Success Insights

(Video Transcript - lightly edited for clarity)

You know the topic of showing agents really has been coming on very strong the last two to three years. They are typically associated with a top producing agent on your team. Like a top producing buyer's agent, a showing agent, or a showing partner, showing assistant, many different titles but let's just call them showing agents. They must be licensed.

Showing agents tend to be newly licensed people helping a high producing buyer agent or a high producing agent on your team Showing agents works only on the buy side, for the most part. Your buyer agents do the prospecting and schedule their initial buyer appointment which I prefer to be in the office. The buyer agent goes through the home-buying process with the prospect including personally picking out properties to show. The showing agent’s job is to show the properties picked out by the buyer agent and report back once the prospect has chosen a property. Then the buyer agent writes up and negotiates the offer.

The showing agent does get compensated and compensation comes in many different ways, shapes and forms. Some will pay a showing agent on so much money per house. Generally, I see $25 a house but we have to put a max on it, not to exceed four to six homes per client, so I'm capping the showing assistance income to $100 - $150. If they have to show more than that well then you probably didn't do a good job understanding the clients wants and needs. Others pay the showing agent a salary.

An agent may hire them and pay them a salary and they work exclusively with that agent. If it's a team showing agent, maybe the Rainmaker is paying a salary. Another way is you know when you look at the splits they have on your team, your net should never be compromised. If you're paying an agent 50% then sometimes what will happen if I have a $200,000 sale and it's three percent commission at six thousand, well if you're paying the buyer's agent you know fifty-fifty, they get three thousand then.

It is buyer agent's responsibility to determine how much of that three thousand they want to give the showing assistant. Normally I see newer showing assistants starting around thirty percent of that money so of the three thousand dollars the agent received, the showing assistant would get $900 and they only get paid upon closing. That's a basic comp plan for a showing assistant.

I have one client, she actually has two showing assistants that work for her. She never leaves the office, works 50 hours a week and all she does all day long is prospect, initial consultations with buyers. Her showing agents take the people out, and she closed 221 properties, never leaving the office. Sounds like a highly profitable business and she's making money off of every one of these deals, so she's leveraging her time through the use of showing assistants, which allows average agents to kind of take a step up and become superstars on your team.

It's also a phenomenal retention tool for top producing agents. Eventually showing assistants want to be an agent on their own. Make sure you have this all worked out with the agent hiring the showing assistant. When that does occur, because it will, some team members may get upset with you if all of a sudden, a showing assistant wants to now come to be a buyer agent on a team, after spending a year training this person. There are ways around this, check with your coach the best policies for doing so. After all, we want to treat everybody fairly.