Chris Snow is a veteran real estate agent and team leader.
After succeeding as a solo agent Chris started a real estate team to leverage his time and energy.
Valuing relationships and helping agents develop their business has been critical to his team’s success.
Watch as Chris talks about growing a real estate team and how he helps ensure agents who come onboard are set up for success.
Transcript:
Chris Bounds 00:02
We had the pleasure of being on panels together and I really enjoyed that. If you can skip back to when you were just a regular agent, our individual agent out there in the market, you decided, “Hey, it’s time to start a team.” What made you go that route as opposed to just standing like a solo agent and doing referral partners?
Chris Snow 00:27
Absolutely. Yes. Leveraging time, right? It’s not that I don’t like customers, it’s just the more that you work with them and you do it over and over again, you kind of lose the- I don’t wanna say the passion, but the excitement goes away, and I’d always wanted my customers to get the best of me.
And so, sometimes the best of me was not necessarily be being there. Finding a referral partner to start with, and then saying, “You know what? I can do this at scale and the lead generation was something that I always knew how to do”. I could generate a whole bunch of leads, and then I just worked the ones that I could work myself and kind of let the ones go by the wayside that I couldn’t get to.
Chris Bounds 01:11
Yet part of it. Let me know your thoughts here, it just popped in my head. And part of it is responsibility, I think our obligation to the industry. You’ve developed a vast amount of education. There’s always new agents coming in. They’re coming in whether you like it or not.
And the successful ones will figure it out, whether you like it or not. Why not just get in the way of that? You be the one that pours into them, kind of like Danny John or Danny Garcia said earlier, you can pour your skill, your experience into them, and then that way, whenever they go off on their own, and they’re a rock star, like you get that like value, like almost like a father or a parent, knowing that you impacted their life. Did any of that come into play? Or did you go all the way?
Chris Snow 01:59
Yes, becasue I like seeing people make money and it’s fun, because I’ve done well in my career. I did well in my career before real estate, my background was in medical sales. I’ve always been in a position that paid very good. And then when I looked at real estate going, oh, my goodness! People have the opportunity with in the state of Florida 63 hour course that you don’t have to leave your home for that you can get in your pajamas.
And all of a sudden, you’ve got a license to go out. And if you’ve got the right hustle, and you’ve got the right skill, and you’ve got the willingness to take a risk, you can make a whole bunch of money. And I like the idea that it doesn’t matter what your background is. There were so many barriers to entry to getting a quote unquote, “prime medical sales job” that getting a real estate license was super simple. It’s like, man, I like that people have the opportunity. And they’re not having something- someone else telling them that they’re not worthy enough to make that kind of income.
Chris Bounds 02:55
Basically, the real estate license keeps you out of jail. But it doesn’t teach you the business. That’s where you’re gonna learn from a mentor, you’re going to get a coach, or you’re gonna join a team. How did you go about finding the maybe there are previous relationships? Or how did you go about selecting the first few team members?
Chris Snow 03:14
When I first started building my team, I was over at REMAX. And so there were plenty of agents that had gotten their license partner with Remax or paying their $1200 a month and struggling and about to get out of the business. It’s like, “Look, guys, if all you’re needing are opportunities, and you need leads, I’ll show you how to convert the leads”.
I’ll generate them, I’ll show you how to convert them”. And they already kind of knew how to open doors and work MLS and that type of stuff. It wasn’t like a brand new agent coming in. But they didn’t have a lot of sales skills. And that was the one thing that really surprised me with this industry is that, there are so many people that don’t do the things necessary and understand how difficult what we do is, and there are enough people out there that kind of bump into transactions and think that, “Hey, I sell five or six houses a year.
I’m a successful salesperson”. It’s like, “Well, no!” Sell 10, sell 20, sell 30, and be able to provide the service and support and the expertise that you really can do a great job for your customers.
Chris Bounds 04:16
In most, I tell agents this all the time. You get your license, you are now a business owner. You just happened to be all jobs in your business. That’s good and bad. You can do whatever you want, but you have to do everything. Which includes sales, marketing, conversion, accounting, bookkeeping, transaction management, customer support and then there’s timelines and deadlines, you get your CRM and then, all this stuff that the agent has to do.
Thankfully, starting out, it’s not much. But once you get a few transactions, because you usually don’t have systems in place yet. That becomes a mountain. And then a lot of people don’t like that. They want to do one thing. They want to talk to people. They love houses, and they want to talk to people. Joining a team for those agents, you will take a split, but you don’t have all those other jobs and headaches, probably you don’t like anyway. You can learn, develop, and then you can focus on what you like.
Chris Snow 05:21
Exactly. And we’ve got people that have been on our team for three, four or five years. And my whole goal is to grow them up that if they want to step out and do this on their own, “Hey, I’ll show you and help you put this tools in the systems”. They’re like, I don’t want to have any part of that.
I like operating in my lane and that’s okay. There’s no right or wrong answer to it. It’s just before the eXp business model, it was always a scary proposition to raise that person up, to be able to do exactly what I do, because if they did it, and they did it well.
Now all of a sudden there’s no place for them in our organization, they would step away either leave the brokerage, leave our team, and all that training, everything’s not only gone, all the trailing income is now gone. And now all of a sudden, they’re competing with me for the same types of stuff that I’ve been, you know, showing them how to do.
Chris Bounds 06:16
That’s the economy. Danny and I talked about this earlier. You grow and develop them. Then, at some point, a lot of them are going to want to go off on their own. Individual, or maybe started their own team or whatever. It can be tough.
I always say, “Hey, just value relationships over transactions, things will work out over time”, always do that. But as far as the financial relationship, which is real, that is real money, that in real revenue that you’re losing, and a client base that you’re losing, that’s real.
But really with any other brokerage, that’s gone forever. But as one of the eXp, that’s not true. The financial relationship from a core team now the splits and all that, that may be gone, but the revenue share relationship that last in perpetuity, as long as we stay with the eXp.
Chris Snow 07:13
Exactly. It’s funny because we always will go back and kind of monitor the agents who transitioned off our team before we came to eXp transitioned off our team and went to other brokerages. And their successes never duplicated.
And the amount of income that they make is less than what they were making on the lower team splits. That always burned in the back of my mind. As much as I want to hold people on, sometimes they have to go in order to understand what we were providing for them.
Chris Bounds 07:44
Yes.
Chris Snow 07:44
And so now as we’re having those conversations and onboarding people onto our team, it’s like, “Look, I want you to”- before they come on, we want them to say, eXp is the company that we want to partner with long term. And that is the ice cream.
And then we just happened to be the whipped cream and the the sprinkles on top, that they get to come to our team, they could still participate in all the stuff that eXp is doing, but they get to grow and learn and operate under our banner, until there’s this point in time where they decide that, “Hey, I’m ready to go do this on my own.” or “I want to go, grow my own team.”
Chris Bounds 08:19
I’m gonna draw a one comparison and we’ll close it with this, because I think this is huge for team leaders. I drive this into team leaders all the time. If you can go back to your other brokerage you mentioned it’s REMAX, it doesn’t really matter what broker. I joined your team. I’m a new agent.
Now, I’m out there doing 6 million a year. I’m like, “Hey, I don’t need to pay this guy 50% or 30% or whatever. I like, you but it’s just time. Time for me to move on. But I still want some coaching and guidance like what’s your incentive even though you may like me- your incentive to coach me once I left your team you’re not making any money off me.
Chris Snow 08:58
Right. Exactly!
Chris Bounds 09:00
Now, train me or network or in collaborate with me as your competitor is probably nearing on 0%
Chris Snow 09:09
Yes. I think there’s as much as anything on the other side. They’re too embarrassed to ask for it. Even though they need it.
Chris Bounds 09:15
Are you sure of that?
Chris Snow 09:16
Yes.
Chris Bounds 09:16
True. Because they may feel like a little bit of bad blood or whatever. eXp, same situation. I joined your team. I get out. I flourish. I go off on my own. I mean, your revenue share team and “Hey, Chris, got this question.”
Really weird situation on this transaction, not sure where to go with it. Or send that text. Your incentive to help me grow my business still exist. You still have your core team responsibility, but that revenue share team is that relationship. It’s real.
Chris Snow 09:55
Absolutely.
Chris Bounds 09:57
You’re financially rewarded even more as I grow.
Chris Snow 10:00
I tell other team leaders and when I’m speaking with an individual agent as well, is that, you want as many people highly interested in your success as you do, right? And in a traditional brokerage model, it’s typically the broker. And that’s it.
There might be a sales manager, maybe, but typically, it’s just the broker is the only one who’s financially incentivized by that relationship with you in the brokerage. And what I love is that, at a minimum, I have seven people that are highly vested, and highly interested in the success that I have not only selling houses, but if I want to help the company grow, they want to help me grow with me. Right. And so, when you have that many people that just on a micro level are vested in your success, if I’m not successful, it’s not the company’s fault.
Chris Bounds 10:53
Yes, but you just didn’t do it.
Chris Snow 10:56
I didn’t do it. I didn’t ask for the help. I didn’t follow what people who walk before me did. I tried to do my own thing. And if it didn’t work, it wasn’t because the support wasn’t there. It’s because I refuse to go there.
Chris Bounds 11:11
Yes, that’s a compelling conversation to have with really any team leader that they should go reflect on.