What you are going to hear is a very different opinion about the eXp Mentor program. As much as I love the company, and I am a Certified Mentor, I do think that new real estate agents need to look at the eXp Mentor program agreements closely and decide if this is the right option for you. If yes, then, how do you pick out the right Mentor? Not all Mentors are created equal, and not all Mentors and Mentees will click with each other for various reasons.Â
Let’s address the fact straight out first before I get too deep into my opinion.
What is the eXp Realty Mentor Program?
According to eXp Realty. “The Mentor Program provides newly licensed agents with a partner and a path to gain the fundamental knowledge needed to start building a successful real estate career. Each new agent, aka mentee, who hasn’t done at least 3 transactions under their belt, is paired with an experienced agent who has been certified through the Mentor Program. Mentor and Mentee usually share the same geographic areaâ€
On top of that, mentees will be enrolled in a 10-module course on real estate fundamentals that will help them jump-start their career in real estate. The workflow is below.
eXp Mentor Program Split break down
Instead of the regular 80/20. The Mentee split will be 60/40 with an additional 10% going to the mentor and an additional 10% going to the mentor program for the 1st 3 deals.
The eXp Mentor program sounded amazing on paper! New agents will get all the support they need. They close their 1st 3 deals, graduate, and know exactly what to do in real estate right?
Here comes the 3 main problems:
1. The eXp Mentor Program pairing process focused mainly on geographical areas.
You can’t simply pair Mentor and Mentee by geographical area. In my opinion that is the worst way to pair people up. Real Estate is a huge industry and each agent specializes in different areas of real estate. Some Mentors specialized in New Construction or in Condos, others only work with investors and hedge funds. One agent can generate leads by cold calling which is brutal for new agents, but many people don’t know how to cold call and just love to use their database. Some certified mentors in eXp are savvy investors who only get their license to buy and sell their investment property. They have no clue on how to work with 1st time home buyers. You get the idea.
If the mentee who wants to do open houses got paired up with an investor focus agent who generates lead on bigger pockets for example, that is nothing but disaster waiting to happen.
2. The certified mentor’s attention is split between mentoring people in his or her revshare group and the assigned mentee.
If a real estate agent or broker is a certified Mentor at eXp, there is a very high chance that they also sponsor people into eXp, aka having their own revenue share group. While eXp Sponsors aren’t required to mentor you, many of them do, like me, because I have a vested interest in your success if I am your sponsor.
Trust me when I say this, your sponsor at eXp will want you to succeed more than your mom and your dad! They will do everything within their power to make sure the people they sponsor into the company become the next superstar. It is a win-win situation. Our Unique eXp Compensation model incentivizes a bonding between the agent and their sponsor more than anything else.
I hope I don’t sound very mean here but when it comes to the bottom line, mentoring my agents, vs a random agent that was assigned to me. The choice was clear due to the revenue share compensation model that eXp Realty designed by default. The agent in the revenue group comes 1st, and then everything else. Any mentor that tells you differently is simply lying, or Agent Attraction is simply not part of their business plan.
3. There is already an overwhelming amount of support without the eXp Mentor program
I can honestly say that when I joined eXp Realty in 2018, we did not have a mentor program and everything worked out just fine. eXp Realty has an amazing broker team who is available almost 24/7 to answer any of your questions when it comes to contracts. If you are lost, all you need to do is hop over to Agent Concierge service on the Cloud and they will simply go out of their way to help you. Problem with Accounting or Tech Support? Just grab a ticket and you will be TELEPORTED to the right department within a second. There are more than 80 hours of live training on eXp Worlds, Thousands of recordings on every single topic taught by eXp ICON agents you could find on eXp University.
On Top of that, as I mentioned before, your sponsor will more than likely do everything they humanly can to make sure you hit the ground up and run like a superstar. Who needs another Certified eXp Mentor added to the mix?
Then how do new mentees leverage the eXp Mentor Program effectively?
There are 3 things you can do as a new agent looking to join eXp and potentially have a certified Mentor supporting you.
1. Know what you want
Know what you want, and seek out the master in the area that you need to improve on. If your interest is doing an open house, seek out an open house queen or King, for the cold call, seek out a cold call master. To go into residential investment, seek out an investor-friendly agent. If you can just do this one thing right, your career at eXp Realty will be a whole lot easier instead of working with a random Certified Mentor and have no idea what he or she is good at.
As a new real estate agent, You have to first know what you want to achieve in your 1st year of real estate. Your objective could change but at the minimum, a mentee should know what she wants out of a mentor. From there, you can ask the eXp Mentor Program to seek out the right mentor for your needs. This is the mistake that most new real estate agents make. They don’t know what they want and are waiting for eXp staff to assign them a random mentor.
2. Have a clear conversation with your Sponsor
As I said, eXp does not require the Sponsor to mentor new real estate agents, if your Sponsor disappears into the ocean after they sponsor you, you can’t blame them. Some of us will do that, but most of us won’t. Some will even go above and beyond even to a point it feels awkward to receive that much support and attention from him or her. Having this initial conversation with your sponsor, setting the right expectation, and having them guide you correctly would have a crucial impact on your real estate career.
3. Some eXp agents are self-learned
If you are anything like me, I will self-learn anything 1st before starting to bother anyone. If you are that type of person then maybe work with your sponsor to see if there’s a way for you to opt out of the exp realty mentor program. Work with your sponsor to see if this is an option
How does the mentor program work for teams?
Joining a real estate team might be the best way for new real estate agents to start their real estate careers. The team leader will assume the mentorship role with an agreeable split between team members and the team leader. There are amazing teams within eXp that love to work with new real estate agents.
Talk with your sponsor, or schedule a qualification call below with me to see if this is the right fit for you.
