Would You Rather Be Given Leads—or Learn How to Create Them?

I recently saw an advertisement from another brokerage promising agents that they hand out “leads like candy.”

I have to admit, it's a good line. If you're a real estate agent wondering where your next client is coming from, the idea of someone handing you a steady supply of leads is going to get your attention. Leads represent potential closings, and closings are how agents make a living. I certainly wouldn't tell an agent to turn down a good opportunity simply because someone else generated it.

But the longer I thought about that advertisement, the more I realized it represented a pretty significant difference in the way brokerages can think about agent development.

I don't simply want our agents to have leads. I want them to know how to create business.

Those may sound like the same thing, but I don't think they are.

A Lead and a Business Aren't the Same Thing

Let's start by acknowledging that brokerage-provided leads can absolutely be valuable.

A brokerage or team may invest significant money into online lead generation, advertising, relocation programs or other sources and then distribute those opportunities to agents. Some agents may prefer exactly that arrangement. They want to spend their time converting and serving clients while someone else handles much of the customer acquisition.

That's a legitimate business model.

My question is what the agent actually owns at the end of it.

If your primary source of business comes from leads generated by someone else's system, what happens if that system changes? What happens if the brokerage changes the way leads are distributed? What happens if the cost becomes too high? What happens if the quality declines? What happens if you decide someday that you want to build your business differently?

Most importantly, what happens if the leads simply stop?

If an agent has spent years learning how to build relationships, stay connected to a sphere, earn referrals, prospect, follow up, communicate value, create a personal brand and turn everyday conversations into real estate opportunities, that agent has developed something much more durable than a lead source.

They've developed the ability to create opportunity, and that ability belongs to the agent.

Not All Leads Are Created Equal

I also think we use the word lead so broadly in real estate that we sometimes forget how different one lead can be from another.

Compare a cold internet inquiry with a phone call from someone who says, “My friend told me I needed to call you.”

Both are leads, but from the agent's perspective, they are very different opportunities.

The internet lead may not know who you are. They may have clicked on a property while browsing late at night and may or may not be ready to do anything. They could be talking with several agents, and you may have to spend considerable time establishing trust before you ever have a meaningful conversation about representation.

The referral arrives differently. Someone the prospective client already trusts has transferred a little of that trust to you before you've even spoken.

That doesn't mean every referral converts or every internet lead is bad. I've seen great clients come from all kinds of sources. It simply means the starting point is different.

I would much rather help an agent build a business that increasingly creates warmer opportunities—people who already know them, know of them, were introduced to them, have watched them demonstrate expertise or have heard about the experience someone else had working with them.

Those opportunities are generally easier conversations because you're not beginning at zero, and perhaps more importantly, the agent can learn how to create more of them.

Lead Generation Is a Skill, Not a Punishment

I think we sometimes talk about prospecting as though it's the unpleasant price an agent has to pay for choosing the wrong brokerage.

“Come here and you won't have to find your own business.”

I understand why that's attractive. Finding business is one of the hardest parts of being self-employed.

But I've come to see lead generation very differently. The ability to create business is one of the most valuable skills an entrepreneur can possess.

If you know how to meet people, build trust, communicate your expertise, maintain relationships, ask good questions, follow up, stay visible and turn relationships into opportunities, you aren't just learning how to sell real estate. You're learning how to build a business.

And those skills become more valuable over time because they compound.

A person you meet today may become a client next year. A client you serve well this year may introduce you to someone three years from now. The neighborhood where you've consistently worked may eventually associate your name with real estate. The database that starts with 100 meaningful relationships may eventually contain hundreds.

That's very different from receiving a name and phone number. One gives you an opportunity, while the other develops your ability to keep creating opportunities.

I don't want our agents waiting for someone to pass around the candy bowl.

I want them to know how to create business whether the bowl is full, empty or somewhere else entirely.

Learning to Create Business Still Requires Teaching

There is an important distinction here because “generate your own business” can sound suspiciously like brokerage language for “You're on your own.”

That's not what I mean at all.

If I believe agents should learn how to create business, then I think the brokerage has a responsibility to actually help them learn how to do it.

At REMAX Results, we spend a significant amount of time and resources doing exactly that.

Our Momentum program is built around complete business development, not simply teaching someone how to fill out a contract once a client appears. We have weekly masterminds where agents can talk about what's happening in the current market and learn from one another. We have an open house opportunity exchange so agents can create opportunities around existing inventory, and concierge assistance that helps agents attract and stay connected to their spheres.

We provide prospecting training and accountability coaching because knowing what to do and consistently doing it are two very different things. We also use personality-specific business planning because I don't believe every successful agent should be expected to build a business the same way.

Some agents genuinely enjoy picking up the phone and setting a daily contact goal. Others are exceptional networkers and naturally build relationships wherever they go. Some thrive through open houses or community involvement. Others are comfortable creating educational content, developing a niche or building a highly organized referral and follow-up system.

The goal isn't to turn every agent into the same kind of prospector. It's to help an agent find productive ways of creating business that fit their strengths, then develop enough skill and consistency to make those methods reliable.

That's what developing a business owner looks like to me.

There Is Also an Economic Difference

This part doesn't get discussed enough.

Lead generation costs money.

Someone is paying for the advertising, technology, staff, marketing or systems that create brokerage-provided leads. How those costs ultimately show up in a particular business model varies, and I wouldn't pretend every brokerage structures it the same way.

But there is real economic value in an agent knowing how to create their own opportunities.

When your business increasingly comes through your relationships, reputation, past clients, referrals and prospecting efforts, you have greater control over the cost of acquiring your next client. You also aren't necessarily giving up part of the economics of every transaction in exchange for access to someone else's lead source.

That can make an enormous difference over the course of a career.

This doesn't mean generating your own business is free. Your time has value. Marketing costs money. Client events, technology, mailers, social media, community involvement and other strategies all have costs associated with them.

But there's a difference between investing in an asset you're building and continually paying for access to an opportunity someone else controls.

Your database can become an asset. Your reputation can become an asset. Your referral network can become an asset, and your ability to generate a conversation can become an asset.

The more of those things you develop, the less vulnerable your business becomes to the decisions of someone controlling a lead source.

Self-Sufficiency Doesn't Mean Doing Everything Yourself

This is something I feel strongly about because I don't believe independence means isolation.

Great entrepreneurs use leverage. They use technology, administrative support, coaching, marketing resources, training and the expertise of other people. They don't prove their independence by doing everything alone.

The distinction I'm making is between support and dependency.

I want an agent to have tremendous support. I don't want their livelihood to depend entirely on whether someone continues handing them opportunities.

A strong brokerage should help an agent become more capable, not make itself indispensable by keeping the agent dependent.

That's one reason I think the question of where your business comes from deserves more attention than it gets. An agent can have a great year financially and still be building a fragile business if most of that production depends on a source they don't control.

On the other hand, an agent may be earlier in the process and producing less today while steadily building relationships, skills, reputation and systems that can support a much larger business later.

If we're only looking at this month's closings, we can miss the difference.

The Best Outcome May Actually Be Both

None of this means I think an agent should refuse a brokerage lead.

If I can create an opportunity for one of our agents, I want to create it. If an open house generates a buyer, fantastic. If the company receives an inquiry we can connect with an agent, I'm certainly not going to hide the phone number because I'm trying to teach some kind of lesson about self-sufficiency.

Take the opportunity. Learn how to convert it and serve the client exceptionally well. Then ask yourself how you can turn that transaction into something bigger than one closing.

Can that client become part of your sphere? Can exceptional service produce referrals? Can you deepen your expertise in that neighborhood or type of transaction? Can you stay connected after closing so that five years from now they aren't searching the internet for another agent?

That's where the two ideas can work together.

A lead someone gives you today can be incredibly valuable. I just don't want it to be the only way you know how to find tomorrow's client.

What Are You Actually Building?

This is really the question I came away with after seeing that “leads like candy” advertisement.

What are we trying to build for an agent?

If the goal is simply to help an agent close the next transaction, providing leads may be a very effective way to do that. My goal, though, is bigger.

I want agents to develop the ability to walk into a room and create relationships. I want them to know how to talk intelligently about the market and communicate their value without sounding like they're giving a sales pitch. I want them to build databases that contain real relationships rather than thousands of names they barely know. I want them to learn how to follow up, how to ask for business, how to earn referrals and how to stay visible in ways that feel authentic to them.

I want them to understand their numbers and know where their business comes from. I want them to recognize which activities produce results and have the discipline to continue doing those activities even when the results aren't immediate.

Most of all, I want them to know that if the market changes, a lead source disappears or their business needs to evolve, they have the skills to create another way forward.

After more than 25 years in this business, I've seen markets change plenty of times. I've watched technology change, consumer behavior change and entire methods of generating business come and go. I'm sure we'll see much more of that in the years ahead.

That's one reason I place so much value on developing the agent rather than simply supplying the agent. I can't promise an agent that any particular lead source will always be there, but I can help them become the kind of professional who knows what to do when it isn't.

If someone wants to hand you a good lead, take it. Serve that client well and make the most of the opportunity.

But I don't want an agent's career to depend on someone else continuing to pass around the candy bowl. I want them to develop the skills, relationships, reputation and confidence to create opportunities of their own.

The real question isn't how many leads someone can hand you. It's whether you know how to create opportunity when no one does.