George Laughton bought his first rental property at the age of 22. As a rookie real estate investor who bartended his way through college, he had no idea he would one day become a top 10 team with over $1B in sales volume and nearly 2,500 transaction sides in 2023.

Today, The Laughton Team consists of more than 200 agents and two dozen staff members across five regional offices in Arizona. From a rigid all-in-one system with little visibility into individual teams, George and his team now use Follow Up Boss to keep every agent connected.

The Challenge

Deliver localized service at scale

With little overhead and a strong team culture, George was dominating his market at 8-10 agents. But he knew he had more to give. His goal was to scale beyond 50 agents. To do that, he’d need a strong lead gen operation.

“There’s a moment when you’re in production and you realize, ‘If I want to bring somebody on, I better scale this more than it is today and continue to invest in lead generation.’ To this day, higher-level relationships focusing on lead generation remains a primary focus,” George explains.

This can take many forms within The Laughton Team, including everything from sphere of influence and pay-per-click, to IDX sites and participation in Zillow's Premier Agent Flex program.

“Lead generation is the number one focus of a team leader. Funneling leads into a good CRM that can help you filter down to those most likely to transact, has been a key component of what we've done. It’s all about taking top of funnel PPC leads, top of funnel seller leads, and getting them down funnel to hand them off to the agents," he says.

“Real estate is done at the neighborhood level. That's something that we've never lost focus on. Trying to keep that as you scale and grow is one of the hardest things to do.”

With a team of 30 agents and 3 staff, George was in a prime position to scale just as he partnered with Zillow. This was the hockey-stick growth moment he’d been waiting for — but he’d have to scale up significantly in order to serve each area with the right local expertise.

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The Solution

An open operating system that unites every team and agent

A couple years later, the team had grown exponentially. George’s job shifted from showings and listing presentations, to becoming a full time coach to his agents. He brought on Chief Operating Officer Billy Hobbs to help steer the ship.

“We’re always thinking about how we integrate backend systems into our business to create greater efficiencies that create a better experience for the consumer and agent.”

Billy and Operations Manager Julia O’Buckley, decided it was finally time to upgrade their CRM.

“It just came to a point where we couldn't get the data we needed. The ability to have transparency in that front end of a lead coming in, all the way to before it went under contract became so important for us to be able to make the right decisions,” says Julia.

With seven team leaders, five offices, 200+ agents, and more than 300,000 leads in their database, they needed an open operating system that could give them flexibility and visibility at every level of the business.

Making the switch to Follow Up Boss

The team at Laughton has a strong experimentation mindset, but they’re careful not to fall into shiny object syndrome. “There are a lot of good products out there, but we don't need them all,” explains Billy. “We need to find the ones that are actually going to do the job.”

George had been in BoomTown since 2007. It was safe, comfortable, and the system that everyone knew. But as they scaled, it didn’t offer the level of integration the team needed.

“If I don't have the flexibility to go and find systems to plug in, and I have to work with the all-in-one system, it just makes it not scalable for us long term. Follow Up Boss had always been at the top of our list, but once we were able to see the true open API and the Zillow two-way integration, it was a no-brainer.”

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Securing agent buy-in for a two-day rollout

Julia, George and Billy spent four months taking recommendations, demoing products and carefully reviewing their options. But once they’d landed on Follow Up Boss, the rollout across the team was surprisingly quick.

“Every single demo I've been in with George, he's like, ‘Tell me why an agent needs this. What benefit does this have to the agent?’ Culturally, it’s just trickled down,” Julia explains.

“I don't know how agents can follow up consistently without having a system that reminds them and keeps them in check. The biggest thing for the business is the CRM.”

They also enlisted the help of Michelle Bleach, Regional Team Lead responsible for supporting team leaders across five branches in every aspect of agent development, leadership, and productivity.

“As a team, we have a lot of past clients and referral leads. We want to help agents be able to use that for the future and help them understand that it's not just waiting for the phone to ring. It's nurturing those relationships, it's having past client events, it's staying in touch with them on a bi-monthly basis. There are lots of programs they can use, including the campaigns and automations inside Follow Up Boss,” says Michelle.

Increasing profitability at every level

With a strong foundation of support, the Laughton team also needed a clear view into the profitability of each individual team and agent.

“Ops is ops. Sales is sales. But as far as the big picture, those really have to come together. "

"Without smooth running backend operations, you'll have a huge impact on sales. Same with sales. You can have a well-oiled operational machine, but if you don't have anyone using it, what's the point?” says their VP of Sales and Operations.

To keep the team’s financial forecasting grounded in ROI, they use a combination of historical data, trending data, and the median profitability line that runs through it.

The Results

A unified system that delivers a better experience for customers and agents

Big goals and expert coaching are key. But they’re nothing without on-the-ground systems.

At every level of the $1B billion business, Laughton’s agents and team leaders are not only aligned on the ‘why’. With a robust team operating system, they’re also clear on the ‘how’.

A local experience that puts customers first

As Head of Agent Productivity, Justin McLellan is always looking for new ways to deliver more appointments to agents.

“One of our key focuses is, how do we set an appointment or get that at bat to an agent? Leads come in through a lot of different places. We get them, funnel them in, and that's where Follow Up Boss helps get them to that appointment opportunity,” he explains.

Justin listens to thousands of hours of phone calls. He’s created a dedicated playbook focusing on three key areas of the customer journey: the initial phone call, initial meeting, and getting to an offer.

“Whether it's an open house, an agent generated source, an aggregate site, or FSBOs and expireds, it doesn't matter — it’s about having those conversations and understanding that the priority is getting face-to-face,” says Justin.

With a clear goal for agents to be creating, taking, or engaging 8-12 opportunities per month, Justin looks at agent appointment rate, met rate, showing rate, and offer rate, to keep agents and teams on track.

“When somebody presses that button, it’s a vulnerability,” says Justin. “There’s a huge responsibility for the person that picks up that call to serve that person at a high level.”

“The regionalization allows them to be that neighborhood expert in the 30-minute area around the home they live in. That's going to provide a better experience for that customer and, especially for the newer agents, it gives them a lot more confidence because they know the street, they know restaurants, they know the high schools, they know they can speak to different things,” explains Justin.

That confidence breeds more confidence — both for customers and agents.

3x agent retention and a clearly defined growth path

George believes that: “If you don't create a growth path for your agents, they're going to create their own and you're probably not going to be in it.”

Through a four-tiered Agent Journey, top producers can choose to build their own teams, while using The Laughton Team’s systems and support to continue reaching for the next level.

With the full power of The Laughton Team behind him, Tony Tramontozzi supports his own team of six full-time agents, including four who are brand new.

Tony and his team use Follow Up Boss for help with:

• Speed to lead: Calling incoming leads within the first 5 minutes.
• Consistent follow up: Including call, text and email follow-up cadences.
• Regular tweaking and testing: Including reporting to find what works for each individual agent.

“With Follow Up Boss, we've got a setup for each and every step. You start at 1 and go through 5, that's what your daily activity looks like. It's foolproof. You don't have to sit down and look at a big pool of leads and wonder where to start.”

As the go-to team leader, Tiffany Gobster pioneered The Laughton Team’s ‘team within a team’ model. 

“I had built this business up so much that I couldn't handle it anymore,” Tiffany recalls. “I think at that point I had 18 to 20 in escrow by myself. Even with a transaction coordinator, it’s too much for one person.”

Like Tony, she’s a producing agent and team leader. With 14 agents, a partner, and Ops Manager, she’s big on leveraging Laughton’s systems to the maximum.

“We utilize every single benefit of the Laughton team. Why wouldn't we? That's the benefit of it, right?” says Tiffany. 

“We're able to be on Zillow Flex, my agents can test all the new pilots that come in, and I get to do my own repeat referral stuff. There's so much we do in our own team and then there’s that whole other pillar of support that we get with the Laughton team.”

The team’s passion for technology, innovation and experimentation is a big draw for both Tiffany and her agents. But what really keeps them around is the culture.

“Culture is the most important thing. No matter what happens in this industry, George is always going to have my best interests at heart. I joke with him like, ‘I could leave, but I don't want to.’” laughs Tiffany. “Culturally, it's just such a good fit for us.”

Complete visibility for leadership

George is fascinated by technology. But as he rolls out new pilots across teams, he needs a strong system for understanding where the bottlenecks and opportunities are.

“A lot of the things we’re doing today weren't even possible a year ago,” explains Julia. “We have the ability to pull the data out, the open API integration, not just the CRM. It's the A to Z, everything all together.”

From top to bottom, every individual inside The Laughton Team is aligned with the overarching vision and accountable for their success. As new opportunities arise, leadership has all the data and information they need to make informed decisions on their next best move as a team.  

“The thing we love about Follow Up Boss is the ability to plug just about everything into it. We can try something, dump the data in, and see if it's working.”

With Follow Up Boss’s open platform, they can integrate their favorite tools including, Ylopo, Sisu, BrokerMint and more, for full control and visibility as they continue to expand.

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“The change into Follow Up Boss truly has built a strong foundation for us where we can just scale.”

Change is a given in real estate. But with a clear focus on experimentation and innovation, George and the entire team at Laughton are ready for whatever comes next.

“We're probably more operationally heavy than your average team, but to stay as a durable business, I see that as innovation. If there's not a portion of your budget allocated to innovation, you're probably going to get left behind,” says George.

Learn the inner workings of a billion-dollar team

Get an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build, support and scale a billion-dollar team. Read the in-depth story of the Laughton Team's journey to the top 10.

Download now