How the agents in a network are selected, and why it matters

The answer, straight away

A professional network is worth what its weakest member is worth, because one careless agent costs the trust of everybody who met them.

So selection happens beforehand and against written criteria, and a network that accepts everybody is of no use to the people already in it.

The mistake we made

At the start we let people in without a serious filter. Then we had to remove them, and removing them meant giving up revenue we had already counted.

We did it anyway. It was the most expensive mistake, and the lesson is that the filter is built beforehand, not after somebody has breached it.

What gets looked at

What they hold. Exclusive properties, or at least a direct owner relationship, in a coherent band. Not how many listings they have online, which tells you how many they have not sold.

Who they have on the other side. Real buyers, spoken to recently, with a budget and an area they know.

What they have completed. Deals concluded in the last two years in the band they claim.

How they behave. They reply, they meet deadlines, they say the uncomfortable thing to their own clients. It shows in the first thirty days.

Whether they are willing to collaborate. Not everybody is, and it is not a failing: it is a different way of working.

Why the criteria have to be published

Because a network that selects at its own discretion looks like a circle of friends, and the people outside say so.

Written criteria applied equally protect whoever runs it as much as the members. Including the case where the person running it has their own agency, which has to be treated on the same terms as every other member, and that has to be written down too.

What happens when somebody does not hold up

They are removed. It costs, and it is done.

A network that removes nobody is telling its good members that their standard does not matter, and the good members are the first to leave.

Why selection is the service, not a side dish

There is a very practical reason underneath all of this, and it concerns the people already inside.

When an agent uploads their best buyer — someone they have nurtured for two years — they are effectively handing them to a stranger. They only do it if they are reasonably sure the person on the other side works the way they do.

One wrong person is enough for that trust to stop existing for everybody. Take the selection away and what is left is software.

There is one criterion that gets little attention and matters a great deal: whether they are growing, and investing in it. Someone comfortable where they are will use none of what they are given, and a year later they will be right to say it was no use. What is not looked at is size: some of the best work alone, with twenty years of relationships and no infrastructure.

The question to ask anybody offering you a network

How many you have turned down, and how many you have removed.

If the answer is none, you know what kind of network it is.