Real estate agents looking to grow their businesses face the time-consuming tasks of prospecting, following leads, setting appointments, making calls, and selling. For high-volume agents, tackling all these tasks is tiring and inefficient. This is why having an inside sales agent (ISA) can be a game-changer for real estate professionals and teams aiming to save time and increase sales.
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What is an ISA in real estate?
A real estate ISA’s primary role is to funnel as many sales-ready leads as possible to real estate agents, boosting their conversions and, in turn, their bottom line. Unlike an assistant, ISAs specialize in inside sales, focusing on turning leads into sales.
What sets ISAs apart from regular sales personnel is their specialized focus on the real estate sector and their proficiency in using targeted strategies to convert initial inquiries into actionable sales opportunities.
What does an ISA for real estate do?
Many real estate professionals consider inside sales agents to be jacks of all trades—and for good reason. They can perform any number of tasks, depending on the needs and goals of the real estate agents they work with, including:
- Prospecting for new leads
- Making cold calls
- Scrubbing leads
- Qualifying incoming leads
- Following up with old leads
- Setting appointments
Let’s take a closer look at three of their main responsibilities and the tasks that fall under them.
Prospecting
This includes cold-calling prospects such as sellers whose listings have expired and property owners who are selling without an agent to identify opportunities. It may also involve conducting market research to evaluate and identify the most effective ways to target prospects.
Qualifying leads
In real estate, a qualified lead is someone genuinely interested in buying or selling property with the financial means to execute on that desire. The ISA is key in identifying sales-ready leads versus those needing more nurturing, helping real estate agents focus on prospects with the highest closing potential.
Once identified, the ISA updates the agent’s CRM with notes on each interaction, marking leads as qualified or unqualified. Many ISAs use a list of leads generated by the CRM, enriching each with insights from conversations, while others manually add new leads from various channels to ensure no opportunity is missed.
Following up
This involves turning unqualified leads into qualified ones by learning about their needs and addressing concerns. For instance, if a lead needs a lender, an ISA can offer a list of local options. With 80% of sales requiring around five follow-up calls, effective follow-up is key. ISAs can also follow up with an agent’s past clients to generate new referrals.
When should a real estate agent hire an ISA?
Deciding when to add an ISA to your real estate team depends on your readiness for growth. It’s vital to match the timing with your business volume – hiring an ISA without enough activity can lead to inefficiency, leaving your ISA underutilized.
For an ISA to truly benefit your business, you should have a strong lead pipeline of around 500 to 1,000 prospects. Another sign that you’re ready for an ISA is consistently closing one to two deals monthly with the help of an experienced assistant to handle the transaction details. This shows you have the necessary lead volume and organizational setup to integrate an ISA effectively, enhancing your sales process.
Additionally, a strong lead generation strategy is crucial. ISAs are great at outbound tasks, like contacting expired listings and FSBOs, but they need a steady stream of leads to be effective and significantly boost your sales growth.
What skills and qualities should an ISA for real estate bring to your business?
The most important skills and traits a real estate agent should look for in an ISA include:
- Outstanding organizational skills
- A solid understanding of drip campaigns and CRMs
- The ability to handle rejections professionally
- Comfort with cold calling
- The ability to follow scripts
- Effective written and verbal communication skills
- Self-motivation
- A goal-oriented approach
In addition, a good ISA understands the brand, services, and sales processes of the real estate agent or team they’re working with. They should be friendly, energetic, and adept at solving problems.
How to find a quality ISA for real estate
Direct hire
When hiring an ISA directly, start with a compelling job ad. Highlight the ISA’s key role in your business to attract the right candidates. Use this template to attract talent today:
INSIDE SALES POSITION – {location}
Join us at {your brokerage}, where we do more than sell properties—we redefine exceptional living. As market leaders, we’re deeply committed to excellence and culture. We’re seeking an Inside Sales Agent (ISA) eager to elevate their career and contribute to meaningful work.
We celebrate diversity, welcoming candidates of all backgrounds regardless of nationality, age, or experience. At {your brokerage}, we offer more than a job; we offer a career path full of growth and learning. Committed to your development, we provide extensive training to equip you with our methods and mindset.
If you’re ready to be more than just a seat filler and are eager to make a meaningful impact, we want to hear from you. Email us at {your email} with “ISA Candidate” in the subject line and include why you believe you’re the ideal fit.
Outsourcing to an ISA company
If you don’t have the time to go through the whole process of hiring internally, there are companies to which you can offload most of your ISA real estate needs. We’ve listed several useful examples below to help you with your search.
Note: When evaluating these providers, it’s crucial to understand they are not traditional staffing agencies for ISAs but rather specialize in call center services, artificial intelligence chatbots, or other ISA tools. Also, they often offer broader solutions for customer engagement and support tasks.
Smart Alto
Offering services with text messaging and integrated website chat capabilities, Smart Alto’s live virtual assistants handle many traditional ISA real estate roles other than follow-up conversations with leads.
Upcall
Because Upcall primarily focuses on outbound sales needs, this isn’t the best option for agents with a large database of leads that need nurturing. But if you’re looking to outsource lead generation without hiring a dedicated sales team, it might be a good choice.
Verse.ai
As a concierge provider for real estate professionals, Verse.ai will nurture leads and perform follow-ups via conversational AI.
Structurely
Structurely provides ISA software designed to engage leads. It also offers chatbot integration into your website and live chat systems.
How to interview an ISA for real estate
When finding the ideal candidate, it’s crucial to conduct thorough interviews. In addition to finding out if they have training or an ISA certification, ask questions that reveal the applicant’s true nature.
We suggest conducting two interviews with each candidate. In the first meeting, evaluate whether the candidate is a team player or prefers working independently. This session should also cover work expectations, including hours and pay, ensuring their goals align with your company’s vision.
The second interview should assess the candidate’s fit through specific questions and scenarios that showcase their problem-solving skills. Use dynamic role play exchanges to evaluate the applicant’s creativity, how they handle objections, and their adaptability.
How to help your ISA for real estate succeed
Once you’ve gone through the interview process and chosen an ISA, it’s important to make sure they’re set up for success. This involves training them to focus on the right leads, defining a good workflow, and setting goals and targets.
Training
To ensure ISAs effectively target leads, structure their training over three weeks. In the first week, ISAs shadow experienced team members, gaining insights into workflows.
In week two, they transition from role-playing exercises to live calls with prospects, enhancing their hands-on experience. At the same time, they learn to use your CRM and other essential tools independently. By the end of the third week, ISAs can confidently handle calls and manage technology independently, guided by constructive feedback.
Workflow
Different CRM workflows work best for different real estate teams, but these are the three you’ll typically see between agents and ISAs:
- From the lead source to the agent to the ISA: This is ideal when agents initially assess lead potential before ISAs perform deeper engagement.
- From the lead source to the ISA and the agent together: This collaborative approach ensures immediate, comprehensive follow-up, suitable for high-priority leads.
- From the lead source to the ISA to the agent: This is preferable when ISAs pre-qualify leads, allowing agents to focus on the most promising prospects.
Additionally, ISAs should meticulously document interactions in the CRM, including follow-up actions and insights gained. This enables effective lead management, such as transferring leads between lists or tagging for targeted drip campaigns.
Set goals and targets
From the start, it’s important to make sure you and your real estate ISA are on the same page about how you’ll measure their success. Setting target metrics upfront in terms of the number of contacts you expect them to make and their overall conversion rate helps you objectively track their progress and improvement.
Keep sales scripts loose
Agents tend to make scripts too complex for ISAs. Simplicity is key. Instead of memorizing scripts, ISAs should concentrate on asking questions, which efficiently gathers essential information and boosts the lead’s confidence by making the conversation about them.
After all, people like to talk about their needs and experiences. While scripts are helpful, they shouldn’t be followed too strictly. A conversational approach, similar to discussing real estate transactions with a close friend, works better.
This method emphasizes active listening and probing questions to understand the lead’s expectations and create a real connection. By prioritizing engagement rather than recitation, ISAs can nurture meaningful conversations with potential clients.
How is an ISA for real estate paid?
Inside sales agents are usually compensated through a combination of base salaries and bonuses linked to their closing success. Entry-level ISAs can earn between $40,000 and $65,000 annually, while experienced agents may reach up to $80,000, mainly from bonuses.
Their base pay often includes a salary between $24,000 and $30,000. Following a successful closing, bonuses usually range from 5% to 10% of an agent’s gross commission. However, if merely setting appointments is your goal, you might consider paying your ISA a bonus of between $50 and $150 each time.
A commission-only model exists, too, but it’s less favored as it primarily rewards straightforward inbound leads, potentially neglecting the broader scope of an ISA’s role. This model may not adequately recognize the effort involved in nurturing leads, setting appointments, and contributing to the long-term sales process.
ISA real estate strategies + Luxury Presence
A real estate ISA can boost your lead intake, but it’s crucial to have a solid lead generation system in place for them to work effectively. Luxury Presence offers award-winning marketing tools like custom websites, targeted advertising, high-converting landing pages, and more to increase your leads and sales. Schedule a free demo to see how we can help.
