How an Assistant Can Give Away Her Job

Did you know that you’re supposed to give your job away?

Wut?

Yeah.

As your team grows, it will become necessary for you to give away parts of your job and eventually you will have given away so many parts that you will have a new job.

A typical progression would look something like this:

An agent hires their first Executive Assistant. If the agent made a good hire, the next step, according to The Millionaire Real Estate Agent (MREA) is to hire a second assistant in the form of a transaction coordinator.

I have to admit that for a long time, I was confused by this. Why in world would one agent need two assistants? Can an agent even work enough hours in the day to warrant two assistants?

The conclusion I came to was this: the third hire should be an agent to work exclusively with the buyers. If the agent makes the right hire, all hell is about to break loose. Contracts are going to be coming in like crazy and if the agent only has one assistant, that person is going to be overwhelmed very quickly. Then, amidst the chaos, the assistant has to find and hire someone to help her.

I only know this because that’s what happened to me.

My agent, Ron Henderson, already had a buyer’s agent when he hired me, and before me, Ron’s wife was helping him out with the admin side on a part time basis. What Ron didn’t realize at the time was that neither of those people were helping him reach maximum capacity. It wasn’t until he went to the Recruit Select class under Keller Williams that he realized he had a problem.His wife wasn’t the right DISC profile for an assistant and while he was asking her to do more work, she was resisting. His buyer’s agent wasn’t the right DISC profile either and was asking him if she could take listings.

After I entered the picture, and Ron started to ramp up the listing side, the buyer’s agent (being a D) was becoming impatient with buyers and eventually chose to go another way. So now it’s just me and Ron.

Ron cranked out around 60 transactions during the time he didn’t have a buyers agent and he was getting pretty tired handling both buyers and sellers. So he hired a buyer’s agent.

The person he hired didn’t have any real estate experience, but he did have sales experience. Scott Parman got into production quite quickly over his first winter and by spring, I was overwhelmed. Booked solid.

I remember a particular day where I was handed four new transactions to process. I processed just those four and did nothing else that day. That’s when I realized I needed help. If I had been given a new listing or other marketing to implement, I would have either had to stay late or not do it at all.

Now, if we had done what the MREA book suggests and hired a transaction coordinator before hiring a buyer specialist, all this would have been a much easier transition. I would have had time to find, hire, and train that person and get her in a comfortable position. Then, as the buyer’s agent got hired and trained and was ramping up production, the transaction coordinator would learn and grow right beside the buyer’s agent.

It all worked out in the end, but why make it hard on yourself when you have the option of making it easy?

So, back to giving away your job…

I love the marketing. It’s where I find my zen. But some of you may absolutely love processing the transactions. The beauty is that you get to decide which part you are going to give up. In giving up part of your job, you become lead admin. And I highly recommend that you ask your agent to send you to Recruit Select and that you be allowed to make that hire yourself. That’s being a leader.

So if you’ve given up the contract to close portion of the business, what’s next? Well, you may decide to give up the listing management. Someone else can now process incoming listings and monitor them as the sellers prepare to come on market. Your transaction coordinator could be getting overwhelmed if your agent has hired more buyer’s agents or added a listing agent. So you’ll need to hire another transaction coordinator. Eventually, you may need to hire a part-time runner to put up and take down signs and lockboxes or to deliver keys to title companies.

As the team grows, it will continue to be your responsibility to manage the admin side of the business. If you have the ability, continue to take Recruit Select every year. It will keep your hiring skills sharp so that you are prepared if one of your admin hires doesn’t work out.

Keep a list of the parts of your job that you would eventually like for someone else to do. I think you’ll start to see a pattern and when it’s time to make the next hire, you won’t have to decide what role that person will play; you’ll already know.

TC Job Description for website – This is the information I posted on our website when I was looking to hire a transaction coordinator. I then put a link to that web page in my email signature.

If you are making your first hire, your job will be split into two. Here are the new job duties for each role:

Transaction Coordinator Job Duties

Executive Assistant Job Duties

Leave your questions in the comments or feel free to email me directly (egilbert AT kw DOT com). If you’ve been the one to hire on additional administrative help, I would love for you to share your experience in the comments.