In Real estate each sales agent is their own entity. Essentially you are your own business and
although it isn’t immediately obvious the most important thing in a business is its systems
and processes.
One thing that comes up with every successful agent I have met is the difficulty to find the
time to prospect once you start holding multiple campaigns at once. Success of course never
comes without its own challenges. And this seems to be the most common one in real
estate, how do I find the time to hit the phones when I have vendors to speak to daily, set to
sell meetings to have, price reductions to get, buyer enquiry to handle and OFI call backs to
get done. What generally happens in this situation is the prospecting goes to the wayside.
This is incredibly counterproductive as the way that we generate listings is by prospecting. It
is the activity that brings new business in this game. How then do we apply systems and
processes to our prospecting to ensure that we remove this up and down cycle from our
business?
There are a couple of ways listed below:
1. Hire a Junior Agent
The traditional system of automating your prospecting is to hire a junior agent or lead
generator to join your team. Essentially this junior agent acts as an assistant for all your
prospecting needs, helping complete calls through your database, growing your database
through cold calls, and completing OFI call backs. There are some benefits and drawbacks to
this system.
In terms of benefits the junior can be used for assistance at open homes, can complete
menial tasks for which you no longer have the time and can eventually be a fully-fledged
agent that brings commission to your business without too much assistance.
In terms of drawbacks there are a couple of issues that seem to pop up regularly. Firstly,
most Junior agents simply are not well trained when they start their careers, and it may take
6 – 12 months before they are proficient on the phone. The issue here is that in that 6–12-
month period, the opportunity cost of the missed listings due to inexperience, can amount
to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Aside from this, junior agents can often times become
disgruntled with being in a secondary position and will sometimes leave to join competitors,
essentially becoming your direct competition.
There are also the added costs of superannuation, sick pay, holiday pay, unproductive days
as well as the time cost of personally managing and training that staff member.

2. Use a prospecting company to do your calls
Hiring an external company to complete prospecting on your behalf is a fairly new concept
in the real estate industry. It has however grown massively in popularity in recent years. This
is because it has proven to be a highly effective way to generate leads and listing

opportunities. Being the owner of such a company, K2X, I have to admit that I am probably
rather biased with regard to this topic. However, there are some clear advantages and
disadvantages to such a strategy.
In terms of advantages there are no extra costs to be paid. Superannuation, holiday pay, sick
pay are not necessary as you are not employing the prospector. In addition to this,
unproductive days are simply not on the cards, as a company like ours offers a money back
guarantee should we not hit our pre-agreed KPI’s. This money back guarantee system also
allows you to decide how many appointments you would like per week and to ensure they
are readily booked for you when you come into a new week. If that KPI is for some reason
not achieved, you simply get whatever results were obtained, free of charge for that week.
All staff are well trained and highly skilled prospectors from the first time they complete a
call for you. There is no time or effort needed to manage or train them yourself.
Now there are some disadvantages to this system too, there is only so much someone can
do over the phone. No assistance can be provided with holding open homes or
administrative tasks.
Depending on your desired outcome both having a junior agent and using a prospecting
company work incredibly well for amplifying your business opportunities. In saying this most
agents would certainly benefit from a combination of the two.