and they just stay there grinding over and over again.

05:25They lose agents, they get agents, they lose agents. And they get in a place, no matter what your size is, where the agents aren’t really doing anything to generate business and bring it to the team, okay? So we’re always providing, and that’s where you guys at Vulcan are a great resource for us, is we’re providing them leads.

05:44Maybe it’s leads to call, maybe it’s expired phone numbers, maybe it’s circle prospecting numbers, maybe it’s a buyer side that the team leader has, that’s their best friend, and we give them our sphere of influence leads that way.

06:00Somehow the team is providing way more and we get in that like, “Hey, I’m not gonna teach you to fish. I’m just gonna give you fish” mode. And all we do is teach them how to convert the fish we give them, right? So we’re teaching them lead conversion and that’s it. And what ends up happening is you only have so many leads to give them.

06:22And so they don’t ever bring anything to the team. And because of that, you’re just giving them all the leads they need. So then you start getting all the excuses, “Well, these leads aren’t any good. It’s too hard to convert them. The leads are getting weaker. I really wanna do listing sides.

06:40I’m not making enough money. I need a better commission split.” All of those types of excuses that create a real bad culture, a lot of drama. And it’s the reason most small teams fail. And when I say most small teams fail, I mean most of them do. I would say like 95% of them ultimately just fall apart, just getting stuck in what I call that small team death zone for too long, right?

07:03And that’s usually a problem, and we get a lot of those clients coming in. They’re just coming in hot and they’re like, “I’m fed up with this. I gotta figure out how to do it. How do I get my agents selling more?” And so lead distribution’s really key here. That’s one of the first things we put in place, right?

07:20And I call it, for lack of a better word, the matching standard. Understand that when people first get their real estate license, I’ve never met one agent that says, “You know, I just wanna be a telemarketer and convert leads from people I don’t know all day long.” They don’t. When they first get into the business, that’s not what they want.

07:41They may know they have to do that to get there. Understand when we give leads, that is only for the purpose of supplementing them so they can pay their bills until they grow their own business, right? And that’s where we have to put our emphasis. We’ve gotta teach them to fish rather than give them fish.

08:00And they’ll buy into that when they first start. They’re like, “You’re right.” “I’m sure you don’t wanna be a telemarketer forever, right?” Right. Everyone’s gonna agree with that. So at that point, that has to be the new culture of your team, right? At some point, the leader of almost every real estate team, we know 70% of all business comes from sphere of influence.

08:19Certainly over 90% of all listings come from sphere of influence, right? So why are we totally abandoning it? I mean, prospecting for business from people we don’t know and their sphere of influence, those work in tandem with each other. They just gravitate together perfectly. So it’s like, “Hey, I’m gonna give you business, but I’m also gonna teach you to fish too, right?

08:42So I don’t want you 10 years from now to still be dependent upon me. So I’m gonna make sure that you are building your business. I’m gonna make sure that you’re getting your contacts together, letting them know you’re in real estate, putting them in the CRM,” because a lot of agents won’t do this, because that’s not business right now.

09:02Whereas a buyer lead or an expired prospecting, I mean, that could be your listing and you get paid in 45 days. So they’re gonna tend to gravitate to that low hanging fruit without ever putting in the time and effort to grow a business that brings business to them in the future. And so I’m very transparent about this.

09:20I’d be saying this to my agents as they come on. So I need a commitment from you. In fact, it’s so much so that our entire chief criteria for lead distribution is based upon this, right? We’re going to not just be tracking how many pendings you have and how many closings you have. We’re going to be tracking how many of your closings came from leads provided by the team versus leads you generated from your own sphere of influence, from people you know.

09:48And we’re going to make a commitment to you right now. We’re always going to stay ahead of you. We’re going to match you and then some. That’s why we call it the matching standard, right? So what’s going to happen is now my leads are going to go a lot longer way, right? And I’m going to be forcing them, if they want more leads from me, then they’re going to have to generate more from their own SOI.

10:11And I’m always just going to stay ahead, and I’m always going to stay ahead. And you’re going to see very few agents ever get to a point where you can’t match them. You know what I mean? Like, oh my gosh, they’re all generating so much from their sphere. They’re bringing so much business from outside the team into the team that we’re making so much money as team leaders that I can’t stay ahead of them.

10:32It very rarely happens. It’s like one out of every 20 agents. But I have a solution when that does happen too, don’t worry. But we always want to stay ahead of them. That way we’re forcing them, if they want more leads, if they want better leads, to actually grow their own businesses. And they’ll all buy into this to a man, especially when you start.

10:52It’s a little hard when you introduce it, especially if you’ve got a bunch of codependent agents, right? That are just dependent on you all the time. But I’m not going to get into that, but when you do come into the company, we do show you how to do that without blowing up your whole team and getting everybody mad.

11:05It’s kind of a process, too much for this podcast, but…

Loida Velasquez11:07

Yeah.

Brian Icenhower11:08

But don’t worry, it can be done. If you’re freaking out and you wanna tune out right now, it can be done. So understand what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna distribute that. And so we have to have clear dashboards, we have to have team meetings every week where we’re explaining.

11:21We’re not just rewarding that one telemarketer that can just slay, and they can just convert any buyer you give them and they close 40 deals a year. And they just think they’re the best. They’re gonna ask for better splits. They’re gonna do all that kind of stuff.

11:36And I’ve seen this in my brokerage before, right? They get so arrogant with their ability to convert leads, they forgot they aren’t the one that generated them. So they ultimately ask for more and more and more and more and complain more and more because they think they’re the greatest. Why should I even be here anymore?

11:53And I’ve seen it. They’ll leave the team, and in my brokerage in the past, I’m like, uh-oh, a high producer just left a team. One of them is probably gonna leave the office, because they can’t coexist in my office together, so I wanna make sure they all stay there. So I’ll go ask the person that left first.

12:08I’ll say, “Hey, great, man. I mean, you closed 40 transactions. Why would you leave that team? I’m curious.” And they’ll say, “Well, I mean…” I’ll say, “How many of those did they give you versus you generate yourself?” And they’ll say, “All of them. I generated them all myself. All 40 of them.” I’m like, “Huh, wow.” And then I’ll go to the team leader and say, “Hey, what happened?

12:27Why’d they leave you?” I’ll go, “How many of those leads did you provide them versus they generate themselves?” And then they’ll be like, the total opposite answer. “I gave them every one of those leads.” I’m like, “Huh, well, they don’t know that.” And guys, this is so common, it’s unbelievable.

Loida Velasquez12:44

Mm-hmm.

Brian Icenhower12:44

People don’t know the difference between lead generation and lead conversion, that but for the team providing the lead, there’s nothing to convert. So they go out on their own and they just completely die because they have nothing to convert. So then they start spending money on online lead sources, trying to generate it, no one holding them accountable, no team structures behind them, and they struggle and they disappear and they just become low producers the rest of their life.

13:10Or they ultimately go to a different team that knows how to explain this difference, and knows how to show them and teach them how to grow their own business, and show them by proving to them how many of their transactions closed year to date, on a weekly basis throughout the year, came from the team versus themselves.

13:31They have to know where their bread’s buttered so they appreciate where they’re at. And number two, we have to show them that, hey, just because you closed a bunch of deals, you’re not as valuable or getting rewarded any more than the guy that closed half as many as you, but brought in 10 from his own sphere of influence.

13:49That’s what we really want to reward. We want to put the most reward and congratulations around the teams that are growing their sphere. They’re getting off of the nipple quicker. They’re moving on. They’re growing their own business just like you did as team leader, and they’re building it within the team.

14:09And that’s the key here. And what happens when they get too high, it’s so easy, guys. When they get super high, like all of a sudden, let’s say they close 25 deals from their own sphere. If you get that one out of 20 agents that does that on your team, then guys, we gotta stop thinking transactionally and think big picture.

14:29Just put them up on a higher split for their SOI, because they’re not gonna want your leads. They’re gonna just wanna close theirs. They’re gonna start saying, I don’t want the team’s fifty fifty split leads. I’m just picking numbers. Put them up on an 80/20, put them up on a 70/30, put them up on a 75/25.

14:46I really do not care. That’s not what’s important, right? And I see this so often with young prospecting teams where they just got a bunch of young agents that are all phone jockeys, work in a boiler room, and they never ever get off it, right? And they can never recruit any producing agents because no one wants to work on a fifty fifty. Well, now you can.

15:08If you’ve got someone that has closed 15 deals at another firm or on another team from their own sphere of influence and they have that historical track record of production, it’s very easy. “Hey, why don’t you come on over, you’re gonna get 80/20 on all your deals because you’ve actually reached your criteria.

15:22I can’t match you.” And you can actually tell everyone on your team you’re doing it. I wanna reward that person. They’re up on an 80/20. Yes, you don’t make a ton of money off their two, three deals, but they stayed with you. And now they’ve shown the path for growth doesn’t involve stepping off your team and going somewhere else, which is what happens on all small teams.

15:43They’re just a stepping stone. Don’t think they don’t wanna do this themselves or eventually not be on fifty fifty splits, they do. But if you don’t have a way for them to grow and kinda go out to pasture, so we’re not making so much on them off transactions… Then you’ll start to see, now these guys start to see, oh, wait a minute, so I can get an 80/20 if I start growing my SOI?

16:03So they’re further incentivized. And guess what? It enables us, because our leads go further, we can grow out more at fifty fifty to protect our profit margins. Rather than having five agents, we can have 10 or 15, right? And now our margin goes up tremendously. We’re always making a higher production off those people that haven’t earned their stripes yet, that haven’t grown their business and shown us.

16:24And the one out of 20 that does, we don’t try to make, you know, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. We’re not trying to squeeze every teeny penny out of the people that are successful. And if you start having successful agents out there on that team, that does something else. All of a sudden, agents that are successful won’t look at it as a demotion to go to your team.

16:49Because if you just got a bunch of boiler room phone jockeys, like most small teams do, that just provide leads twenty four seven, there’s no self-respecting agent that’s gonna publicly make a decision to go to your team to work with a bunch of newbies that can’t work the phones.

17:05All you’re doing publicly to all your peers is saying, “I can’t make it. I don’t have enough money. I have to go backwards and demote myself.” So no one’s gonna do it. It’s just too much public shame. But if you have agents on your team that are selling at a high level and they’re respected and everybody knows, oh my gosh, these guys sell quite a few transactions, and SOI transactions are always higher priced, and all of a sudden they’re respectful.

17:31Now other agents will start moving to you because you’re bigger. We gotta stop thinking about having this tight culture where everybody does the same thing, or you’re gonna be small and tight and you’re always gonna do the same thing you’re doing right now. The larger teams that have massive profit margins that can start opening mortgage companies and property management companies or brokerages or whatever they’re trying to do, we need to do it to get the team leader out of production, so not so much of the profit is depending on that team leader’s own production.

18:00We have to grow to get there. We have to get enough. Stop trying to get your five agents to do it themselves. You’ll squeeze them to death until you squeeze them right through your fingers. So we have to actually do that. And the way we do it is we actually create an entire lead distribution system and our entire culture where we’re gonna teach you to fish, everything’s rewarded by it.

18:20We determine which leads go to which people based on how much they’re generating themselves, which is totally fair. No one can argue with that one. It won’t be based on seniority. It won’t be based on who’s favorites. It won’t be fighting over leads because they can totally earn it. Like, I can’t give you any more leads, Janet.

18:35I mean, John over here has brought me 10 transactions from his own sphere. I gotta stay ahead of that guy. Everybody sees that. You do the same for me. How can I help you build your sphere? Now we’ve got them refocused back on what they need to be doing to grow their business rather than complaining all the time.

18:52So pretty neat culture.

Loida Velasquez18:54

Yeah. I mean, you have said so many things that I have taken down notes. I mean, this is a great episode, especially for someone that’s a team leader, because I think you’ve said so many different things that kind of hit different points. I hear agents all the time kind of complain about leads, or, I’m a part of a team and they’re giving me leads, but they don’t work, so I’m gonna go and find another team.

19:17Or there’s team leaders that are like, you know what? I have a whole bunch of agents that are not really producing or doing anything. So in your experience coaching team leaders, and you’ve dealt with so many different ones, what do you think is the biggest mistake that the team leaders are doing?

19:33Is it just not setting the expectations up front from the beginning, or is it maybe they don’t know that the agents should be producing on their own as well instead of just expecting leads all the time?

Brian Icenhower19:45

Yeah. They’re not setting that expectation up front. They don’t set the expectation up that leads are gonna come to you based on how much you grow, right?

19:55Now I get it when they’re brand new, they don’t have a sphere of influence yet and it takes a while to get that built, saturated, so you start getting business from it. So early on, yeah, we’re gonna give you a lot more leads. But at some point, we’re gonna wanna see the activities. We’re gonna wanna see the contacts for your sphere of influence in the CRM.

20:12We’re gonna see you doing marketing activities to actually grow and cultivate and generate business from your sphere of influence. We’re gonna wanna see those activities. We wanna weave those in to measurable key performance indicators that we are tracking to make sure that they’re doing the things to grow their SOI, not just convert leads we provide them.

20:33So it’s very important that becomes part of our culture, so that we… Otherwise it’s like, “Hey, why don’t you guys ever do what I did?” Well, where team leaders fail is they get very mad. “I wish these guys would just have the urgency and the motivation I had.” I’m like, “No, you don’t. You don’t.

20:48Or they wouldn’t be on your team or need you. They’d be your competitor.” I mean, leaders need followers, so that’s where we gotta kind of bring up our leadership and kind of shift our mindset there, because then what ends up happening is we see leadership fall. You start getting frustrated with your agents, mad at your agents, and it’s all because your structure has a lid on it.

21:08We have to break that lid off, because you can only go so far. It’s like going across a pit of hot coals, right? You walk across those hot coals and let’s say you walk slowly, you grow your team too slowly. I mean, those coals start to burn. And then you get stuck with five, seven, eight agents or something like that.

21:27Now your feet are really gonna start to burn, because you’re losing agents as quick as you bring them, and teams can’t live there for long. And here’s why. You grow a team so you don’t have to work as hard yourself, right? You don’t have to sell as much yourself, so you get more flexibility.

21:46But understand, you have five or six more agents, usually only one or two of them are really gonna be selling a lot, and it’s only gonna be selling your leads usually. They’re not bringing in a whole lot themselves. And if one does, okay, so you might make a little bit more money by having a team of five, right?

22:04A little bit more money. However, you’re working twice as hard, because now you’re still having to sell and you’re having to run the team and deal with all those headaches as well too. So your feet are gonna burn in the middle of those coals. And what’ll happen is you’ve lost sight of what’s on the other side, you don’t even believe it exists anymore.

22:24So you start moving backwards to being a solo agent again. And you give up on your dreams, your hopes, your flexibility, and certainly anything like a succession or exit plan. You’re gonna have to sell until you turn the faucet off, and hopefully you save a lot of money and we don’t get a lot of inflation, because you’re never gonna build a business that runs itself.

22:43And we have a really good track record of actually affecting that with our clients. So they forget and they just run backwards as fast as they can. And that’s one of the biggest problems I see out there, is they just get stuck and they forget to grow. And how could they grow? They can’t grow. They don’t have any time to grow.

23:01You gonna go out there and start recruiting people and bringing them in if you can’t even keep them anyway? It just feels like you just got a lid and you can’t go past it. So it’s very important we start, well, number one, this is self-serving, but they really gotta get a coach.

23:15There’s way too many obstacles in there.

23:18So just do what all the top teams do. They all have coaches, guys. Stop trying to watch videos and podcasts and Frankenstein your team together based on bits of knowledge. There’s just no way you’re gonna get that in the right timing and the right order, and even then walk you through all the objections.

23:32So I will say that. But that’s the biggest problem I see, is an inability to get across those coals fast enough.

Loida Velasquez23:43

Yeah. And I know that after watching this video, there’s probably gonna be a lot of team leaders and agents that are gonna be like, “You know what? I need to talk to Brian because I’m going through all of these situations that you explained,” that we might need another episode to talk about. But what is the best way that they can reach you?

24:00And then also, do you also help team leaders kind of structure how to select agents to bring on to their team and which ones to turn away and things like that?

Brian Icenhower24:11

Oh, sure. Yeah. We definitely help a lot with recruiting and the selection process and how to recruit and recruit by attraction and things like that, certainly.

24:19How to target recruiting. That’s what gets you across the coals. So we have to be good at that, whether you’re a brokerage or a team leader or whatever you’re doing there. So we’re all things growth. We’re all things growth. The way to get ahold of me is real easy.

24:32I mean, you can go to icenhowercoaching.com. You see how my name’s spelled. It’s a little different than a lot of people know. It’s right on the screen in front of you. Icenhower Coaching, I-C-E-N-H-O-W-E-R, coaching.com. You can schedule a free coaching appointment. And if you talk to the coach that gets on there with you and say you wanna talk to me too, just do it.

24:52There’s a coaching form up there. I’ll pick it up. I don’t coach myself. I don’t even run my company anymore. I’ve got a CEO and a COO that run that, so I got all kinds of time. You wanna talk to me personally, just put on there, I wanna talk to Brian, and I’ll make sure I do it.

25:05It’s no problem, although our coaches are all very, very good themselves too. And we’ll sit there and talk to you about what we can do for you, and it’s no obligation, doesn’t cost you anything. And we’ll go from there. It’s real easy.

Loida Velasquez25:17

Awesome. Well, Brian, thank you so much for hopping on on today’s episode.

25:21You dropped so many great nuggets and knowledge that I know a lot of the agents are probably gonna have to re-watch this a couple of times. And just like you said, you need a coach. You need someone to guide you. Don’t try to figure this all out yourself or watch all these YouTube videos, because it doesn’t work that way

25:39if you wanna succeed at a high level.

Brian Icenhower25:41

There you go. Success leaves clues. It’s up to you to pick them all up, that’s for sure.

Loida Velasquez25:45

Yes. All right. Well, Brian, thank you so much once again for being here on this episode, and everyone else, we’ll see you on the next one. Bye.