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Brenda Tushaus, the CEO of the most productive large brokerage in the US, joins us in this episode to discuss the market. Additionally, we discuss the importance of recruiting and keeping A player agents (and how they help you recruit more A players).
TRANSCRIPTION
Hi everybody. And welcome to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. And today I have the pleasure of interviewing Brenda Tushaus. Brenda’s the CEO of Re/Max Results, which is not only one of the largest Re/Max franchises in the world. It’s not only one of the largest Brokerages in the United States in terms of both transactions and dollars sold, but it’s actually also the most productive, large Brokerage in the entire country. Brenda is a friend of mine and her company is also a client of ours at Tribus. So full disclosure before we get started on that today. But I think we’re going to have a really fun conversation and hopefully everybody listening, that’s a brokerage owner or staff person can glean something from this most productive brokerage in the country. So first of all, Brenda, thank you so much for joining us.
Hi, Eric. Thanks. I’m happy to be here.
Great. Well first, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Re/Max Results and kind of your role at the country?
Re/Max Results. We are located in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin. We have just over 40 offices and just shy of 1200 agents. And I’ve been at the company for going on. I lose track. It’s like 18 or 19 years. And I’ve been CEO for the last two years. We are, we’re just a growth minded. We’re always looking to expand, you know, when I say we’re in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin eventually, into other territories as well. What do you want to know?
Well, one of the stories that I love about your working at the company is you started out as a IT person more or less. And if I remember correctly, you were pretty much the low woman for, from an it perspective, just doing updates on computers around the offices, right?
So my history at the company, when I started, I was hired as the technology manager and you know, I was literally crawling around under desks and hooking up computers and, you know, back then we had MLS books. And then I remember when we moved from books to diskettes and I was installing, you know, the MLS program on all of our resource room computers and, you know, just really supporting and managing, the tech infrastructure in three offices at the time. So obviously we’ve grown from three offices, 40 offices, and through the years I’ve grown in a variety of different roles, but I’ve maintained that, that, that kind of technology interests, there came a point where I knew that, this, this wasn’t for me, and there are better individuals out there to kind of manage that area. So I hired a gentleman who’s been with me at least 15 years, probably longer who oversees our technology. We now have department. It’s not just one, one person like it was when I first started. And, yep. I’ve held roles, I’ve done training, business development, marketing kind of director of operations. I was director of recruiting for a couple of years. I really enjoyed that. And then eventually grew into a chief operating officer and then CEO.
Yeah. And by the way, if you want to hear more of Brenda’s story, Brenda actually has her own podcast where she interviews some of the top agents at Re/Max Results that everybody should subscribe to. It’s called the Results Driven Podcast. Remember correctly, right? Brenda
Q Eric. Yes. I just launched it a couple months ago and it’s results driven podcasts. It’s, it’s essentially, I’m, I’m the host and I’m just featuring Re/Max Results, sales executive. So it’s an inside glimpse into the associates that work at our company and then their secrets to success and yeah, and we’re loving it.
Well, speaking of that and the company and the success that your agents have. So, you know, I mentioned to everybody that you’re one of the most productive, excuse me, you are the most productive, large brokerage in the country. So how many about how many transactions and how did you do last year and how many agents do you have in the company?
Looking over at a marketing piece that I have been to my wall, I should know this number. I think I know I’m drawing a blank. It was over 23,000 sides. Well, you know, in 2019 we did, we took a little dip in closed transactions. I think a lot of people did. I think in 2018 we did closer to 24,000 sides. Our average per agent production fluctuates over the years, anywhere from 21 to 24 sides per agent, I think last year it was just over 22 sides per agent was our average. When, when, when looking at, you know, the top 20 brokerages on some of the national trend reports that come out we, we tend to rank right at the top.
And so that yields the question. You have a thousand plus associates at the company, they’re all averaging 20 plus transactions, let’s call it. And it’s something I tout all the time to people on our sales team of saying we have the most productive, broke, large brokerage in the country where the average person’s doing 20 transactions. How do you get and retain these a players? Because obviously if you were a traditional brokerage where, many brokerages out there that might even be listening to this, they have, and I hear this story all the time. 80% of my agents sell two or less transactions a year, right. If you had 80% of that, your numbers wouldn’t be that good. So how do you get and retain these A-players?
Well, I, I say retaining them has been pretty easy. It’s the getting part that’s difficult. Everyone would agree that recruiting when you’re running a brokerage is it’s, it’s the number one, you know, it’s what it’s about when you’re running a real estate broker, just recruiting. So, especially in, in our markets, it’s, it’s very, very competitive, but, I think it, it, it goes, there’s a couple things, you know, there’s the, you know, you surround yourself with the people that, you want, you know, if you want to be successful, you surround yourself with more success. So we naturally have just attracted higher level. We never used to, years ago, we never used to hire newly licensed individuals. We do now. We started hiring newly licensed agents and we started offering training programs for newly licensed.
When it, teens really became a thing and teams started growing probably eight or nine years ago, I think in our marketplace. And, you know, it’s the teams that wanted to bring on the newly licensed sales executives and train them the way they wanted, you know, so we, we had to change our model to adjust to that, but, we have some, some rules. When you come to work for Re/Max Results, you have to be full time. You can’t be a part time agent. Now there’s always a couple of exceptions to that rule. So, you know, you get people that are transitioning into a real estate career and they’re leaving maybe a corporate job. We work with them and we get that commitment from them. Like, you know, six months from now, you’re going to be in this full time.
So we do work with people in transitioning, but the goal is to get them to full time rural her status. We have, we do have – like we are separate independent contractor agreements for our, for our sales executives. We have a team member agreement and then a independent agent agreement and the team member agreements, because it’s the teams that are typically bringing in the newly licensed individuals do mention desired standards as far as sales performance. So, you know, in their first 12 months with Re/Max Results, you know, it is our, that they are doing a minimum of eight to 10 transactions in their first year. So the other thing about the importance of maintaining these, these standards and maintaining that full time status as a realtor with us is, are our sales executives, the seasoned agents that have been with us for many years. They love that. They love knowing that the, you know, the agent on the other side of the transaction, if it’s another Re/Max result’s agent, they know they’re dealing with someone who’s full time who knows what they’re doing a full time professional. So that is, that helps as well. Just, just having that, that good reputation in, in our communities, but also just amongst our, our sales executives.
And by the way, I mean, I know your big competitor of yours has maybe almost as much as two times as many agents as you do, but does less transactions if I remember correctly. So, you know, is that where people go, if they don’t hit the numbers and what do you do if somebody doesn’t get the numbers?
Well, okay. So we can ask that question, you know, sometimes people interview with us, you know, and, and they’ll leave an that question. Like, what if I have an off year, or, or what if I can’t sell enough real estate? Like, am I not results material like that? And then, you know, or, you know, someone that’s been with us for years, they’re just having an off year. We’re not going to, you know, as, as, as the founder, John Collopy would say, career, adjust people. If they’re not making those minimums you know what we need to see if we have sales executives and we’ve got seven regional managers with several offices in there and they’re under their wing. And if they have an individual who might be having a lower year production wise, they consult with them and they, you know, ask to review their business plan with them.
They encourage them to sign up for an accountability or coaching class. You know, and, and if we see that person trying, we leave them alone. You know what I mean? We’re not going to, we’re not going to say you can’t hold your license here because you’re not selling enough real estate. Everybody has different situations. And sometimes, I mean, even obviously this year with all the craziness of 20, 20, there’s some fluctuations in some people’s business. So we are, you know, we’re not like cutthroat, you can’t work here, you don’t meet results standards anymore. We, if we see that they’re trying, and we see that they’re there in the, and that sort of thing. You know, we, that’s good. That’s all we need to see,
But to be clear, if they’re not, you’re sending their license back to the state, right.
We are having some difficult conversations with them, you know? Yeah. You know, I, I, you know, you know, if we, yeah. You know, we’re, we’re not, we’re never going to just send someone’s license back to the state without talking to them and saying, you know, what’s going on in your world? What are your plans? You know, how are you, how are you going to get your business back up? What can we do to help you? We’re going to help, help, help. We’re going to try and help them as best as we can. And then if they are not interested in that help, we might suggest that they take a temporary leave and maybe hold their license with one of our sister brokerage where some of our licensed assistants, or hold their license.
And we, you know, we suggest something like that. So fortunately, we’re not having a lot of those conversations. That’s difficult, you know, difficult, but, but getting and retaining those high producing agents, that’s what it’s all about. It’s, it’s getting harder. Recruiting is getting harder, not just in our marketplace, I think just everywhere. And we don’t write the big checks that, you know, other companies are doing because, you know, in my opinion, if that’s your only value proposition, a big, big check, then, then that person is joining your company for the wrong reason.
I said, literally, and for those listeners that don’t know, I used to own a Brokerage. And I told all of my office managers always to remember one rule of recruiting, which is you recruit on commission, lose on commission. And I think the same thing goes with writing these checks. If you recruit on writing a check, someone will always be there to write a bigger check. Right? Yup. Yup. And the other problem with that is you end up with no culture, your culture is people that came there because they got a check, not because they liked the team and, and something that I think I can’t stress enough from what Brenda is saying here is that she’s, she’s curated a team of these, a players and a players only want to be around a players. Right. And so would you find that in recruiting that recruiting is easier of getting the top tier talent because of that? Or do you think each team or each person that isn’t a player comes to you independently for different reasons?
I’d say it’s kind of a hybrid of the two. Because I’ve seen situations where, you know, we, we get the, a player, they’re so happy and they’re just like, why didn’t I make this decision, you know, a year ago or two years ago. And then these top producers, they know all the other top producers in town and it’s not competitive necessarily. They say, you know, you need to get this person over here to let me help you. They actually want to help. You know what I mean? So, it’s, I’ve seen that time and time again. And it’s usually a top producer from the company that they left because it’s a, it’s, it’s someone that, you know, they enjoyed working with. And, yeah, so it’s our own associates that are, that help us. You know, we don’t expect them to, we don’t ask them, we don’t want our agents recruiting. We want our agents selling real estate.
And absolutely, it’s not like you guys have this massive program to compensate people for recruiting either. Right, right. Correct. So, and I, and I happen to know that there’s at least a few, what are now big selling agents and teams inside of your brokerage. And they started by being assistants or you know, lower people down the totem pole then, other people inside of the brokers, like they were assistants to teams, that were there before. I know for example, like the Huffman’s used to work for the Doyle team right. And so it can yield those players that want to stay around if you’ve built that great culture inside of the brokerage, that it’s a players, they demand a players, and then they, you know, you can grow a players. You don’t have to always recruit them. You can grow them if the policy is, is like what Brenda’s talking about. So, you know, being that somebody’s listening to this show might be a con person considering getting a license. What advice would you give to a new agent?
Make sure your spouse or significant other, is also supportive of your decision to get into selling real estate. You know, realistically knowing that it could be three to six months before you get your first paycheck, you really need to have the support of that other person in your life. If there is another, you know what I mean? And, and then you just have to commit, commit to a full time, you know, and, and stick to it and show up every day, whether you’re going to the office or going to your home office, like show up, get up. And every day you need to stick to routines.
And I actually just listened to a, a, a different podcast where they were interviewing another brokerage leader from the San Francisco area. I listen to this the other day. And one of the things she said was she could tell in the first 10, 15 days, whether the person was going to work out, not because they sold something in the first 10 days, but did they show up to the office every day? Did it, were they dressed appropriately, not in cutoffs and a tee shirt that they showed up in, you know, where are they taking it seriously as what she was kind of alluding to with it? And it sounds like your advice to folks is kind of the exact same thing. And, and certainly something that I think everybody should pay attention to is the people in your life have to be on board for this too.
Cause like I remember having agents and when they didn’t have a sale in their first 30 days, the spouse or the significant other might say, you got to stop this. You’re not bringing anything home and it just doesn’t work like that. You know, it can take longer and then you accelerate once, once you get your feet rolling underneath you. So, so now obviously TRIBUS provides technology to, so, but I really want to stay at, from a high level and ask, you know, how does results, obviously with you having a technology background and how you started the company, how do you view the technology offerings, the agents, what, what makes results choose, we’re going to offer this product or that product to our agents?
Well, I listen to what our associates are saying. Im in the, our offices every day. I don’t, I don’t sit, I have an office in our headquarters in Eden Prairie, but I’m sitting here now and I’m here for the first time this week. I’m all over the place. So I’m in all 40 of our offices talking to our associates all the time. I’m very active in our private Facebook group as well. And so I, I just pay close attention and identify needs, because I have always been kind of the techie side of things. I, I I’m, I just, you know, I have a lot of friends in the technology industry, you know, you’re one of them, Eric and I, and, and people sometimes will just reach out and say, Hey, there’s this new product you need to, you need to check this out.
And I did that twice last week. And so I’m always doing that too. Just get a pulse. And sometimes I’ll walk away from an introduction, like a webinar going, what was that? You know? And sometimes I walk away going, we need that, you know, like that is something we do not have. We need that. Have I hit it out of the park with some of the offerings in our technology stack? Yes. With some, no with others. I mean, there have been tools that we’ve rolled out and, you know, we just couldn’t get that adoption rate. Or after the fact we maybe were sold something, we were delivered something different than what we were sold. And, you know, I think every broker has experienced that at some point. And, you know, you just, you give it a run and if it doesn’t work after a year or two, you, you have to sunset that technology. But there is also the importance of keeping it consistent technology, the associates, our customers, they get, they get frustrated. You can’t be changing out their CRM systems every, you know, two years you can’t, you know what I mean? They, they need that consistency. Cause sometimes it takes them two years just to master it. You know what I mean? So, yeah. I don’t know. Did that answer your question?
Sure. It actually leads something you just said actually leads into the next question that I have for you, which is how, you know, you were talking about adoption and getting agents to actually use something and some things are working and some things aren’t. Do you think that that is solely a function of the product? Or do you think that it’s mostly perhaps a function of the support from the other company working with your team? Or is it something else I’m not even thinking of?
I think it’s two things. I think it’s a function of the product. It has to be easy to use. It has to be so intuitive that it requires little to no training, so that someone can just jump in and just kind of figure it out. And then the other side really has to do with how well we did as the brokerage in the rollout in promoting it. We’ve rolled things out, you know, in the spring market, which is the worst time to roll out a product. You know, when associates are way too busy to learn something new and then we’ve had to like relaunch it again in the fall or the winter when things settled down. So, so it, you know, I think there’s both parties on both sides are responsible.
So, you know, in, in your company one of the things that I know is we have a very high adoption rates. It’s something we kind of tout to other clients of how higher adoption rate is of the system. And, you know, obviously you guys have helped out immensely with helping us get there and you know, for numbers sake, we’re about 50% adoption counted as a, at least a time per week logging into the platform and something we’re really proud of. Would you say that, adoption is the main metric to success? Or would you say that it’s maybe more about if people are, are talking to you and saying, Hey, I’m getting business from this. Even if it’s not half your, your agents are logging in every week, maybe you’ve got five agents that in the past month have told you, Hey, I got a deal out of this, or I have at least a lead out of this. Would that make you, would that entice you to stick around with a product?
Yes. If I’m hearing our associates are closing deals as a result of the product. Absolutely. I can just say, the adoption rate, it is one of our highest our TRIBUS CRM back office kind of all in one solution is our, one of our most highly adopted tools because that’s, that’s something that we, we pushed the importance of a CRM system. You know, you can’t be a Realtor and not have a CRM. And, you know, we don’t force them to use our CRM. It’s an option to them because it’s complimentary, obviously any CRM, is, is a good CRM, any see anything, anyone they’re using as a good CRM as the old saying goes. But I, I, I think I contribute to high adoption. I just heard this from a few people the other day that are newer to our company from another large brokerage in town. And they, they say that our back office system is amazing, spectacular, wonderful. Everybody loves it. They just love the big, easy visuals and navigation and single sign on is another thing like having that single sign on to other tools that helps with adoption, if they can’t remember their login, they’re not going to use it. So yeah, that, that’s, that’s, that’s important
Now. I swear I did not pay Brenda to say what she just said. So thank you. But speaking of that, I happen to know that we’re getting ready to relaunch your website. And actually by the time this episode airs, the, the whole redo of the website will be live. But one of the things that I know our teams worked really close together on was map-based data. And that was one of the big giant in the relaunch of the website. And so, you know, was that something that consumers were coming to you and saying, Hey, we need commute times and school data and school ratings and where the closest grocery store is. Was that something consumers were telling the agents about, or was it something associates came to you and said, Hey, we really, we really want to focus on this because we think we can provide a higher level of value to our clients.
We get the messaging, the requests from our associates, you know, our customers, they’re getting it from their buyers and sellers. And, you know, I, I don’t even know, like what’s, what percentage of our agents would you say Eric use the TRIBUS is provided websites it’s really high. Do you know?
It’s the vast majority, I don’t know, off the top of my head, but one thing I’m particularly proud of is WAV group, which is an independent consulting company in the business. When we first launched they actually did an analysis and found that over 50% of your teams and Brenda, what is it, 125 teams you have now, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So over 50% of their teams had switched over to using their TRIBUS website as their primary website, not something like BoomTown or conversion or, or a commission zinc or something like that. That is something we were incredibly proud of. So from teams to use it that much, you know, agent adoption is, is a high too. I don’t know the number off the top of my head of how many of them use it as their primary website, but I know it’s a big chunk of it,
A large, large percentage of our associates use the websites that are provided to them complimentary through the TRIBUS platform. And so the requests and the wants and the stuff that we come to try this with aren’t necessarily for the main company website results.net. It’s actually because we want, you know, it’s our customers, our agents want them on their own personal websites. So yeah, school districts is really, really important, especially in the twin cities. And we’ve, we’ve had that ability, but the new stuff that’s coming, I’m excited about with that includes the ratings for the schools as well. Just the ability to search by districts or attendance zones. Obviously driving drive time is it’s still important to tell it’s, it’ll be interesting to see, you know, with, with COVID and work from home, how, how that changes. So then, you know, maybe you know, I, I, it’s still important to, it’s a tool that we know people are using. The neighborhood highlights, just the lifestyle type searches. I’m super excited about it.
Me too. I can’t wait to see the usage of those tools where you can really drill down and find the right home for you. Speaking of that, I have to ask this question which is, have you heard any of your associates being asked about properties that have zoom rooms or anything like that right now, because of this
Really? No, but my kids are asking me to turn for bedrooms into zoom rooms. Like, you know, like there are no, I haven’t, I haven’t, but that’s interesting. Yeah, that was a conversation I was having with my 12 year old last night, because they’re starting distance learning and it’s all about like, what’s in the background, mom, when I’m zooming, you know, for eight hours a day,
It’s the new, what you wear to school, a type of a thing. It’s how you stand out. It’s what’s behind you in your career, right?
Yeah. Seriously so no, I haven’t. So tell me more about this.
I only asked the question because I happened to see somebody posts some data about this. I think it was even to this morning that they posted the data, showing the rise. And it was, it was an article that I think was on Bloomberg business week or something like that. And it was talking about the concept of a zoom town BoomTown. And the idea was people were moving from places like San Francisco and instead going to Tahoe, or they were going to lesser expensive areas because their employers were now allowing their work. And I know Minneapolis is a huge environment for, for a large scale corporate companies that have their headquarters. They’re like, I know best buy is based there. And I know, I think United healthcare is based there along with I’m sure a number of other very large companies, but I, I was, you know, reading this that was talking about how Minnesota, because of the lower overall pricing was drawing people that direction as a place that they could have as almost like a summer place, because it wasn’t as expensive as a beach town or something like that, but they could still have, you know, the land of lakes, right.
10,000 lakes and so, rom that perspective, what they were talking about was that the house needed to have at least an extra bedroom, but that a lot of builders were starting to consider adding to their, their floor plans rooms that were not as big as a bedroom, but were sheerly designed for kids or, or adults to be on there for zoom. And it was these multiple three and four of these small, you know, bigger than a closet, but smaller than a bedroom type rooms. And they cited Minnesota is one of those areas. So, sorry, I kind of derailed that, but I don’t know if you had heard anything.
That’s interesting. I haven’t, but I, I, I believe it, you know, it’s, it’s funny that you’re, you’re talking about the movement too, because I was earlier this week I was spending some time in our Duluth and superior market. We have three offices around the Lake superior market. And I had a couple of associates telling me the movement that they’re seeing out of the twin cities to the Duluth area. Yeah. So, you know, not only people like you have heard moving to the twin cities, but also those that know that, you know, don’t need to be close to work or don’t need to be in the city. They’re heading, they’re heading to Duluth, so yeah.
Yeah. And now you’re on the Lake. You’re on a big Lake being out there. So, okay, well, let’s get back to technology, a couple of these technology questions I have for you. So, you know, one of the tools that I know you just recently introduced and I’m sure you don’t have any metrics per se on it quite yet. Zavvie. And for those listeners that don’t know, Zavvie is a company that it, the whole concept is that sellers or people that own homes can essentially get multiple bids from either buyers or these instant offer companies in one place. Now, obviously you’re the most productive brokerage in the country. You have well over a thousand associates in the company they’re doing 20 plus transactions per associate. And here you’re adding what amounts to an eye buyer opportunity on your website. What was the thinking behind that? Was it perhaps to show that these offers are somewhat lower than what a traditional sales process would be?
It was really just a tool to assist our first and foremost, and there’s, there’s multiple features to Zavvie, but the, the one that appealed to us most was a component that supports our sales executives when they are going after a listing. You know, when they, when they are meeting with a potential seller, they also can be armed with an instant offer because we have open door and Zillow offers in our marketplace. You know, the CMA, the market analysis for like what they could get for the sale of their home if they go to market traditionally, but then it lays it out in a nice report alongside what you would get from open door, what you would get from Zillow offers. And then you can even add a private investor if that agent works with investment team of investors, which some of them, some of them do.
So it’s really just a nice solution because we have a couple of, competitors and tell them that are pretty aggressive in their marketing as far as instant offers and guaranteed offers. And so that allows Re/Max Results, sales executives to also say, you know, Oh, so you would like, okay, yep, here you go. Here’s what I can, you know, it allows them to kind of compete in that world. So really you’re, you’re using those services, those eye buyers, but you’re presenting it alongside what you can do as a traditional real estate agent. Does that make sense?
Yeah, for sure. So for example, they’re putting these offers in maybe with their listing presentation and showing the seller what the numbers might be. Yep. Yep. Makes, makes absolute perfect sense. Okay. Well that’s pretty much all the time we have, but, I do want to ask you one more question, which is, if you could change anything about the real estate industry, what would be the one thing that you would change?
Brenda Tushaus
No, part-timers obviously, but that, what I would say is you know, some sort of increased education increased like requirements or threshold or whatever you want to call it for just getting in to real estate. And, you know, we need the industry, you know, fortunately we’ve got all the serious, Realtors at our company, but, but some, some do not. And I, you know, the ones that only sell one or two houses a year, or have their license for personal, you know, reasons of doing their own transactions they’re really doing a disservice to the industry and to consumers.
So we’ll ask you a quick follow up question to that. Then. Would you advocate for an apprentice ship program when somebody gets into real estate?
Yes, absolutely.
It’s something that I’ve heard more and more, and it’s seemingly like a very good idea because it’ll, it gets rid of those concerns of somebody maybe not making as much money, but at the same time, they’re learning the business and how to be a professional in the industry, not a newbie that doesn’t know what they’re doing. So any which way will thank you very much, Brenda, for coming on the show, we really appreciate your time. Hopefully all of our listeners have gleaned something to take back to their brokerages with what Brenda’s talked about here. You’ve been listening to Brokerage Insider the podcast where we interview the leaders in real estate and technology. Please make sure to subscribe to our show for future episodes, where we’ve interviewed more of these leaders, just like Brenda. Thanks again, Brenda, for coming.
Thank you.
