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Name: Dewayne Carpenter and Kirk Kessel
Title: Team leaders and founding agents
Location: Brevard County (Space Coast), Florida
Team Name: Carpenter Kessel at Compass Florida
Rankings:
- No. 7 on the 2023 RealTrends + Tom Ferry The Thousand for transaction sides in the Large Team category
- No. 15 on the 2023 RealTrends + Tom Ferry The Thousand for sales volume in the Large Team category
- 2023 America’s Best list for exemplary sales production in 2022
- Total of 621 transaction sides, which earned the No. 1 rank in the state of Florida for sides
- No. 3 in the state of Florida for residential sales volume
Team size: 19 active licensed agents
Transaction sides: Successful completion of 621 transactions in a county of just 616,628 residents
Sales volume: $340,381,735 (2022)
Awards:
- The Thousand by Sides (2023)
- The Thousand by Volume (2023)
- America’s Best by Volume (2023)
- America’s Best by Sides (2023)
How did you choose your current brokerage?
We chose our current brokerage, Compass, because their values align with ours and they are dominant in all the feeder markets for our area, providing a robust agent-to-agent referral network.
Additionally, the tech they provide allowed us to get rid of a lot of other subscriptions we were paying for with other vendors from video integration, digital flipbooks, market insights and multiple premade advertising templates. Also, the leadership and agent support at Compass is unsurpassed.
What’s your top tip for newly formed teams?
Do not form a team because it’s a buzzword in the industry. We see too many illegitimate teams, where it’s just a bunch of agents combining production with no defined roles. Teams should be built organically because you have too much business to handle as a single agent.
Start small; your first hire should be a transaction manager, handling all of the minutiae from contract signing to closing. From there the next two hires are a personal assistant and a buyer’s agent. Remember you are trading money for time, so each person you hire needs to understand their primary objective within their role is to protect the team leader’s time.
What makes a good leader?
A good leader leads by example and has high integrity. A good leader is one who is in the trenches with the team and is committed to helping everyone meet their goals and grow. They constantly challenge themselves and the team, sharing the playbook for success every step of the way. A good leader doesn’t think they are the smartest person in the room and is always eager to learn.
What’s something you know now that you wish you knew when you started?
After 10 years in the business, it gets easier. The first five to 10 years of being a real estate agent will be the biggest hustle of your career. Typically the largest business source for agents is SOI and past clients. Your past clients will stay in their homes for five to 10 years before transacting again. It is important to stay in touch with past clients; it will eventually yield dividends.
What are 5 things you’d like readers to know about you and your brokerage?
We are quality over quantity. Our mission is to be the highest-producing team with the least amount of agents.
We are not a lead-based team; while we do give out leads, it’s not our focus. We are a business builder team, only hiring agents with a growth mindset.
We stay in our lane. We focus on what we are really good at, which is selling real estate. We do not have a mortgage company or title company. We outsource our marketing, photography and videography to the true professionals rather than bringing those departments fully in-house.
We go deep instead of wide. Helping our team members build their own teams in a very organic way. Our team members never outgrow our team.
The team leaders have been on all sides of the real estate transaction: agent, investor, advisor, expert witness, mortgage holder and developer. Through this knowledge, we continue to expand into every aspect of real estate, research, analytics and marketing. We leverage our expertise to make better decisions through established processes based on quantifiable results.